Media-editing application with automatic background rendering capabilities

• US 8,910,032 B2
• Filed: 06/15/2011
• Issued: 12/09/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 01/28/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Graves, Eric J., Agnoli, Giovanni, Sundaram, Vijay
• Primary Examiner(s): Hong, Stephen
• Assistant Examiner(s): LUDWIG, MATTHEW J
• Application Number:
  US13/161,467
• Publication Number:
  US 20120198318A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,273 Days
• Field of Search: 715/201, 715/202, 715/203, 715/255, 710/54, 710/200
• US Class Current: 715/201
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4843 by program, e.g. task dispatcher, supervisor, operating system
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/034 on discs G11B27/036, G11B27/038 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/34 Indicating arrangements indicating means incorporated in magazine or cassette G11B23/046 and G11B23/0875; indicating measured values in general G01D

Abstract

Some embodiments provide a media-editing application that includes several background-rendering modules. These modules automatically render segments of a media presentation in the background of a system on which the media-editing application is being executed. By performing rendering in the background, the background-rendering modules produce rendered results for the segments. That is, the modules pre-generate playable media output data (e.g., composite video frames or audio samples) of the media presentation without interrupting other operations (e.g., editing operations, etc.) of the media-editing application. The background-rendering modules in some embodiments include a first background-rendering module and a second background-rendering module. The first background-rendering module determines a prioritized order in which the segments are to be rendered. The second background-rendering module renders the segments of each category in the prioritized order that is determined by the first background-rendering module.

Claims

1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a media-editing application for creating and editing a media presentation, said application comprising sets of instructions for:

providing an editing module for editing the media presentation;

specifying background-rendering operations, the background-rendering operations, rendering portions of the media presentation without interrupting editing by the editing module, including;

grouping segments of media in the presentation into categories, prioritizing the categories to be processed based on attributes of the segments, and rendering the segments according to the priorities of the media presentation; and

using operating system (OS) services to put the background-rendering operations and a set of other operations related to activities performed by a user of the media-editing application in differently prioritized queues, ensuring that the background-rendering operations queue is prioritized lower than the queue for the set of editing operations related to activities performed by a user when using shared computing resources in order not to interrupt editing by the editing module.

2. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein said prioritizing mitigates interruptions to the set of other operations of the media-editing application by the background-rendering operations.

3. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the background-rendering operations comprise operations to determine an order to render the segments of the media presentation.

4. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 3, wherein the background-rendering operations further comprise operations to render the segments of the media presentation in the determined order.

5. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the computing resources of the device comprise a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processing unit (GPU), a storage, and a memory.

6. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the media-editing application further comprises a set of instructions for starting to perform the background-rendering operations after a certain amount of time elapses after a user of the media-editing application stops interacting with the media presentation using the media-editing application.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the media-editing application further comprises a set of instructions for stopping performing the background-rendering operations when the user interacts with the media presentation again.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein using the OS services comprises putting the background-rendering operations in a queue that queues operations that a central processing unit (CPU) of the device executes.

9. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein using the OS services comprises putting the set of other operations of the media-editing application in a queue that queues operations that a graphics processing unit (GPU) executes.

26. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the background rendering operations further include:

generating keys for the segments.

27. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the background rendering operations further include:

generating keys for the segments by using a hash function; and

constructing a frame identifier.

10. A method of background-rendering portions of a media presentation that is defined by a media-editing application, the method comprising:

providing an editing module for editing the media presentation;

performing a set of background-rendering operations of the media presentation by the media-editing application without interrupting editing by the editing module, the background-rendering operations including;

grouping segments of media in the presentation into categories, prioritizing the categories to be processed based on attributes of the segments, and rendering the segments according to the priorities;

reading a piece of data that defines a portion of the media presentation; and

applying a lock to control access to the piece of data, the lock allowing a set of editing operations by the media-editing application to access the piece of data while the set of background-rendering operations are reading the piece of data.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the lock is a readers/writer lock.

12. The method of claim 11 further comprising specifying a lock to control access to rendered result for the portion of the media presentation.

13. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a media-editing application for creating and editing a media presentation, said application comprising:

an editing module for editing a set of media clips to generate the media presentation; and

a background-rendering module for rendering portions of the media presentation without interrupting editing by the editing module, the background-rendering module having operations including;

grouping segments of media in the presentation into categories, prioritizing the categories to be processed based on attributes of the segments, and rendering the segments according to the priorities; and

the background-rendering module prioritizing itself lower than the editing module when using shared computing resources of a device executing the media-editing application in order not to interrupt editing by the editing module.

14. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the background-rendering module prioritizes itself lower than the editing module by placing instructions from the background-rendering module in a first queue of an operating system (OS) that is prioritized lower than a second queue of the OS for placing instructions from the editing module.

15. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the background-rendering module prioritizes itself lower than the editing module by using a prioritization scheme that is internal to the media-editing application.

16. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the background-rendering module allows the editing module to access a piece of data that represents a portion of the media presentation while the background-rendering module is accessing the same piece of data.

17. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the editing module and the background-rendering module use a readers/writer lock for controlling access to the piece of data.

18. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the editing module and the background-rendering module use another lock for controlling access to results of background-rendering the portions of the media presentation.

19. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a media-editing application for creating and editing a media presentation, said application comprising:

an editing module for editing the media presentation;

a first background-rendering module for (1) identifying different portions of the media presentation for background rendering and grouping the portions into categories and (2) determining an order in which the categories should be rendered based on attributes of the identified portions; and

a second background-rendering module for background-rendering the portions identified by the first background-rendering module in the order determined by the first background-rendering module,

wherein background rendering operations of the first and second rendering operations are performed without interrupting editing by the editing module by prioritizing the first and second background-rendering modules lower than the editing module in using computer resources.

20. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 19, wherein the first background-rendering module groups the identified portions of the media presentation into different categories based on a set of attributes of the identified portions.

21. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 20, wherein the set of attributes comprises a type of video that a portion of the media presentation has, real-time playability of a portion, availability of a source media file for a portion, user'"'"'s inputs as to whether a particular portion is to be rendered first.

22. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 19, wherein the first background-rendering module assigns the highest priority to a category that includes portions of the media presentation that a user of the media-editing application has specified to be rendered first.

23. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 19, wherein the first background-rendering module assigns the lowest priority to a category that includes portions of the media presentation that do not need background-rendering or already have rendered results.

24. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 19, wherein the first background-rendering assigns a higher priority to a category that includes portions the media presentation that require more computing resources of a device executing the media-editing application to render than a category that includes portions of the media presentation that require less computing resources to render.

25. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 19, wherein said application further comprises an editing module for editing a set of media clips to generate the media presentation, wherein the first and second background-rendering modules perform identifying and rendering without interrupting processing editing by the editing module.

28. An apparatus comprising:

one or more processors;

memory storing one or more programs for execution by the one or more processors, the one or more programs including instructions for;

providing an editing module for editing the media presentation;

specifying background-rendering operations, the background-rendering operations, rendering portions of the media presentation without interrupting editing by the editing module, including;

grouping segments of media in the presentation into categories, prioritizing the categories to be processed based on attributes of the segments, and rendering the segments according to the priorities of the media presentation; and

using operating system (OS) services to put the background-rendering operations and a set of other operations related to activities performed by a user of the media-editing application in differently prioritized queues, ensuring that the background-rendering operations queue is prioritized lower than the queue for the set of editing operations related to activities performed by a user when using shared computing resources in order not to interrupt editing by the editing module.