Sharing a streaming video

Abstract

A video segment can be shared over a computer network by first receiving the video segment at a receiving computer on the network. The receiving computer assures that the video segment is in a streaming video format, and creates at least one identification tag for the video segment. The receiving computer also stores the video segment, and communicates the identification tag to another computer on the network. Upon subsequent receipt of that identification tag, the receiving computer streams the video segment to a destination computer on the network.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A computer program product for sharing video, the computer program product comprising:
 a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having computer-readable program code embodied therein, the computer-readable program code comprising:
 computer-readable program code configured to convert, when executed by a processor, a video segment determined to be incompatible with a streaming video format into a compatible streaming video format; 
 computer-readable program code configured to compress, when executed by a processor, the converted video segment into multiple streaming multimedia files, each of the multiple streaming multimedia files being encoded for play at a particular transmission rate and bandwidth; 
 computer-readable program code configured to generate, when executed by a processor, a thumbnail identifier associated with the converted video segment; and 
 computer-readable program code configured to transmit, when executed by a processor, the multiple streaming multimedia files and the thumbnail identifier associated with the converted video segment to a video distribution computer system over a network.