Seamless playback of composite media

Abstract

A streaming composition system is described herein that provides easy workflow and playback capabilities for content producers to create composite media assets from existing and on-going media content and for streaming clients to seamlessly playback composite multimedia streams provided from different sources. These assets provide broadcasters an option to quickly turn around highlights for an on-going event. The streaming composition system allows a producer to identify clips within existing media assets and compose the clips into a new unified streaming presentation. For producers that already have smooth streaming media assets, the system leverages these assets to provide seamless playback across clip boundaries including advanced playback support for advertisement insertion, fast forward, rewind, and so on.

I/We claim: 
     
         1 . A system, comprising:
 at least one processor and a memory;   the at least one processor configured to:
 provide an interface through which a content producer can identify media assets from which to compose clips from one or more sources into a seamless composite media presentation; 
 receive information identifying one or more clips for the composite media presentation; 
 identify the one or more clips identified by the received information and store information to play each identified clip; and 
 create a composite manifest that specifies information about the composite media presentation and each clip associated with the composite media presentation, each clip defines a start time and an end time of media content within a chunk that is to be played, each chunk being an individually addressable portion of media content that is cacheable by a network infrastructure, the composite manifest describes a plurality of chunks of media content forming the composite media presentation and an order for playback of the chucks based on the sequence of clips. 
   
     
     
         2 . The system of  claim 1  wherein receive information identifying one or more clips further comprises receive selections of one or more previous presentations and identify start and stop times of one or more locations within the previous presentations from which to create clips. 
     
     
         3 . The system of  claim 1  wherein create the composite manifest further comprises order clips so that a computer can play clip after clip as a single presentation to the user without asking the user to identify each subsequent item to play. 
     
     
         4 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein at least one clip is part of an on-demand presentation. 
     
     
         5 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein at least one clip is part of a live presentation.