Abstract: A method and system provides interfaces, data structures and events for representing a “sink” of multimedia data to interact with objects in a multimedia system to control multimedia objects. The interfaces and data structures enable efficient management for media objects that must interface directly with each other. One embodiment is directed to providing a common interface and a single API to a plurality of media objects. In an embodiment, the API is a control layer that isolates the media objects from each other and provides a single point of control, allowing media objects to be added or removed without affecting any other media objects. The control layer allows users to become familiar with only one API instead of many thereby facilitating the tasks of programming and documentation.

Abstract: A computing system, which is in communication with a multimedia source and that includes at least one application for processing multimedia content from the multimedia source, includes an Application Programming Interface (API) for obtaining basic multimedia information that may be required by applications to process the multimedia content. By doing this, the invention enables multimedia application(s) to easily obtain the basic information from the API in a predetermined and standard manner, without having to obtain the information directly from the multimedia source, thereby reducing the functionality that has to be programmed directly into the application(s) for obtaining the basic information, and thereby reducing the cost, time, and resources that are required for creating the multimedia application(s).

Abstract: A system and method for automatically recover from broken network connections in streaming media scenarios. Server software executing on the server communicates with client software executing on the client during the streaming media session. If the streaming media session is interrupted, the server software and the client software exchange messages to associate the client with a client state stored by the server and to re-synchronize playback of the content.