Abstract: Applications are managed in an interactive media environment by the creation of a logical model for the lifetime of an application. The model is applicable to concurrently and/or consecutively running applications and governs the creation of applications, manipulation of applications by other applications, resource consumption, visibility of an application to a user, and application shutdown in the interactive media environment using the construct of application “state.

Abstract: In an interactive media environment, input events are distributed to a plurality of applications where each application includes zero or more script components and zero or more markup files and has a Z order which corresponds to the position of the applications' visual elements on a display. An input event processing order is utilized where the application that has focus in an interactive media environment (by virtue of its receipt of user events) is provided with the first opportunity to consume the input event. If the focused application does not consume the input event, it is then delivered to the remaining applications in top down, inverse Z order. Each application is enabled with the ability to consume an input event, pass it on to lower Z ordered applications, hide it from lower Z ordered applications, or otherwise handle it. Input event processing stops when an application consumes the input event.

Abstract: An arrangement is provided where all applications in an interactive media environment run on a single application thread in a media player. Event queues are utilized to schedule the application thread's processing of workitems corresponding to events that occur in the environment. Workitems include methods to be invoked when the workitem is processed and arguments for the method. Workitems further include a begin time and an end time and are ordered in the event queue first by begin time followed by the order in which they were inserted into the queue. The application thread marks workitems whose begin times corresponds to the current or previous time and then processes marked workitems from the queue in order. Such processing is committed so that once the application thread begins processing of a workitem it does not stop. Workitems are dropped from the event queue if their end times have been passed.

Abstract: Playing an interactive multimedia presentation involves pre-rendering a media object at certain times based on a frame rate of the interactive content, a frame rate of the video content (which may include video, audio, data, or any combination thereof), and a play speed of the presentation. Certain actions taken include calculating a current elapsed play time representing an amount of the presentation's play duration that has passed. Based on the calculated time, a current interactive content presentation time is ascertained from an interactive content timeline. The interactive content timeline represents times at which the media object is presentable. A subsequent interactive content presentation time is selected from the interactive content timeline. The presentation state of the media object is predicted for the subsequent interactive content presentation time. The media object is pre-rendered within a time offset period before the subsequent interactive content presentation time occurs.