Patents by Inventor Mark DeSpain

Mark DeSpain has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Publication number: 20220141507
    Abstract: Dynamic transcoding can be used to provide supplemental content, selected to be played during breaks in a stream of primary content, that has the same format as the primary content. It can be desirable to provide supplemental content that is personalized. This may include additional content or advertising that may be of interest or relevance to a viewer. In many instances, the supplemental content will come from a different source and thus can be in a different format. Approaches in accordance with various embodiments can take advantage of dynamic transcoding of the supplemental content to provide properly formatted supplemental content through the same stream as the primary content. A custom manifest can be provided to the media player that points to the transcoded supplemental content. At an appropriate break in the playback, the media player can use the manifest to obtain the formatted supplemental content.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 14, 2022
    Publication date: May 5, 2022
    Inventors: Varun Ram, William Dirks, Meera Jindal, Sierra Anderson, John Cowgill, Kenneth Victor Chamberlin, Mark DeSpain, Matthew Brinkley, Khawaja Salman Shams, Alex Xiaoye Zhang
  • Patent number: 11228792
    Abstract: Dynamic transcoding can be used to provide supplemental content, selected to be played during breaks in a stream of primary content, that has the same format as the primary content. It can be desirable to provide supplemental content that is personalized. This may include additional content or advertising that may be of interest or relevance to a viewer. In many instances, the supplemental content will come from a different source and thus can be in a different format. Approaches in accordance with various embodiments can take advantage of dynamic transcoding of the supplemental content to provide properly formatted supplemental content through the same stream as the primary content. A custom manifest can be provided to the media player that points to the transcoded supplemental content. At an appropriate break in the playback, the media player can use the manifest to obtain the formatted supplemental content.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 19, 2018
    Date of Patent: January 18, 2022
    Assignee: AMAZON TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
    Inventors: Varun Ram, William Dirks, Meera Jindal, Sierra Anderson, John Cowgill, Kenneth Victor Chamberlin, Mark DeSpain, Matthew Brinkley, Khawaja Salman Shams, Alex Xiaoye Zhang
  • Patent number: 11146832
    Abstract: This disclosure describes techniques for distributed storage of files that represent video content across different storage tiers to reduce the amount of computing resources used to store the files, while maintaining a low latency when responding to user requests to stream the video content. Video streaming services support the streaming of video content at different resolutions to support various user devices and/or user preferences. To provide streaming of a particular video content item at different resolutions, the video streaming services may store multiple files that represent the video content item for the different resolutions and stream at different bitrates to user devices. The techniques described herein include storing files configured to stream a video content item at different bitrates (and for different display resolutions) in a tiered storage structure to reduce the amount of computing resources taken to store the files.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 8, 2018
    Date of Patent: October 12, 2021
    Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Ryan Farris, Jimmy George, Jesse Robert Hepburn, Benjamin Schwartz, Mark DeSpain, Mathew P. Jack, Marcin Manek, Prakash Bhasker, Saurav Sengupta, Matei Mitaru Berceanu, Akhil Ramachandran, Colleen Marie Toth
  • Patent number: 10893303
    Abstract: A content streaming system and methodology for facilitating the management of content streaming. A content delivery service provides streaming content that is organized according to a set of encoded content chunks. An encoding component generates encoded chunk data for transmission to requestors. A content delivery management component can determine configuration information that indicates the size of the content chunks. The content delivery management component can then receive encoded data but will not replicate and propagate the received encoded data to distribution endpoints of the content delivery service until complete content chunks are ready for transmission. A video playback application processes the set of encoded content chunks to dynamically form a content segment for live video streaming.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 31, 2019
    Date of Patent: January 12, 2021
    Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Matei Berceanu Mitaru, Mark DeSpain, Benjamin Aldouby Schwartz