Patent ID: 9049494
Filing Date: 2015-06-02
Classification: G06F,H04N

Abstract:
1. A method for playing a mid-roll advertisement during media playback, the method comprising: receiving, at a media player, a media manifest file, the media manifest file comprising a set of operations to be performed sequentially by the media player, the media manifest file indicating a sequence of chunks of media content for retrieval and a length of each of the chunks, wherein the lengths are variable and selected such that a chapter break in the media content temporally aligns with an end of a chunk and wherein each of the lengths are above a predefined minimum chunk length; retrieving a first chunk of media content based on a pointer specified in the media manifest file and playing the first chunk of media content; at a chapter break, extracting by a processor, from the media manifest file, at least one tag associated with a chunk of advertising content to be played by the media player, the tag comprising instructions to disable at least one media player control during playback of the chunk of advertising content and the tag specifying a length of time to disable the identified media player control; parsing the at least one tag to identify 1) a media player control to be disabled during playback of the chunk of advertising content and 2) the length of time to disable the identified media player control; retrieving, for playback, the chunk of advertising content, the chunk of advertising content dynamically selected from an advertising server based on a user profile associated with the media player; playing the chunk of advertising content; and during playback of the chunk of advertising content, disabling the at least one media player control for the specified length of time based on the at least one tag in the media manifest file associated with the chunk of advertising content; and following playback of the chunk of advertising content, retrieving and playing a second chunk of media content specified in the media manifest file.