Patent ID: 7526565

Claim:
A method of streaming data over a communications network with varying streaming conditions, said method comprising: conditioning a data stream to generate a plurality of conditioned data representations of the data stream, wherein the conditioned data representations comprise different encoded representations of source data of the data stream each targeting a different set of running conditions, wherein conditioning comprises partitioning the data stream into a plurality of data units, and generating the different encoded representations of each of the data units of the data stream; packaging the plurality of conditioned data representations of the data steam together with metadata that specifies a target set of running conditions associated with the different encoded representations of the data stream, wherein the conditioned data representations arc packaged by pre-computing one or more trajectories among the plurality of different encoded representations for each of the data units based on a given finite set of streaming conditions; observing a current run-time condition of a computing network; and dynamically selecting one of the packaged conditioned data representations for streaming over the computing network according to the running conditions specified in the metadata of the packaged conditioned data representations in view of the current run-time condition of the computing network.