Patent ID: 7664882

Claim:
A method implemented in a component object-based multimedia framework of an operating system executing on a computing device, the method comprising: receiving a uniform resource locator (URL) as associated with one of a plurality of applications requesting media content; identifying a scheme associated with the URL; selecting a first object operated to handle the identified scheme associated with the URL to access parameter data from a location specified by the URL; invoking the first object and determining whether the first object produces a second object according to a requested media content type; in an event the second object is produced according to the requested media content type, then returning the second object to the one of the plurality of applications; in an event the second object comprises a media source object, then returning the media source object to the one of the plurality of applications via a component object-based pipeline, the pipeline comprising: the media source object performing format-specific parsing to produce one or more streams of data that are sent through the pipeline, and one or more media sinks rendering or archiving the media content; and in an event the second object comprises a byte stream object and the requested media content type is a media source object or a timeline object, then invoking one or more selected byte stream handlers to generate the requested media source object, wherein the byte stream handler is selected based in part on the byte stream object, and returning the requested media source object to the one of the plurality of applications via the component object-based pipeline.