Patent ID: 8019885

Claim:
A method of enabling discontinuous download of media files, the method comprising: storing at a server a media file comprising a plurality of chunks of the media file corresponding to separate, contiguous time intervals of the media file, wherein the plurality of chunks comprise a frame selected from a group consisting of a video stream, an audio stream, a text stream, and a metadata stream, wherein the chunks are not stored as TCP/IP packets, and the server comprises a server computer system; receiving at the server from a client a request for a first of the plurality of chunks of the media file corresponding to a first time interval of the media file, wherein the request comprises at least one content identifier and instructions corresponding to the at least one content identifier, the instructions further comprising a content transformation instruction; transmitting from the server to the client a portion of non-requested content; transmitting the first chunk from the server to the client to enable playback of the first chunk at the client; tracking which of the plurality of chunks have been transmitted to the client; in response to receiving a request from the client for one or more of the plurality of chunks that have not been transmitted to the client, the one or more chunks corresponding to one or more time intervals of the media file not contiguous with the first time interval, transmitting the requested one or more chunks to the client to enable playback of the one or more chunks at the client; continuing to transmit remaining of the plurality of chunks from the server to the client; transmitting overall file size information for the media file from the server to the client for preallocation of storage space for the media file on the client; and wherein header and footer information are transmitted from the server to the client with each transmitted chunk.