Patent ID: 8260794

Claim:
An article of manufacture comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium including code executed to perform operations, the operations comprising: generating a user interface to create a playback definition, wherein the user interface is manipulated by a user to perform: receiving user input to create the playback definition; creating the playback definition in response to the received user input; receiving user input indicating a plurality of segments of media content from a plurality of media files and an ordering of the segments, wherein the media content comprises at least one of audio and video content, wherein the segments each indicate a start point and end point in the media content in one of the files and a media file locator indicating a location of the media in a computer readable storage medium, and wherein at least one of the indicated segments has start and end points between the beginning and end of the media content that comprises less than all of the media content in the media file having the segment; adding to the playback definition the plurality of segments defined through the user input and the ordering of the segments; processing the playback definition in response to initiating an operation to play the playback definition by performing for each segment and location indicated in the playback definition according to the ordering: accessing the media content between the start and end points indicated in the segment from the location indicated in the media file locator for the segment; rendering the accessed media content between the start and end points indicated in the segment; and accessing a next segment from the playback definition in response to determining that there is a next segment and in response to rendering the accessed media content, wherein the operations of accessing the media content and rendering the accessed media content are performed for the accessed next segment.