Patent ID: 7934159

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a request, from an application at an application programming interface (API), to interact with a plurality of media comprising streaming media; and generating an original media timeline based on the request, wherein the original media timeline: is exposed to the application via the API; includes a plurality of nodes; defines a presentation, to be output via one or more computers, of a first media referenced by a first node with respect to a second media referenced by a second node, wherein: the first and second nodes are configured as parallel nodes such that the media referenced by the first node that is a child of a parent node is rendered concurrently with the media referenced by the second node that is a child of the same parent node; the original media timeline is configured for dynamic creation, automatically by the one or more computers without human user interaction, such that at least one node is dynamically created while at least one of the media referenced by the plurality of nodes of the original media timeline is being rendered; and at least one node includes metadata, the metadata describing: rendering of the at least one node; and a collection of additional nodes to be dynamically modified when the original media timeline is rendered; and specifies, automatically by the one or more computers without human user interaction, delayed creation of one or more of the plurality of nodes when the media timeline is rendered, wherein the delayed creation includes creating the one or more of the plurality of nodes when called by the application.