Patent ID: 7155109

Claim:
In a computing system that is connected with a storage medium that stores multimedia data, the computing system being connectable to at least one remote device that is configured to receive the multimedia data at a desired playback rate specified by a user request, and wherein the stored multimedia data includes a plurality of frames that are assigned time stamps corresponding to an intended playback rate of the multimedia data, a method for selecting certain key frames from the multimedia data and for scaling the time stamps assigned to the selected key frames so that the multimedia data can be rendered by at least one rendering device at the desired playback rate, the method comprising: an act of determining a desired playback rate of the stored multimedia data; optionally an act of determining that only certain selected frames of the multimedia data should be transmitted to the at least one device in order to accomplish the desired playback rate; an act of calculating an incremental duration of multimedia data to be skipped over, wherein the incremental duration corresponds to the time stamps assigned to the frames of the data; upon determining that only certain selected frames should be transmitted, iteratively performing acts of: identifying a first encountered key frame, wherein the key frame is a frame that can be decoded and rendered without the use of any other frame of the multimedia data, selecting the identified key frame as a selected frame to be sent to the at least one remote device, and skipping over the calculated duration of the multimedia data; and an act of scaling the time stamp assigned to each selected key frame so that the selected key frame can be rendered for an appropriate duration of time by the at least one rendering device in accordance with the desired playback rate specified by the user request.