Patent ID: 7668242

Claim:
A storage medium comprising a plurality of executable instructions which, when executed on a computing system, implement a method comprising: identifying one or more characteristics of one or more elements of a media processing system, wherein identifying the one or more characteristics of the one or more elements comprises: generating a first negotiation data structure in accordance with a proposed set of media processing capabilities; issuing the first negotiation data structure to one or more elements of a media processing system; determining whether each of the one or more media processing system elements accepted the first negotiation data structure; executing media processing tasks within the proposed media processing capabilities if the first negotiation data structure is accepted by the elements of the media processing system; generating one or more auto-negotiation data structure(s) denoting a proposed set of media processing system capabilities and/or a proposed split in media processing among media system elements; and iteratively issuing the auto-negotiation data structure(s) to media processing system elements until a proposed set of media processing system capabilities and/or split in media processing is agreed upon by each element of the media processing system; dynamically negotiating which element of a media processing system will perform certain media processing tasks based, at least in part, on the identified one or more characteristics of the system element(s); if the media processing system elements did not previously accept the first negotiation data structure, generating a second negotiation data structure that is different from the first negotiation data structure in accordance with another proposed set of media processing capabilities; and iteratively performing the issuing, determining and generating until the media processing system elements accept a negotiation data structure.