Patent ID: 6976208

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of progressive time stamp resolution in a multimedia presentation, comprising the steps of: supplying a player of a multimedia presentation with information comprising two labels, one for a multimedia object's start time and one for the multimedia object's end time relative to other multimedia object start and stop times, and three durations, a maximum duration and a preferred duration for each multimedia object prior to playback of the multimedia object; and resolving the durations of the multimedia objects using said information based on actual multimedia object durations and arrival of information of multimedia objects to be played, wherein the step of resolving comprises the steps of: collecting all the dependency relations for a label Px, by taking all objects n that have Px as the label for their end time: t n +minimum( n )≦ t x ≦t n +maximum( n ) n=1, . . . , N where t n is the start time of object n, and N is the number of objects; using the N relations to calculate the tightest bounds on t x min {t x }≦{t x }≦max{t x } with min{ t x }=max{ t x +minimum( n )} n=1, . . . , N max{ t x }=min{ t x +maximum( n )} n=1, . . . , N; recalculating bounds on the duration of each object n, by using: duration( n )= t x −t n to get min{ t x }−t n ≦duration( n )≦max{ t x }−t n n=1, . . . N; and recalculating the preferred duration of each object n according to the process: if (preferred( n )<min{ t x }−t n ) then preferred( n )=min{ t x }−t n else if (preferred( n )>max{ t x }−t n ) then preferred( n )=max{ t x }−t n end if.