Patent ID: 6963910

Claim:
A method for providing a centralized user interface at an administrator terminal in a network for managing operations including encoding operations performed on media data by selected ones of a plurality of media servers, the process comprising the steps of: displaying a graphical user interface at the administrator terminal, said interface including a plurality of interface components enabling a user to select between a manual encoding mode for manually starting and stopping manual encoding processes to be performed by selected ones of the media servers, and a scheduled encoding mode for defining schedules for scheduled encoding processes to be performed by selected ones of the media servers; receiving information input by the user indicating a selection of one of the media servers, a selected mode of operation, an encoding operation, and a notification circumstance; generating commands and associated parameters based on the input information for instructing the selected media server to execute the specified encoding operation in accordance with the selected mode of operation; transmitting said commands and said associated parameters to said selected media server; and selectively generating a notification of said specified encoding operation based on said notification circumstance.