Patent ID: 7587509

Claim:
A method comprising: communicating a media stream comprised of a one or more streams, wherein each of said one or more streams is divided into a plurality of chunks; and associating a state of a plurality of states with each chunk of said plurality of chunks, a header of each of said chunks including a state association representing said state, the state association indicating one of a plurality of possible purposes for each respective chunk, wherein said possible purposes indicated by said state association consist of: a new stream chunk associated with a new stream, wherein said new stream chunk includes a plurality of new parameters in said header and uses no parameters from a previous header, a new media chunk associated with said new stream wherein said new media chunk includes a plurality of new parameters in said header and uses at least one other parameter from a previous header, a new time chunk associated with said new stream wherein said new time chunk includes at least one new parameter in said header and uses a plurality of other parameters from a previous header, and a continuation chunk requiring no new parameters in said header and using a plurality of parameters from a previous header.