Patent ID: 8644674

Claim:
A video delivery system for control of video playback of an output video content object generated from a plurality of video segments for an end user system, with a plurality of control files from a plurality of sources, the video delivery system comprising: a first control file from a first source that is a content provider, wherein: the first control file is associated with one of the video segments that corresponds to a requested video content object and is addressable with a first universal resource indicator (URI), the first control file is part of the plurality of control files, the first source is part of the plurality of sources, and the first control file specifies a plurality of first actions that define a look-and-feel of a video player of the end user system; a second control file from a second source that is a third party with respect to the content provider, wherein: the second control file is associated with one of the video segments that corresponds to an advertising video content object and is addressable with a second URI, the second control file is part of the plurality of control files, the second source is an ad server, and part of the plurality of sources, the second control file specifies a plurality of second actions that define the look-and-feel of the video player of the end user system, the first source and second sources are from different network locations, and each of the plurality of first actions and second actions is associated with a corresponding one of the video segments, a start time, a stop time, and an application program interface (API) intent for the corresponding video segment; a control profile for the requested video content object or a group of video content objects that provides a hierarchy specifying which of the first and second actions take priority in the event of a conflict among the control files; and a control compiler that uses the control profile to: disambiguate between the first actions and the second actions where their associated video segments overlap in time within the output video content object, according to the hierarchy specifying which of the first and second actions take priority in the event of a conflict, and produce a control document for the output video content object or group of video content objects, wherein the control document includes at least the first URI and the second URI that specify where to find the requested video content object and the advertising video content object, and specifies actions controlling playback of the content object or group of content objects for all video segments of the output video content object.