Patent ID: 7277956

Claim:
A server computer for use in a computer network having at least one client computer, the server computer characterized in that the server computer: sends media assets over said computer network to said client computer, the server computer coupled to at least one file system organized into a plurality of asset groups, each asset group comprising at least one media asset, all media assets within an asset group sharing a quota of system resources including storage medium bandwidth resources and storage medium space resources on the server computer that is reserved for the asset group on a per-asset-group basis rather than on a per-asset basis, and the asset group and the at least one media asset in the asset group being placed within the at least one file system according to (i) an asset group placement policy for placing the asset group which determines the resource quota for the asset group, and (ii) a media asset placement policy for placing the media asset within the placed asset group, which in combination guaranteeing a specified number of simultaneous playouts for each media asset within the asset group; and the file system further characterized in that the asset group is created by: specifying a maximum simultaneous playouts for asset group attribute, a maximum bit rate of the assets installed in asset group attribute, a guaranteed possible playouts attribute, and a resource quota attribute; calculating the storage bandwidth component of the resource guota by multiplying together a maximum simultaneous playouts attribute, a maximum bit rate attribute, and a default guaranteed possible playouts attribute (DGPP); assigning the asset group to the file system maintained on the server; storing the media asset(s) in accordance with the asset group; and defining a data structure that includes a list of pointers that contain values indicating the storage locations of the media assets stored in the asset group, as well as either pointers to values of the attributes or the attribute values themselves rather than pointers or a combination of the pointers and actual values.