Patent ID: 7548237

Claim:
At a computer system, the computer system including a processor, a system memory, and a graphics subsystem, the computer system also including a compositor, the compositor configured to manage the composing, animation, and rendering of graphical scenes which are provided to the graphics subsystem, the computer system also including a plurality of clients that can provide instructions to the compositor for modifying graphical scenes, a computer implemented method for receiving a structural update to a graphical scene, the computer implemented method comprising: receiving a compositing change request from a client program, the compositing chain request requesting a compositing chain between the client program, the compositor component, and a client manager; accessing a media instruction block containing rendering instructions representing a structural update to a graphical scene, the graphical scene represented in a tree data structure maintained by the compositor, the media instruction block referenced through a handle that was previously returned from a rendering call; in response to the request, communicating from the compositor to the client manager to register the media instruction block with the compositor; and asynchronously communicating the media instruction block to the compositor in accordance with flow control components that mediate the incoming instruction flow into the compositor between the plurality of clients; and updating a handle table in the compositor to include the handle for the media instruction block such that the handle can be resolved to the media instruction block for subsequent incorporation of the structural update into the tree data structure for the graphical scene.