Patent ID: 8341282

Claim:
A method, comprising: establishing, by a content processing device for a buffer, a limited size for the buffer that is specific to a media stream provided by an application server, the limited size providing a maximum time delay for frames of the media stream to spend in the buffer; establishing, by the content processing device, an alert threshold for the buffer, the alert threshold comprising a threshold size that is a portion of the limited size for the buffer; receiving, by the content processing device, the media stream from the application server via a packet-switched network; storing, by the content processing device, frames from the received media stream in the buffer; sending, by the content processing device, an alert message to the application server when the alert threshold is reached; receiving, by the content processing device from the application server in response to the alert message, a flush instruction; receiving, by the content processing device from the application server in response to the alert message, recovery information for decoding the received media stream after the flush instruction is executed, the recovery information replacing reference frame information to be flushed from the buffer in accordance with the flush instruction; and executing, by the content processing device, the flush instruction by only partially flushing the buffer to reduce the buffer to a size that is below the alert threshold, wherein the flush instruction is executed while the media stream is received from the application server via the packet-switched network such that at least a most recently received one of the frames in the buffer is preserved.