Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Anton Kucer

Bret P O'Rourke

Dawson F Dean

Rodrigo Maialle Bomfim

Prakash Duggaraju

Thomas Leo Marquardt

Vishal Sood

Rajesh Hegde

Samuel Ng

Krishna Prakash Duggaraju

Geqiang Zhang

Jake Carver Swenson

Jimin Gao

Pete Mountanos

Raymond W C Cheng

Prasanna Kudli

A fault tolerant video streaming distribution service utilizes multiple distribution servers to receive and process a video stream simultaneously. Each distribution server performs a mapping of each encoded timestamp associated with a transport stream having time discontinuities to a continuous time sequence. The distribution servers coordinate the timestamp mapping through a distributed leader election protocol that elects a leader to coordinate the timestamp mapping in an environment where failures are anticipated and the number of distribution servers dynamically changes without notice.

Distributed fragment timestamp synchronization

Example apparatus and methods concern recording content based on program identifier information included in a fragment of the content. Example apparatus and methods facilitate identifying a content fragment (e.g., f-MP4 fragment) based on an identifier located in the fragment rather than information located in some external source (e.g., Event Information Table (EIT)). One example method includes identifying a fragment based, at least in part, on a program identifier (PI) encoded as a universally unique identifier (UUID) in the fragment and then selectively recording the fragment based, at least in part, on the PI. Rather than rely only on a predicted start time, a predicted start time, and a predicted channel, example apparatus and methods may be better prepared to account for unanticipated start times, ending times, schedule changes, channel changes, and other changes that may frustrate users.

Program identifier based recording

Embodiments provide an abstraction on top of virtual machine allocation APIs to expose scalable services. The services are higher level components that expose a particular set of functionalities. A deployment manager handles matching and managing virtual machine allocations in order to meet the customer demands for the managed services. A deployment service exposes a 'service' as a unit of resource allocation in a distributed computing environment or cloud computing service. Client components interact with the deployment service to request new service instances to meet customer demand.

Scalable services deployment

A computer-implemented method for archiving a live media presentation includes archiving the live media presentation as it is being streamed from a live server, wherein the archiving includes recording the live media presentation in fixed-length segments. A segment name is associated with each of the segments, wherein each of the segment names includes a time stamp. The fixed-length segments are stored on a video on-demand (VOD) server. A manifest is generated that describes at least a portion of the live media presentation and identifies a uniform resource locator (URL) to be used by a client device to access a first one of the segments, wherein the URL includes the segment name of the first segment.

Archiving a live media presentation

Systems and methods for combining streaming media content items for streaming to a client computer across a network are described. In one aspect, a server computer receives a request from a client computer for one or more content items. Responsive to receiving the request, the server computer identifies a data structure that refers to the one or more further content items. The server computer modifies the data structure to reference the requested content items. The server computer provides the content items referenced by the modified data structure to the requesting client computer for streaming media content to a user.

Wrapper playlists on streaming media services

Systems and methods for combining streaming media content items for streaming to a client computer across a network are described. In one aspect, a playlist is maintained on a server computer. The playlist includes at least one reference to a streaming media content item and at least one placeholder. A request for a requested streaming media content item is received at the server computer from a client computer over a network. The server computer modifies the playlist to create a modified playlist by replacing at least one placeholder with a reference to a streaming media content item. This is accomplished such that the modified playlist includes at least one reference to the requested streaming media content item and at least one reference to at least one further streaming media content item. The streaming media content items referenced by the modified playlist are provided to the client computer over the network.

The following subject matter associates new or different media content with a particular playlist while maintaining the playlist's corresponding reference(s) to content such as streaming media content. A server component receives a request from a client for one or more content items. The server component identifies a data structure that refers to one or more further content items. Next, the server modifies the data structure to reference the content item or items requested by the client. The server provides the content items referenced by the modified data structure to the client.

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Anton Kucer