Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Microsoft Corporation

Barry Aaron Steinglass

Derek H Smith

Maciej Maciesowicz

David Anthony William Pickford

David Pickford

Described is a technology for managing audio playback queues maintained in separate memory spaces, e.g., in a game console, such that that audio playback continues upon transitioning between states (including reboots) that change a memory space's contents. For example, before transitioning from a dashboard mode to a game playing mode, the playback queue in memory space used for the dashboard (and the game) is copied to a second queue in a second (e.g., operating system) memory space. The dashboard queue's contents (often large) are truncated as necessary to fit in the relatively smaller queue space. When transitioning from a game to the dashboard mode, copying the queue back takes place after the dashboard is operational. A third type of queue corresponding to a container of an audio source is also managed, including copying its contents when appropriate to the memory that has the queue currently being used for playback.

Maintaining music playback

A game system utilizes a codecs abstraction laver (CAL) to allow the game system to accommodate new and/or modified codecs without requiring the game application code to be modified. The CAL, functioning as an application programming interface (API), operates between media sources and the game application. The game application interacts with the CAL and not the codec. Differences between codecs are transparent to the game application. New codecs can be introduced and used by existing applications without modifying the existing application code. The CAL processes media from a variety of sources such as memory, files, http sources, queues, custom sources, external drives, or game media sources (e.g., XMedia). The CAL determines the source of the media, the type of media being received (e.g., audio, video, image, animation, or game), and the codec used to compress the media. The CAL provides the decoded media to the game application.

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Barry Aaron Steinglass