A method includes receiving, via an input service running on a server, a transcoding request from a client, the transcoding request requesting a segment of digital content, the transcoding request containing a start time of the segment and a duration of the segment; requesting, via the input service, the segment from a source based on the transcoding request; receiving, via the input service, the segment and metadata from the source based on the requesting, the metadata being related to the start time and the duration; transcoding, via the input service, the segment based on the metadata in the transcoder service; and sending, via the input service, the segment from the transcoder service to the client based on the transcoding.

Systems, apparatuses, methods, and software for using a network to efficiently distributing media content assets from a virtually unlimited content library and/or other storage to a plurality of client devices, as well as bi-directional local content sharing between head ends, and dynamic distribution and generation of media content assets within the network.

A content delivery server may provide content to a requesting client device using a streamlined HTTP enhancement proxy delivery technique. For example, an HTTP proxy server may receive a request for video content or a fragment of video content from a client device. The request may be associated with a timeout scheduled to occur if no content has been received after a specified amount of time. The server may then transmit a request for the content to a remote server, such as an upstream cache server in the proxy server's CDN. When the proxy server receives a portion of the requested content from the remote server, the proxy server begins transmitting the portion to the client device before the requested content has been completely received and buffered. The client device may then begin receiving data from the proxy server before timeout has occurred.

A generation unit generates a plurality of pieces of segment data, and appends an index to each of the plurality of pieces of segment data in a predetermined order. Each piece of the segment data corresponds to each predetermined time period of video data. A reception unit receives, from an external apparatus, an acquisition request which is for the external apparatus to acquire segment data and designate an index of the segment data. In a case where an index of segment data which is generated after a lapse of a predetermined time period or longer from a time when the acquisition request is received by the reception unit is designated by the acquisition request, the generation unit appends the index designated by the acquisition request to the segment data regardless of the predetermined order.

The present application discloses a streaming media data processing method, including: receiving streaming media data, initializing a storage file and a storage queue according to a header data packet of the streaming media data, and starting a first thread to receive an enqueuing operation; starting a second thread and establishing a message channel to read a streaming media data packet from the storage queue for parsing, and adding the parsed streaming media data packet into the message channel in the form of a message; starting a third thread to read the message from the message channel and encapsulating the message according to preset requirements so as to store the message on a disk; determining a target pull server corresponding to the streaming media data and publishing the streaming media data to the target pull server.

The media stream delivery system encodes and fragments media streams into numerous media stream fragments maintained on fragment servers. Devices obtain fragments to reconstruct media streams including live real-time media streams for playback on the devices. A device may perform caching of media stream fragments so that particular fragments need not be accessed again from a fragment server. A fragment server or even a content provider can analyze and monitor characteristics of media streams, viewing behavior, content popularity, etc., to identify fragments for caching at the playback devices. Caching indicators along with time period indicators may be included in the media stream fragments.

A method is provided for managing over-the-top delivery of content through a plurality of content delivery networks (CDN). The method provided works transparently with standard HTTP servers supporting an initial request for content from a client to a first preferred CDN. If the first CDN does not have the content, the method includes provisions for the first CDN to acquire the content from a second CDN, or for the client to request the content from a second CDN directly. A system is also specified for implementing a client and server infrastructure in accordance with the provisions of the method.

Semantic data corresponding to video data may be received. Next, the received semantic data corresponding to the video data may be analyzed. Caching decisions may then be made based upon the analysis of the received semantic data corresponding to the video data.

In various embodiments, methods and systems for accelerating on-premise delivery of content items using a unified content delivery network system are provided. A request is received from a content device for a content item. The request is communicated using a content delivery network protocol where the content delivery network protocol supports a unified content delivery network profile between content devices, local off-net cache devices, and content delivery network platform servers. A determination that the content item is not cached at a local off-net cache device is made, where the local off-net cache device is identified in the unified content delivery network profile as corresponding to one or more content devices. A retrieval routine for downloading the content item to the content device is selected; the retrieval routine is selected using the unified content delivery network profile. The content item is retrieved to the content device using the selected retrieval routine.

The serving of content with (e.g., on) video documents may be improved in a number of ways. For example, a system may accept information defining at least one ad spot associated with at least one instance of an video document, accept offers to have ads served in the ad spot(s), and arbitrate among competing ads, using at least the offers, to determine at least one ad to be served in that ad spot(s). As another example, a system may accept relevance information for an ad, determine at least one video document using the accepted relevance information, present information about the video document(s) to an ad provider associated with the ad, and accept, from the ad provider, an offer to have its ad served with at least one of the video document(s) accepted. As yet another example, a system may accept relevance information for an video document, determine a plurality of ads relevant to the video document using the relevance information and serving constraints of the ads, and select at least one of the determined relevant ads to be served with the video document. Examples of video documents include video files published on the Internet, television programs, live or recorded talk shows, video-voice mail, segments of a video conversation, etc.