Video on demand applet method and apparatus for inclusion of motion video in multimedia documents

摘要

A computer process which requests streams of motion video titles and decodes and displays the motion video signals of the stream for display in a computer display device is constructed in the form of an applet of a multimedia document viewer such as a World Wide Web browser. Accordingly, a designer of multimedia documents such as HTML pages can easily incorporate motion video titles into such HTML pages by specifying a few parameters of a desired title or a desired portion of a title to be requested from a video server. The applet builds bit stream control signals from the specification of the title or the portion of the title. The bit stream control signals request transmission of the title or the portion of the title from a bit stream server such as a video server and are in a form appropriate for processing by the bit stream server. The applet transmits the bit stream control signals to the bit stream server to thereby request that the bit stream server initiate transmission of a bit stream representing the requested title or the requested portion of the title. The applet also builds decoder control signals from the specification of the title or the portion of the title. The decoder control signals direct a bit stream decoder to receive the requested bit stream from the bit stream server and to decode a motion video signal from the bit stream. The applet transmits the decoder control signals to the decoder to cause the decoder to receive the bit stream and to decode the motion video signal from the bit stream.