Collaborative media sharing

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016103572-A1
Application number	US-201514973730-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Dec 18, 2015
Priority date	Dec 14, 2011
Publication date	Apr 14, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

A media party network service manages a set of media parties and a set of users of the media party service. Managing the media parties can involve instantiating new media parties according to input from the users, allowing the users to join the media parties, and tracking which users are participating in which media parties. Managing a given one of the media parties may include maintaining a queue of media items, allowing users in the media party to provide input to add media items to the queue and to provide input to skip media items in the queue. The media party service streams the given one of the media parties to client devices of the users currently in the given media party such that all of the client devices are currently displaying substantially a same part of a media item in the corresponding queue.

First claim

1 . A method performed by one or more computers to implement a network service, the method of the network service comprising:
storing, maintaining, and serving a media parties, each media party comprising a respective queue of media items and a respective group of participant devices able to participate with instances of a user interface provided at least in part by the network service and displayed on the participant devices; for each of the media parties, storing a respective history of media items synchronously played to a respective group of participant devices, each media party having a respective history of media items played therefor, each history of media items continuing to be stored after the corresponding media items indicated therein have been played from the corresponding queues; and receiving a request from a client device specifying a media party, and in response asynchronously playing back the history of media items played to only the client device.

2 . A method according to claim 1 , wherein the histories are stored after the respective media parties have ended.

3 . A method according to claim 1 , wherein the histories of media items comprise participant comments submitted from the participant devices while synchronously participating in the media parties.

4 . A method according to claim 3 , wherein the playing back comprises playing back comments at relative timings that correspond to relative timings of their respective submissions from participant devices asynchronously participating in the media parties.

5 . A method according to claim 1 , wherein the histories comprise timing information indicating a chronology of respective requests from participant devices during synchronous participation, the requests comprising requests to add and media items to the queues of media items and requests to skip synchronously streaming media items.

6 . A method according to claim 1 , wherein the histories comprise indications of scrub requests from the participant devices to scrub synchronously streaming media items, and during the asynchronous playing back of the history of media items the media items are automatically scrubbed according to the scrub requests in the history of media items.

7 . A method according to claim 6 , wherein the client device is never a participant in the media party corresponding to the history of media items, and wherein the asynchronous playing back of the history of media items is performed: (i) while participant devices participating in the media party corresponding to the history of media items receive synchronous streaming of a current media item being played for the corresponding media party, (ii) and while a different media item is being streamed to the client device according to the history of media items.

8 . A method according to claim 1 , wherein the histories comprise vote events received from the client devices, the vote events associated with media items.

9 . A computing device comprising:
processing hardware and storage hardware; a display displaying a user interface, the user interface operated by a user that used the computing device to send a request via a network to a media party network service to playback a history of a media party that was provided by the media party network service to participating client devices by controlling synchronous streaming of the media party to the participating client devices, the user interface on the display comprising:
a graphic queue, displayed on the display, comprised of graphic items representing respective media items in a media queue corresponding to the media party, the graphic queue including a graphic item of a current media item and graphic items of other respective media items in the media queue, wherein appearance of the graphic queue is updated over time based on the playback of the history of the media party being received by the computing device via the network, the appearance of the graphic changing to indicate additions and/or removals of media items to/from the media queue that occur at the media party network service in accordance with the playing back of the history of the media party.

10 . A computing device according to claim 9 , the user interface further comprising a display area displaying a display of whichever media item is at the head of the media queue.

11 . A computing device according to claim 9 , wherein the changing of the appearance of the graphic queue comprises adding and removing graphic items in correspondence with state changes of the queue of media queue.

11 . A computing device according to claim 9 , the user interface further comprising graphic representations of respective users indicated by the history of the media party to have participated in the media party.

12 . A computing device according to claim 11 , wherein the history comprises indications of when users joined and left the media party, and wherein which of the graphic representations are displayed changes during the play back of the history of the media party in correspondence with the history.

13 . A computing device according to claim 12 , wherein when history further comprises indications of when comments were submitted during the media party and indications of which of the users submitted which of by the comments, and wherein the user interface displays the comments during the playback at times determined according to the indications of when the comments were submitted during the media party.

14 . A computing device according to claim 13 , wherein the media items comprise video clips, and the history further comprises annotations associated with regions of the video clips.

15 . A computing device according to claim 9 , the user interface further comprising user interface elements to control playback of the media queue.

16 . One or more server computers collectively comprising:
storage hardware; processing hardware; the processing hardware providing a media party network service by managing synchronous participation in a media party for whichever client devices are currently participating in the media party via a network, the managing comprising:
storing, in the storage hardware, indications of which client devices are currently participating in the media party, and updating, by the processing hardware, the indications in response to receiving client participation events corresponding to client devices entering and exiting the media party;
storing, in the storage hardware, a media queue of media items, and applying updates, by the processing hardware, to the media queue, responsive to receiving queue update events from whichever client devices are currently participating in the media party;
controlling synchronous streaming, via the network, to the client devices, of whichever media item is currently at the head of the media queue;
storing, in the storage hardware, the participation events and queue update events as an event history stored in association with the media party; and
the processing hardware responding to a request from a client device to playback the media party, and in response, via the network, asynchronously streaming the media party based on the event history.

17 . One or more server computers according to claim 16 , wherein the event history comprises reordering or removal events that reordered or removed media items for the media queue, and wherein the asynchronous streaming is performed according to the reordering or removal events.

18 . One or more server computers according to claim 16 , wherein the

Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Joffray Flynn
• Halai Sameer
• Coy Stephen
• Ickman Steve
• Newman Todd
• Portnoy William

Classifications

• H04N21/4825

  using a list of items to be played back in a given order, e.g. playlists · CPC title

• H04N21/482

  End-user interface for programme selection · CPC title

• H04N21/6587

  Control parameters, e.g. trick play commands, viewpoint selection · CPC title

• G06F16/735

  Filtering based on additional data, e.g. user or group profiles · CPC title

• G06F16/78

  Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually · CPC title