SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR INDEXING MEDIA STREAMS FOR NAVIGATION AND TRICK PLAY CONTROL

1 . A method of indexing a media stream comprising:

receiving a media stream having a plurality of frames including a current target frame, a previous target frame and a next target frame;

inserting an empty navigation control block (NCB) proximate to the current target frame to which it is associated; and

populating the NCB with data including offset data for the previous target frame, current target frame and next target frame.

2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

identifying a target frame type to index.

3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the NCB is inserted into the original media stream.

4 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

populating the NCB with data including NCB offset, frame type start code data, target frame offset.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the previous target frame and next target frame are buffered while the NCB associated with the current target frame is populated.

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the NCB is configured to reference the previous target frame and the next target frame.

7 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

populating the NCB with data including timestamp data for the current target frame.

8 . The method of claim 7 , wherein the timestamp data provides positional information for indexing the frames in the media stream.

9 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

populating the NCB with data including encoding type data for the target frame and target frame type data for the media stream.

10 . The method of claim 9 , wherein the encoding type data identifies the type of media encoding for the current target frame.

11 . The method of claim 10 , wherein the type of media encoding is selected from the group consisting of: MPEG-2, AVC, MPEG-4, WMV, FLASH, and unidentified.

12 . The method of claim 9 , wherein the target frame type data identifies the type of frame being indexed by the NCB.

13 . The method of claim 12 , wherein the type of frame is selected from the group consisting of: RA-IndependentFrame, IndependentFrame, P-Frame, B-Frame, TimingDiscontinuity, ProgramDiscontinuity, encoding type discontinuity and ad discontinuity.

14 . A system for navigating a media stream having a previous target frame, a current target frame, and a next target frame, the system comprising:

a data store for storing a media stream and navigation data for navigating said media stream, said navigation data provided in one or more navigation control blocks (NCBs) inserted proximate to a target frame in the media stream; and

a processor module in communication with said data store and configured to access said media stream, said processor module including a decoder configured to decode said current target frame in the media stream and extract the navigation data from the NCB.

15 . The system of claim 14 , further comprising:

a navigation control block module in communication with the processor module, said navigation control block module configured to insert one or more empty NCBs into the media stream.

16 . The system of claim 15 , wherein the navigation control block module is further configured to populate the one or more empty NCBs with offset data for the previous target frame and next target frame.

17 . The system of claim 16 , wherein the offset data for the previous target frame and next target frame is extracted from the previous target frame and next target frame.

18 . The system of claim 14 , further comprising:

a frame buffer in communication with the processor module, said frame buffer configured to cache the previous target frame and next target frame while an NCB for the current target frame is being populated with navigation data.

19 . The system of claim 18 , wherein the navigation data comprises at least one of: timestamp data for the target frame, encoding type data for the target frame, and target frame type.

20 . The system of claim 14 , wherein said navigational data includes a plurality of in-stream NCBs, and wherein said decoder is configured to navigate in a bi-directional manner through the media stream using the NCBs.