Abstract

A method and apparatus for use in a digital video delivery system is provided. A digital representation of an audio-visual work, such as an MPEG file, is parsed to produce a tag file. The tag file includes information about each of the frames in the audio-visual work. During the performance of the audio-visual work, data from the digital representation is sent from a video pump to a decoder. Seek operations are performed by causing the video pump to stop transmitting data from the current position in the digital representation, and to start transmitting data from a new position in the digital representation. The information in the tag file is inspected to determine the new position from which to start transmitting data. To ensure that the data stream transmitted by the video pump maintains compliance with the applicable video format, prefix data that includes appropriate header information is transmitted by said video pump prior to transmitting data from the new position. Fast and slow forward and rewind operations are performed by selecting video frames based on the information contained in the tag file and the desired presentation rate, and generating a data stream containing data that represents the selected video frames. A video editor is provided for generating a new video file from pre-existing video files. The video editor selects frames from the pre-existing video files based on editing commands and the information contained in the tag files of the pre-existing video files. A presentation rate, start position, end position, and source file may be separately specified for each sequence to be created by the video editor.