A new patent has appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office that may hint at interface changes in upcoming versions of QuickTime.

Patent number 20100132005 is for recapping media content. It relates generally to the field of media and, in particular, to playing, viewing, and controlling video or other media.

The invention involves a system in accordance with the present invention may include one or more processors, memory that receives instructions from the one or more processors according to a clock operating at a frequency, one or more programs stored in the memory, with instructions to: open a media file or receive a media broadcast that may be stored locally or remotely; play the content of the media file or media broadcast at a default speed; and control the play of the content with control features such as a feature for recapping earlier media content. The inventors are Windy Chien, Gary Stewart and Robert Kondrk.

Here's Apple's background and summary of the invention: "Current media players may be used for playing live or pre-recorded content, which may be played by streaming the content over the Internet to a media player, or loading the content (e.g., source media file) from a local media storage device to a media player. Content may be comprised of audio, video, slideshow pictures, or any combinations thereof. Content may be represented according to one of many media file types (e.g., MP3, M3U, MPEG (-1, -2, -4), QuickTime Movie, AU, MIDI, JPEG, GIF, TIFF). Media players today also may offer features for controlling content, even during play.

"For example, media players today may offer features for playing content at a normal or accelerated speed, reverse playing content at a normal or accelerated speed, pausing the play of content, forwarding or reversing paused content, and skipping-over active content to new content. However, current media players do not provide a feature for recapping earlier media content according to a recapping control variable, then displaying descriptive information related to the recapped media content. Moreover, current media players also do not provide a feature where the descriptive information related to the recapped media content may be text, images, audio, or a combination thereof.

"Accordingly, the present invention is directed to a system and method for playing and controlling content that substantially obviates one or more problems due to limitations and disadvantages of the related art.

"An object of the present invention is to provide a computer-implemented method for opening a media file or receiving a media broadcast, wherein the media file or media broadcast are stored locally or remotely; playing content of the media file or media broadcast at a default speed; and controlling the playing with control features, wherein the control features include at least a feature for recapping earlier media content.

"Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objectives and other advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by the structure particularly pointed out in the written description and claims hereof as well as the appended drawings.

"To achieve these and other advantages and in accordance with the purpose of the present invention, as embodied and broadly described, a system comprises one or more processors; memory; one or more programs stored in memory, the one or more programs comprising instructions to: open a media file or receive a media broadcast, wherein the media file or media broadcast are stored locally or remotely; play content of the media file or media broadcast at a default speed; and control the play with control features, wherein the control features include at least a feature for recapping earlier media content.

"In another aspect, a computer-readable storage medium stores one or more programs configured for execution by a computer, the one or more programs comprising instructions to: open a media file or receive a media broadcast, wherein the media file or media broadcast are stored locally or remotely; play content of the media file or media broadcast at a default speed; and control the play with control features, wherein the control features include at least a feature for recapping earlier media content."