Claims
- 1. A graphical user interface for use in a transport multiplexer having plural input ports and plural output ports wherein dynamic content streams are received at the input ports and routed to the output ports, the content streams comprising plural components and having attributes that include bit rate, type and name, the graphical user interface comprising:
a tree view screen for displaying graphical objects representing the input ports and the output ports and for displaying input and output trees with plural branches indicating the hierarchical structure of respective input and output content streams, the tree view screen indicating the content streams received at and routing through the transport multiplexer and displaying, in real-time, changes in the content streams received at the transport multiplexer.
- 2. The graphical user interface of claim 1 wherein at least some of the graphical objects are icons and wherein selection of an icon displays a transport editor window in which the content stream attributes may be modified.
- 3. The graphical user interface of claim 2 wherein output bandwidth utilization is recalculated and redisplayed in real-time in response to at least one content stream attribute being modified.
- 4. The graphical user interface of claim 1 wherein the tree view screen further comprises a scrolling log message window for displaying system generated log messages in real-time.
- 5. The graphical user interface of claim 4 wherein the log messages to be displayed are filtered in accordance with plural predetermined filter levels.
- 6. The graphical user interface of claim 1 wherein the trees further comprise graphical objects indicative of the type of content streams received by the input ports and exiting the output ports.
- 7. A graphical user interface for use in a transport multiplexer with a chassis having plural hardware and software components to route input content streams received by input ports to predetermined output ports, the graphical user interface comprising:
a chassis view screen for displaying graphical objects representing the physical structure of the hardware components installed in the chassis of the transport multiplexer, the graphical objects indicating the type of input and output ports provided by the hardware components.
- 8. The graphical user interface of claim 7 wherein the chassis view screen also displays in real-time the operational status of the displayed hardware components.
- 9. The graphical user interface of claim 7 wherein the graphical user interface further comprises a software attributes screen for displaying attributes of the software utilized in the transport multiplexer, the software attributes comprising software version number.
- 10. The graphical user interface of claim 7 wherein the interface is capable of graphically displaying in real-time changes detected in the hardware status data.
- 11. A method of using a graphical user interface to configure routing control of a content stream through a transport multiplexer, the router having plural input ports and plural output ports, the method comprising:
displaying icons representing the input ports; displaying icons representing the output ports; displaying an icon representing a input content stream, the stream being received by one of the input ports and the input stream icon being displayed in proximity to the input port icon; dragging the input stream icon into proximity to an output port icon; dropping the input content stream icon in proximity with the output port icon; and responsive to the step of dropping, displaying an icon representing an output stream exiting the output port, the icon being displayed substantially where the input stream was dropped.
- 12. The method of claim 11 wherein the output stream icon represents an output stream presently exiting the output port.
- 13. The method of claim 11 wherein the output stream icon represents an output stream that will begin exiting the output port at a predetermined time in the future.
- 14. The method of claim 11, wherein:
the input content stream comprises plural hierarchical components having attributes, the input stream icon represents all of the plural hierarchical components, and the output stream icon represents a content stream having the same plural hierarchical components as the input stream.
- 15. The method of claim 11 further comprising:
displaying an alphanumeric character string in proximity with the input stream icon; dragging the alphanumeric character string with the input stream icon; dropping the alphanumeric character string with the input stream icon; and displaying an alphanumeric character string in proximity with the output stream icon.
- 16. A graphical user interface for use in a transport multiplexer having plural input ports and plural output ports wherein content streams are received at the input ports and routed to the output ports, the content streams comprising a hierarchy of plural components and having attributes that include bit rate, type and name, the graphical user interface comprising:
a tree view screen for displaying icons representing the input ports and the output ports and input and output trees with plural branches indicating the hierarchical structure of the input and output content streams; the graphical user interface permitting configuration of routing controls by dragging content stream components from the input tree and dropping the content stream components onto the output tree whereby the content stream is automatically routed through the transport multiplexer to a desired output.
- 17. The graphical user interface of claim 16 wherein plural content stream components can be simultaneously dragged from the input tree and dropped into the output tree whereby plural content streams are automatically routed through the transport multiplexer to the output.
- 18. A graphical user interface for use in a transport multiplexer having plural input ports and plural output ports wherein dynamic content streams are received at the input ports and routed to the output ports in accordance with routing control data, the graphical user interface comprising:
plural tree view screens for displaying icons representing the input ports and the output ports, the tree view screens also displaying input and output trees with plural branches indicating the hierarchical structure of respective input and output content streams, each of the tree view screens showing content stream routing for a unique time segment; a time bar comprising plural time segments defined between pairs of segment start and stop times; and the graphical user interface permitting consecutive display of the plural tree view screens by selection of corresponding time segments of the time bar.
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED CASES
[0001] This application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. 1 19(e) of co-pending U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/285,188 filed Apr. 20, 2001 and entitled “Broadband Bandwidth Management, Device Management and Multi-Media Control System”; and 60/285,153 filed Apr. 20, 2001 and entitled “Data Insertion, Transport, Grooming, Aliasing, Routing, and Multiplexing of MPEG 2 Data Streams”, which Provisional Applications are hereby incorporated by reference.
[0002] This application is related to co-pending U.S. Patent Application Serial No. ______, filed Apr. 16, 2002 (based on provisional application No. 60/322,063 filed Sep. 13, 2001) and entitled “High Speed Serial Data Transport Between Communications Hardware Modules,” which Application is hereby incorporated by reference.
Provisional Applications (2)
|
Number |
Date |
Country |
|
60285188 |
Apr 2001 |
US |
|
60285153 |
Apr 2001 |
US |