Multimedia management system (MMS)

A method for displaying media records in parallel mediastrips, comprising:

• identifying a plurality of media records, the set of media records comprised of a plurality of media types with each media record of the plurality of media records represented by one thumbnail, wherein the plurality of media records are divided into a plurality of subgroups that are each represented by a thumbnail in mediastrips where the thumbnails in each mediastrip are further organized into time sequential order based on the creation date of their associated media record;
• displaying multiple separate but parallel mediastrips separately and simultaneously in a display area of a user interface (UI) where each mediastrip represents one of the subgroups of media records and where a scrollable display area of each mediastrip is aligned such that boundaries of the scrollable display area associated with a newest displayed thumbnail for each mediastrip are vertically aligned above and below each other in the UI;
• presenting, by the UI, an independent mediastrip format option to display the thumbnails in each mediastrip in time sequential order, with uniform display spacing between thumbnails, and allow the user to scroll each of the mediastrips independently to review all the thumbnails within each mediastrip regardless of display area constraints;
• presenting, by the UI, a multiple-mediastrip, matrix-centric thumbnail format display option that maintains a sequential order of each thumbnail in each mediastrip while the time sequential order of all thumbnails across all mediastrips is presented in time sequential columns of thumbnails such that:
• a number of thumbnails in a column can range from 1 to n, where n equals the number of mediastrips;
• no more than one thumbnail from each mediastrip can be placed in a column;
• thumbnails in each column represent the next time sequential thumbnail in the sequence of thumbnails regardless of a thumbnail's position in the column;
• each thumbnail in the column must maintain its sequential order in its associated mediastrip which may or may not require non-uniform spacing within its mediastrip;
• spacing between thumbnail columns is uniform except to emphasize a specific column;
• for any thumbnail column, all content in an adjacent thumbnail column must either be all newer or all older;
• and
• any scrolling action of one of the mediastrips causes all media strips to scroll at an equal rate to maintain a column thumbnail structure of the format and allow the user to review all the thumbnails for the plurality of media records regardless of display area constraints;
• displaying a simple mediastrip format control in the UI that allows the user to switch between the independent and matrix-centric thumbnail format options;
• and
• providing a persistent thumbnail selection function that allows the user to select or unselect one thumbnail in any one of the subgroup mediastrips such that when selected, the thumbnail will stay selected if the mediastrip format option is changed to the matrix-centric format, and will scroll the resulting reformatted mediastrip to ensure the selected thumbnail and the thumbnail columns preceding and following the thumbnail column of the selected thumbnail are visible, ensuring thumbnails representing any media records created before and after the media record for the selected thumbnail will be visible regardless of which mediastrip they are located in, and the thumbnail will stay selected and visible if the mediastrip format option is changed back to the independent format.