Data stream protocol for multimedia data streaming data processing system

In a multimedia data processing system comprising a personal computer having processor and a storage system, said storage system including a memory for storing at least one multimedia application program and a multitasking operating system for execution by said processor, data streaming apparatus operable under said operating system and said application program for streaming data from a source device to a target device in accordance with a streaming protocol, said apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of programmable stream handlers stored in said storage system and including at least one source stream handler and at least one target stream handler;
• a plurality of predefined streaming protocol control blocks (SPCBs) stored in said storage system and including a first SPCB for said source stream handler and a second SPCB for said target stream handler;
• each of said predefined SPCBs containing a plurality of fields for storing stream protocol parameters including data type, number of buffers needed to maintain continuous streaming of data, and size of buffers;
• said source stream handler comprising a callable first routine for creating a source thread as a task under said operating system and blocking such source thread, and a callable second routine for unblocking said source thread and streaming data from said source device to said buffers;
• said target stream handler comprising a callable third routine for creating a target thread as a task under said operating system and blocking such target thread, and a callable fourth routine for unblocking said target thread and streaming data from said buffers to said target device;
• and stream manager means operable in response to execution of a stream create call instruction in said application program, to create a data stream by
• calling said first routine and said third routine to set up source and target threads as multitask threads under said operating system and block on such threads,
• creating a negotiated source SPCB and a negotiated target SPCB by negotiating differences between said first and second SPCBs, said negotiated source SPCB and said negotiated target SPCB defining a negotiated streaming protocol mutually acceptable to both said source handler and said target handler,
• and dynamically allocating in said memory a plurality of buffers for said data stream in accordance with said streaming protocol defined in said negotiated source and target SPCBs.