METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR COMBINING METADATA AND CONTENT STREAM MANIFEST FILES FOR PROCESSING ON CLIENT DEVICES

A method and apparatus are disclosed for preparing program data for delivery to internet-enabled client devices implementing a targeted advertising scheme. A data combining apparatus (100) and associated data are provided for generating a combined manifest file. The apparatus (100) includes a demultiplexer (104), a data message handler (102), an A/V segmenter (103), and a manifest and metadata combiner (104). A content stream (105) (e.g., MPEG-TS) may be received at demultiplexer (104) and separated into data messages (i.e., metadata) and A/V content. Data message handler (102) may process the data messages into data message files (106) which include metadata. A/V segmenter (103) may segment the A/V content into A/V file chunks and generate manifest files (107) which include PTSs. Manifest and metadata combiner (104) may merge the data message files (106) and manifest files (107) into combined manifest files (108).