the invention provides a system and method for processing object - based audiovisual information which is capable of flexibly encoding , storing and accessing a variety of data objects . audiovisual objects , illustratively prepared in mpeg - 4 format , are stored onto physical media using file consisting of segments and access layer primary data units , which are accessed using index information . the processes of encoding , storing and accessing audiovisual information are decoupled from monolithic storage in a strict linear order , and reordering and other editorial manipulations are possible .