8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the viewer application comprises a transcoder, the transcoder performing the steps of: applying the predetermined texture strip function to each frame of the plurality of frames of the video to generate the textured frame representation for only that individual frame; sequencing the textured frame representations for each of the frames in the order of appearance in time of the frames in the video to form the single still image comprised of the sequence of textured frame representations; and generating the texture strip using the sequenced texture frame representations.
1. A method of non-linearly viewing videos in a distributed scalable media environment, comprising: in a viewer application executing on a computer, receiving a video comprising a plurality of frames, the plurality of frames comprising at least a portion of the video; applying, by the viewer application, a predetermined texture strip function to each frame of the plurality of frames of the video to generate a textured frame representation for only that individual frame, wherein each textured frame representation includes texture data, and wherein each frame of the plurality of frames is a self-referential frame from the video; sequencing the textured frame representations for each of the frames in the order of appearance in time of the frames in the video to form a single still image comprised of the sequence of textured frame representations; generating a texture strip using the sequenced texture frame representations, the texture strip comprising the single still image for visually representing the entire video including the plurality of frames comprising moving image data over a time period, the single still image of the texture strip comprised of the textured frame representations corresponding to the plurality of frames of the video sequenced according to their order of appearance in time in the video; receiving a selection of at least a portion of the video based on a selected part of the texture strip, the selected part of the texture strip corresponding to subject texture data; applying, by the viewer application, a predetermined highlight function to the subject texture data to generate a highlighted portion of the single still image of the texture strip corresponding to the selected part of the texture strip; and displaying, in the viewer application, a playback of the video, the texture strip, and the highlighted portion of the texture strip.