This paper describes how the handling of visual media objects is implemented in the visual information retrieval project VizIR. Essentially, four areas are concerned: media access, media representation in user interfaces, visualisation of media-related data and media transport over the network. The paper offers detailed technical descriptions of the solutions developed in VizIR for these areas. Unified media access for images and video is implemented through class MediaContent. This class contains methods to access the view on a media object at any point in time as well as methods to change the colour model and read/write format parameters (size, length, frame-rate). Based on this low-level-API class VisualCube allows accessing spatio-temporal areas in temporal media randomly. Transformer-classes allow to modify visual objects in a very simple but effective way. Visualisation of media object is implemented in class MediaRenderer. Each MediaRenderer represents one media object and is r...