Automated processes, computing systems, computing devices, and other aspects of a data processing system improve reliability in transmitting digital media content over a network using resource constrained hardware. Media content may be received from a media source and used to generate data segments. A reference to a first segment of the media content stored in the buffer is written to a message queue. A computing device switches into copy data mode in response to the number of references in the buffer being greater than or equal to a first threshold value. A second segment of the media content is written directly to the message queue.