APIs discussed herein promote efficient and timely interoperability between hardware and software components within the media processing pipelines of media content players. A PhysMemDataStructure API facilitates a hardware component's direct access to information within a memory used by a software component, to enable the hardware component to use direct memory access techniques to obtain the contents of the memory, instead of using processor cycles to execute copy commands. The PhysMemDataStructure API exposes one or more fields of data structures associated with units of media content stored in a memory used by a software component, and the exposed fields store information about the physical properties of the memory locations of the units of media content. SyncHelper APIs are used for obtaining information from, and passing information to, hardware components, which information is used to adjust the hardware components' timing for preparing media samples of synchronously-presentable media content streams.