Teleconferencing arrangement
First Claim
1. A method of controlling a conference call in a system which comprises a conference bridge for combining several audio signals arriving from terminals and transmitting the combined signal further to at least one of said terminals using at least one transmitting codec, the conference bridge comprising a spatialization unit for creating a spatial effect, the method comprising determining the number of substantially simultaneously active predetermined audio components, such as speech signals, from the audio signals of said conference bridge inputs, selecting, from a group of codecs comprising at least two different codecs, at least one transmitting codec for use on the basis of said number of simultaneously active pre-determined audio components, and transmitting said combined signal to at least one terminal using the selected transmitting codec.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A method and an apparatus for controlling a conference call is a system which comprises a conference bridge for combining several audio signals arriving from terminals and for transmitting the combined signal further to at least one of the terminals using at least one transmitting codec. The conference bridge comprises a spatialization unit for creating a spatial effect. The number of simultaneously active audio components, such as speech signals, is determined from the audio signals of the conference bridge inputs. At least one transmitting codec is selected for use on the basis of the number of simultaneously active audio components and the combined signal is transmitted to at least one terminal using the selected transmitting codec.
47 Citations
33 Claims
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1. A method of controlling a conference call in a system which comprises a conference bridge for combining several audio signals arriving from terminals and transmitting the combined signal further to at least one of said terminals using at least one transmitting codec, the conference bridge comprising a spatialization unit for creating a spatial effect, the method comprising
determining the number of substantially simultaneously active predetermined audio components, such as speech signals, from the audio signals of said conference bridge inputs, selecting, from a group of codecs comprising at least two different codecs, at least one transmitting codec for use on the basis of said number of simultaneously active pre-determined audio components, and transmitting said combined signal to at least one terminal using the selected transmitting codec.
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16. An apparatus for controlling a conference call (conference bridge) which is arranged to combine several audio signals arriving from terminals and transmit the combined signal further to at least one of said terminals using at least one transmitting codec, the apparatus comprising a spatialization unit for creating a spatial effect, wherein said apparatus is arranged to
determine the number of substantially simultaneously active predetermined audio components, such as speech signals, from the audio signals of the inputs of said device, select, from a group of codecs comprising at least two different codecs, for use at least one transmitting codec on the basis of said number of simultaneously active predetermined audio components, and transmit said combined signal to at least one terminal using the selected transmitting codec.
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28. A terminal which is arranged to receive a combined audio signal transmitted from a conference bridge, the terminal comprising
at least two different codecs or codec modes, means for separating the codec type indication from the rest of the audio signal, a control unit for generating a control signal on the basis of the type indication for selecting the codec or its mode, and a demultiplexer for feeding audio frames into the selected codec or its mode for decoding.
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31. A teleconferencing system which comprises a conference bridge, which is arranged to combine several audio signals arriving from terminal and transmit the combined signal further to at least one of said terminals using at least one transmitting codec, the conference bridge comprising a spatialization unit for creating a spatial effect, in which system the conference bridge is arranged to
determine the number of substantially simultaneously active audio components, such as speech signals, from the audio signals of the conference bridge inputs, select, from a group of codecs comprising at least two different codecs, at least one transmitting codec for use on the basis of said number of simultaneously active predetermined audio components, and transmit said combined signal to at least one terminal using the selected transmitting codec.
Specification