System and method for record and playback of collaborative communications session

• US 20060200520A1
• Filed: 05/26/2005
• Published: 09/07/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 11/18/1999
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Red Hat, Inc. (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Intercall Incorporated (West Corporation)
• Inventors: Jones, Dan, Rust, David Bradley, Vernon, Todd
• Granted Patent: US 7,349,944 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/204
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1083 In-session procedures
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1101 Session protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/403 Arrangements for multi-party communication, e.g. for conferences data switching systems for conference H04L12/18; arrangements for connecting several subscribers to a common circuit, i.e. affording conference facilities H04M3/56; television conferencing systems H04N7/15
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]

Abstract

A collaborative communication session (“session”), as created by the presenter and witnesses by one or more users on second computers, may be recorded. The session may be replayed by a user'"'"'s computer, directing the audio and visual components of the browser on the user'"'"'s computer as if the user was attending the live session. The recorded session replays the events of the live session in real time such that they playback experience contains the same audio and visual events that took place when the session was originally being recorded. Moreover, the recorded session may be encoded such that the session may be played back according to the client'"'"'s playback capabilities, permissions and preferences.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method for recording a collaborative communications session comprising:

at a first computer, sending a plurality of media type data used in said collaborative communication session to a recorder client

at said recorder client, preparing a file of said collaborative communications session configured for playback according to a second computer'"'"'s processing capabilities, wherein the preparation of said file includes;

encoding each of said media data types into media type streams using a mixture of key frames and delta frames; and

at a second computer, playing back said file by selecting the media type streams that match the second computer'"'"'s processing capabilities.

2. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the media type data is an audio data element.

3. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the media type data is visual data element.

4. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein a full frame contains a complete copy of a buffer at a given point in time.

5. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein a delta frame is configured to include only changes to the buffer since a previously captured buffer.

6. The computer implemented method of claim 1 wherein the audio and visual data elements are encoded, stored separately and later merged into a file.

7. The computer implemented method of claim 1 wherein the visual data elements include images dynamically integrated into the collaborative communication session.

8. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the processing capability is the bandwidth connection.

9. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the processing capability is the media type applications available on said computer.