Method and System for Providing Continuous Presence Video in a Cascading Conference

• US 20110018960A1
• Filed: 09/20/2010
• Published: 01/27/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/01/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Polycom Incorporated (Plantronics, Inc.)
• Inventors: Gants, Oded, Eshkoli, Noam
• Granted Patent: US 8,446,451 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/14.09
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1822 Conducting the conference, e.g. admission, detection, selection or grouping of participants, correlating users to one or more conference sessions, prioritising transmission
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/50 Telephonic communication in combination with video communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/563 User guidance or feature selection
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/565 relating to time schedule aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/567 Multimedia conference systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2343 involving reformatting operations of video signals for distribution or compliance with end-user requests or end-user device requirements video transcoding H04N19/40; media packet handling at the source H04L65/762
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/152 Multipoint control units therefor

Abstract

Disclosed herein are methods and systems for providing continuous presence video stream in a cascading video conference, i.e., a video conference that is conducted over more than one MCU. A cascading continuous presence composition controller (CCCC) selects which endpoints from among all of the endpoints participating in the conference should be displayed in the layout, regardless of which endpoints are associated with which MCU. The CCCC can be resident on one of the MCUs, resident on a cascading conference server, or can be distributed among all of the MCUs involved in a cascading conference.

Claims

1. A cascading continuous presence composition controller (CCCC) adapted to manage the composition of a cascading continuous presence stream in a video conference involving a plurality of multipoint control units (MCUs), each MCU associated with a plurality of endpoints, wherein the CCCC is configured to:

communicate with each of the plurality of MCUs;

select one or more endpoints to be included in the cascading continuous presence stream, independently of which MCU is associated with which endpoint;

instruct a first MCU to compose an associated continuous presence video stream that comprises video streams from the selected endpoints associated with the first MCU and send the associated continuous presence video stream to a second MCU; and

instruct the second MCU to compose the cascading continuous presence stream comprising video streams received from the selected endpoints associated with the second MCU and the video streams comprised in the associated continuous presence video stream received from the first MCU.

2. The CCCC of claim 1, wherein the selection of the one or more endpoints to be included in the cascading continuous presence stream is based on at least one selection parameter corresponding to at least one endpoint associated with each of the MCUs received by the CCCC.

3. The CCCC of claim 1, wherein the CCCC is embedded within an MCU.

4. The CCCC of claim 1, wherein the CCCC is embedded within a cascading conference server.

5. The CCCC of claim 1, wherein the associated continuous presence video stream transmitted from the first MCU comprises a video image that was composed by the first MCU from video images received from the selected endpoints associated with the first MCU.

6. The CCCC of claim 5,

wherein the cascading continuous presence stream composed by the second MCU comprises the video image that was composed by the first MCU.

7. A multipoint control unit (MCU), comprising:

a network interface that is configured to communicate with a first plurality of endpoints that are associated with the MCU and with a second MCU that is associated with a second plurality of endpoints; and

a video processor, coupled to the network interface, that is configured to;

receive a plurality of video streams from the first plurality of endpoints;

receive an associated continuous presence video stream from the second MCU, wherein the associated continuous presence video stream comprises video streams from selected endpoints from the second plurality of endpoints;

create a cascading continuous presence video stream comprising video streams received from selected endpoints of the first plurality of endpoints and the video streams included in the associated continuous presence video stream received from the second MCU; and

send the cascading continuous presence video stream toward an endpoint of the first plurality of endpoints via the network interface.

8. The MCU of claim 7, wherein the selection of one or more endpoints from the first plurality of endpoints and the selection of endpoints from the second plurality of endpoints are performed independently of which MCU is associated with which endpoints, based on at least one selection parameter received from each endpoint, the at least one selection parameter comprising audio energy.

9. The MCU of claim 7, further comprising a controller configured to select one or more endpoints from the first plurality of endpoints to be included in the cascading continuous presence video stream.

10. The MCU of claim 9, wherein the controller is further configured to select one or more endpoints from the first plurality of endpoints to be included in a second associated continuous presence video stream.

11. The MCU of claim 10, wherein the video processor is further configured to:

compose the second associated continuous presence video stream, comprising video streams from the selected one or more endpoints from the first plurality of endpoints; and

send the second associated continuous presence video stream toward the second MCU.

12. A method of composing a cascading continuous presence stream in a video conference involving a plurality of multipoint control units (MCUs), each MCU associated with a plurality of endpoints, comprising:

selecting one or more endpoints to be included in the cascading continuous presence stream, independently of which MCU is associated with which endpoint;

instructing a first MCU to perform actions comprising;

composing an associated continuous presence video stream that comprises video streams from the selected endpoints associated with the first MCU; and

sending the associated continuous presence video stream to a second MCU; and

instructing the second MCU to compose a cascading continuous presence stream comprising video streams received from the selected endpoints associated with the second MCU and the video streams included in the associated continuous presence video stream received from the first MCU.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the act of selecting one or more endpoints to be included in the cascading continuous presence stream comprises:

selecting one or more endpoints based on at least one selection parameter corresponding to at least one endpoint associated with each of the MCUs received by a cascading continuous presence composition controller.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein the acts of selecting one or more endpoints to be included in the cascading continuous presence stream, instructing a first MCU to compose an associated continuous presence video stream, and instructing the second MCU to compose a cascading continuous presence stream are performed by a cascading continuous presence composition controller embedded within an MCU.

15. The method of claim 12, wherein the acts of selecting one or more endpoints to be included in the cascading continuous presence stream, instructing a first MCU to compose an associated continuous presence video stream, and instructing the second MCU to compose a cascading continuous presence stream are performed by a cascading continuous presence composition controller embedded within a cascading conference server.

16. The method of claim 12, wherein the associated continuous presence video stream comprises a video image that was composed by the first MCU by composing video images from the selected endpoints associated with the first MCU.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the cascading continuous presence stream composed by the second MCU comprises the video image composed by the first MCU and video images from the selected endpoints associated with the second MCU.

18. The method of claim 12, where the act of selecting one or more endpoints to be included in the cascading continuous presence stream comprises:

selecting one or more endpoints independently of which MCU is associated with which endpoints, based on at least one selection parameter received from each endpoint, the at least one selection parameter comprising audio energy.