Video Conference

• US 20110085017A1
• Filed: 10/09/2009
• Published: 04/14/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 10/09/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Culbertson, William, Robinson, Ian N.
• Granted Patent: US 8,330,793 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/14.08
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1827 Network arrangements for conference optimisation or adaptation
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44008 involving operations for analysing video streams, e.g. detecting features or characteristics in the video stream arrangements characterised by components specially adapted for monitoring, identification or recognition of video in broadcast systems H04H60/59
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4788 communicating with other users, e.g. chatting arrangements for providing for computer conferences, e.g. chat rooms, to substation in data switching networks H04L12/1813; distributed application using peer-to-peer [P2P] networks H04L67/104
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/147 Communication arrangements, e.g. identifying the communication as a video-communication, intermediate storage of the signals selecting H04Q
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/15 Conference systems

Abstract

A method for rendering a video conference including identifying a location of a focus region and a size of the focus region by tracking a head position of a participant viewing the video conference and rendering the video conference to increase an amount of display resources for one or more participants included in the focus region and decrease the amount of display resources for one or more of the participants not included in the focus region.

Claims

1. A method for rendering a video conference comprising:

identifying a location of a focus region and a size of the focus region by tracking a head position of a participant viewing the video conference; and

rendering the video conference to increase an amount of display resources for one or more participants included in the focus region and decrease the amount of display resources for one or more of the participants not included in the focus region.

2. The method for rendering a video conference of claim 1 wherein tracking the head position of the participant includes tracking a direction of a head movement of the participant and an amount of the head movement.

3. The method for rendering a video conference of claim 2 wherein tracking a direction of a head movement of a participant viewing the video conference and an amount of the head movement includes determining an initial head or eye position of the participant and an ending head or eye position of the participant.

4. The method for rendering a video conference of claim 1 wherein the focus region corresponds to one or more of the participants in the video conference which the participant is focusing on.

5. The method for rendering a video conference of claim 4 further comprising identifying one or more of the participants included in the focus region.

6. The method for rendering a video conference of claim 1 further comprising determining whether the head movement includes a rotation.

7. The method for rendering a video conference of claim 1 wherein decreasing the amount of display resources for one or more of the participants not included in the focus region includes scaling down one or more video streams of the participants in the video conference which are not included in the focus region.

8. The method for rendering a video conference of claim 1 wherein decreasing the amount of display resources for one or more of the participants not included in the focus region includes cropping one or more video streams of the participants in the video conference which are not included in the focus region.

9. The method for rendering a video conference of claim 1 wherein decreasing the amount of display resources for one or more of the participants not included in the focus region includes vertically skewing one or more video streams of the participants in the video conference which are not included in the focus region.

10. A machine comprising:

a processor;

a display device configured to display a video conference of participants;

one or more input devices configured to track a head position of a participant viewing the video conference; and

a video conference application executable by the processor from computer readable memory and configured identify a location and a size of a focus region in response to the head position of the participant and render the video conference to increase and decrease display resources for one or more of the participants in response to the focus region.

11. The machine of claim 10 wherein one or more of the input devices track a head position of the participant by tracking a direction of a head movement of the participant and an amount of the head movement.

12. The machine of claim 10 wherein one or more input devices include at least one from the group consisting of one or more cameras, one or more depth cameras, one or more proximity sensors, one or more infra red devices, and one or more stereo devices.

13. The machine of claim 11 further comprising a map of coordinates which is marked by the video conference application to indicate where the head movement of the participant was detected.

14. The machine of claim 11 wherein one or more of the input devices track the direction of the head movement and the amount of the head movement along one or more axis.

15. The machine of claim 14 wherein the size of the focus region is modified in response to one or more of the input devices detecting the head movement along a z-axis.

16. The machine of claim 11 wherein the video conference application additionally utilizes facial recognition technology when tracking the direction of the head movement and the amount of the head movement.

17. A computer-readable program in a computer-readable medium comprising:

a video conference application configured to identify a location of a focus region and a size of the focus region by tracking a head position of a participant viewing a video conference; and

wherein the video conference application is additionally configured to render the video conference to increase an amount of display resources for one or more of the participants included in the focus region and decrease the amount of display resources for one or more of the participants not included in the focus region.

18. The computer-readable program in a computer-readable medium of claim 17 wherein the video conference application renders the video conference to increase an amount of display resources for one or more of the participants included in the focus region by simulating a motion parallax when the participants are displayed in the video conference to be in more than one row.

19. The computer-readable program in a computer-readable medium of claim 18 wherein the video conference application simulates the motion parallax by rendering the video conference such that one or more of the participants appear to overlap one another.

20. The computer-readable program in a computer-readable medium of claim 18 wherein the video conference application simulates the motion parallax by rendering the video conference such that one or more of the participants shift along one or more axes at different rates from one another.