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Television conference system

  • US 5,206,721 A
  • Filed: 03/08/1990
  • Issued: 04/27/1993
  • Est. Priority Date: 03/08/1990
  • Status: Expired due to Term
First Claim
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1. A television conference system for automatically shooting a current speaker of a plurality of speakers with a camera, comprising:

  • microphone input judgement means for judging existence of microphone inputs into microphones provided for each of the speakers;

    judgement result holding means for holding the results of the judging of the existence of the microphone inputs over a first predetermined period, the first predetermined period being longer than the shortest period of continuous speaking, said judgement result holding means including a plurality of storage buffers, the number of the storage buffers being the same as the number of samplings in the first predetermined period, and the storage buffers being ring shift registers;

    time totaling means for obtaining a total time of the microphone inputs during the first predetermined period from the results of the judging held in said judgement resulting holding means;

    speaker specifying means for specifying as a current speaker the speaker using the microphone input having the total time obtained by said time totaling means over a second predetermined period, the second predetermined period being a predetermined continuing period of noise; and

    camera drive means for driving a camera within a shooting range of the speaker specified as the current speaker by said speaker specifying means.

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