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System and method for determining the active talkers in a video conference

  • US 9,154,730 B2
  • Filed: 10/16/2009
  • Issued: 10/06/2015
  • Est. Priority Date: 10/16/2009
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A method of determining an active talker for display on a video conferencing system, the method comprising:

  • implementing a state machine, the state machine having an active state and a pause state for each of N participants in a video conferencing session, the state machine also having a silent state;

    for each of the N participants, capturing audio data using an audio capture sensor and video data using a video capture sensor;

    determining a first state of the state machine;

    determining transition probabilities from the first state to other states in the state machine based on corresponding probabilities of active speech by the N participants (pA, pB . . . pN), where the probabilities of active speech are functions of a probability of soft voice detection captured by the audio capture sensor for a corresponding one of the participants and a probability of lip motion detection captured by the video capture sensor for the corresponding one of the participants;

    selecting a second state of the state machine based on the transition probabilities, the second state corresponding to an active talker; and

    automatically displaying at least the active talker corresponding to the second state.

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