US 10,567,448 B2 · Participation queue system and method for online video conferencing

Abstract

A virtual conferencing system is described for implementing a speaker queue. For example, one embodiment of the virtual conferencing system comprises: a plurality of clients, each of the clients comprising state management logic to maintain a current state of a virtual conference; a virtual conferencing service to establish audio and/or video connections between the plurality of clients during the virtual conference, the virtual conferencing service further including a state synchronization service communicatively coupled to the state management logic on each client to ensure that the current state of the virtual conference is consistent on each client; wherein the current state on each client includes a speaker queue comprising an ordered set of participants to be designated as current speakers during the virtual conference, wherein participants are added to the speaker queue in response to input provided by the participants indicating a desire to be a current speaker, wherein one or more participants towards the top of the speaker queue are designated to be current speakers, wherein participants are initially added to the bottom of the speaker queue and are moved towards the top of the speaker queue as other participants are removed from the top of the speaker queue; a virtual conferencing graphical user interface (GUI) to display a video stream of one or more current speakers within one or more current speaker regions, the virtual conferencing GUI further providing a visual representation of the speaker queue to each of the participants, the visual representation comprising an ordered representation of each of the participants in the speaker queue.

Claims22

Dependent claims

A virtual conferencing system comprising:

a plurality of clients, each client comprising:
one or more audio/video (A/V) capturing devices to capture audio and video of a participant at the client during the participant's participation in a virtual conference;
and
A/V compression and decompression logic to compress the captured audio and video of the participant to generate an A/V stream, wherein the A/V compression and decompression logic encodes the captured audio and video of the participant at a relatively higher resolution and/or frame rate when the participant is a current speaker;
a virtual conferencing service to establish A/V connections between the plurality of clients during the virtual conference, the virtual conferencing service further including a multimedia stream distribution service communicatively coupled to a virtual conferencing app/browser on each client through a web socket connection, the multimedia stream distribution service comprising:
a stream forwarding logic to manage receipt and distribution of A/V streams for each client, wherein the stream forwarding logic is to receive a first A/V stream from a first client of the plurality of clients and forwards the first A/V stream to one or more other clients of the plurality of clients;
a multimedia storage service configured to receive and record all A/V streams for all participants on a storage device;
and
a dynamic state synchronization service of the virtual conference service to synchronize a speaker queue across the plurality of clients, wherein the speaker queue is associated with a default speaker and the default speaker is to gain access to a current speaker position in the virtual conference when the speaker queue is empty.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Participation queue system and method for online video conferencing

Life of this patent

Participation queue system and method for online video conferencing

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims22