Advanced video conferencing systems and methods

A computer implemented method, comprising:

• (a) generating a crop-failure score based on a location of one or more participants relative to one or more boundaries of a first apparent field-of-view contained within a video stream to-be-transmitted to a remote display device;
• (b) generating an accumulated crop-failure score comprising a plurality of generated crop-failure scores acquired over time;
• (c) comparing the accumulated crop-failure score to a crop-failure tolerance limit;
• (d) determining boundaries of a desired second apparent field-of-view based on the locations of the one or more participants within a physical environment when the generated crop-failure score or the accumulated crop-failure score is equal to or outside of the crop-failure tolerance limit;
• (e) determining a difference between at least one attribute of the desired second apparent field-of-view and at least one attribute of the first apparent field-of-view;
• (f) comparing the determined difference between the at least one attribute of the desired second apparent field-of-view and the at least one attribute of the first apparent field-of-view with an anti-movement rule;
• (g) determining that an alteration to the to-be-transmitted video stream should be made based on the comparison of the determined difference between the at least one attribute of the desired second apparent field-of-view and the at least one attribute of the first apparent field-of-view with the anti-movement rule;
• and
• (h) altering the to-be-transmitted video stream based on the determination that the alteration to the to-be-transmitted video stream should be made, wherein the alteration to the video stream comprises changing from the first apparent field-of-view to the second apparent field-of-view.

A video conferencing method, comprising:

• (a) generating a video stream that comprises a first apparent field-of-view of a video conferencing environment;
• (b) determining boundaries of a desired second apparent field-of-view based on a location of one or more participants within the video conferencing environment;
• (c) determining a difference between at least one attribute of the desired second apparent field-of-view and at least one attribute of the first apparent field-of-view;
• (d) applying an anti-movement rule to the determined difference between the at least one attribute of the desired second apparent field of view and the at least one attribute of the first apparent field of view, wherein applying the anti-movement rule comprises:
• (i) determining an amount of time since an adjustment was previously made to the apparent field-of-view;
• (ii) determining a magnitude of a requested change between the desired second apparent field-of-view and the first apparent field-of-view
• (iii) determining an effect an adjustment would have on a composition of the first apparent field-of-view;
• or
• (iv) a combination of (i), (ii) and (iii)
• (e) determining that an alteration to the video stream is required based on the comparison of the determined difference between the at least one attribute of the desired second apparent field-of-view and the at least one attribute of the first apparent field-of-view with the anti-movement rule;
• and
• (f) altering the video stream based on the determination that the alteration to the video stream is required, wherein the alteration to the video stream comprises changing from the first apparent field-of-view to the second apparent field-of-view.