Video and audio tagging for active speaker detection

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9065971-B2
Application number	US-201213719314-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 19, 2012
Priority date	Dec 19, 2012
Publication date	Jun 23, 2015
Grant date	Jun 23, 2015

Abstract

A videoconferencing system is described that is configured to select an active speaker while avoiding erroneously selecting a microphone or camera that is picking up audio or video from a connected remote signal. A determination is made whether an audio signal is above a threshold level. If so, then a determination is made as to whether a tag is present in that audio signal. If so, that signal is ignored. If not, a camera is directed toward the sound source identified by the audio signal. A determination is made whether a tag is present in the video signal from that camera. If so, the camera is redirected. If not, local tag(s) are inserted into the audio signal and/or the video signal. The tagged signal(s) are transmitted. Thus, system will ignore sound or video that has an embedded tag from another videoconferencing system.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A transmitter system for a videoconferencing system, comprising:
a tag generator to generate an audio tag;
a combiner to combine an audio signal with the audio tag to produce a tagged audio signal; and
a transmitter to transmit the tagged audio signal and a corresponding video signal; and
a control system operative to:
determine whether the audio signal is above a threshold level;
if the audio signal has been determined to be above the threshold lev…

Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Verthein William George
• Leorin Simone

Classifications

• H04N7/15 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04N7/147

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04N7/155

  Electricity · mapped topic