Patent ID: 9595271
Date: 2017-03-14
CPC Classifications: G10L,H04L,H04M,H04N

Claim:
1. A method of operating a video conferencing system having a conference server connected to conference clients by a network, the conference clients receiving audio streams from respective participants and having respective conference graphical user interfaces (GUIs), comprising: by the conference server, (1) receiving audio streams from the conference clients, mixing the audio streams together to generate a conference audio feed, and sending the conference audio feed to the conference clients, and (2) generating conference graphical content and sending the conference graphical content to the conference clients for local rendering in the respective conference GUIs; applying audio detection processing and speech recognition processing to an input audio stream of a participant to generate distinct audio detection and speech recognition signals, the audio detection signal being generated upon the audio detection processing indicating presence of audio in the audio stream in both a speech audio condition and a non-speech audio condition of the audio stream of the participant, the speech recognition signal being generated upon the speech recognition processing indicating presence of speech audio in the audio stream in the speech audio condition; processing the audio detection and speech recognition signals to identify distinct conditions of (1) a silence condition, (2) the speech audio condition, and (3) the non-speech audio condition of the audio stream of the participant, the silence condition being identified by the non-generation of the audio detection signal, the speech audio condition being identified by the generation of the speech recognition signal, and the non-speech audio condition being identified by the generation of the audio detection signal while the speech recognition signal is not generated; and operating the conference GUIs to reflect the silence, speech audio, and non-speech audio conditions of the audio stream of the participant, including (a) in the speech audio condition, providing a first graphical identification of the participant as a speaking participant, (b) in both the silence condition and the non-speech audio condition, providing a second graphical identification of the participant as a non-speaking participant, and (c) in the non-speech audio condition, providing a third graphical identification of the participant as generating non-speech audio in the audio stream.