Patent ID: 7515172

Claim:
An automated event presentation system for capturing and viewing an event having event participants, comprising: an omni-directional camera system that captures a seamless omni-directional image of the event and that automatically tracks event participants simultaneously to determine the event participants that are speaking using audio-based tracking techniques including a microphone-array sound source localization technique to alleviate camera view switching delays; an automated online broadcasting system including a tracker module that controls and uses the omni-directional camera system and video-based tracking techniques to monitor and keep track of each of the tracked event participants simultaneously; a virtual director module that receives as input audio and video tracking results and uses probabilistic rules to automatically select in a probabilistic manner which portion of the omni-directional image to use as an output view; and a viewer platform in communication with the automated online broadcasting system that allows a viewer to view the output view of the broadcasted event.