Patent ID: 7668907

Claim:
A system for conducting a multimedia conference, comprising: a plurality of participants each providing multimedia conferencing data including a video signal and an audio signal; a client in conference with the plurality of participants, the client capable of receiving the video signal corresponding to one of the plurality of participants at a time; a participant selection control parameter stored in a memory for tuning a video switching stream behavior, wherein the participant selection control parameter affects an outcome of a weight computation, said participant selection control parameter received when the multimedia conference is set up, said participant control selection parameter having a static display constraint on a selection of a video signal; a participant state table stored in a memory and indicating an activity state variable for each of the plurality of participants, said activity state variable including values and statistics associated with each of the plurality of participants' video signal and audio signal; and a bridge server connected to the plurality of participants through a network and having a point-to-point connection with the client, the bridge server assigning a predetermined weight to at least one of the plurality of participants for a duration specified by the static display constraint, receiving simultaneously the multimedia conferencing data including the video signal from each of the plurality of participants, updating the activity state variable stored in the memory for each of the plurality of participants in the participant state table according to changes in a data information and a control information of each of the plurality of participants' video signal and audio signal, periodically computing a weight of said each of the plurality of participants based on the activity state variable of said each of the plurality of participants and the participant selection control parameter, identifying a participant having a highest weight among the plurality of participants, and selecting from the received multimedia conferencing data the video signal corresponding to the identified participant having the highest weight for transmission to the client for viewing.