Patent ID: 8471890

Claim:
A videoconference system comprising: a user camera at each of a plurality of user locations; a user computer at each of the plurality of user locations linked to the user camera at each location, one or more bridges linking the plurality of user computers to one another; a videoconference client program product comprising executable instructions stored in a non-volatile computer-readable medium on each of the user computers and causing each of the user computers to communicate a video data stream to each of the other user computers over the one or more bridges wherein each user computer receives a video data stream from each other user computer; a video encoding computer program product comprising executable instructions stored in a non-volatile computer-readable medium on each of the user computers and causing each of the user computers to encode video data received from the camera at the user location using one or more encoding parameters; a decode information set request monitoring program product comprising executable instructions stored in a non-volatile computer-readable medium on at least a first of the user computers and causing the first user computer to perform the steps of: monitoring the network for reception of a decode information set request message; responding to the decode information set request message by querying the decode information set request message for an ID, and if the ID of the decode information set request message matches an ID corresponding to a video data stream generated from the first user computer, communicating the corresponding decode information set that includes the at least one encoding parameter to at least a second user computer that transmitted the decode information set request message.