Patent ID: 7797383

Claim:
A method for displaying content from a plurality of sources in a video conference display in a plurality of display windows, wherein content from each source is displayed in its own display window, the method comprising: determining a first set of N most desirable source video streams of M available source video streams based on first ordering of desirability of the M available source video streams, the first ordering of desirability determined based on a policy, wherein M is greater than N; mapping the first set of N most desirable source video streams to N destination video streams such that content from the N most desirable source video streams is rendered in the plurality of windows for a video conference without duplication of the N most desirable source video streams in more than one of the windows; determining one or more state changes in the video conference that causes a change in the mapping of N source video streams to the N destination video streams; determining, by a computing device, a second set of N most desirable source video streams from M available source video streams based on second ordering of desirability of the M available source video streams, the second ordering of desirability determined based on the policy, wherein the second set of N most desirable video streams includes at least one new source video stream that replaces at least one of the N source video streams in the first set; and mapping, by the computing device, the second set of N most desirable source video streams to the N destination video streams, wherein the destination video streams are mapped to the plurality of display windows such that content from the N most desirable source video streams is rendered in the plurality of windows, wherein when changes in desirability of the source video streams being mapped to the N destination video streams occur, a number of windows that change their contents from associated sources is minimized, wherein source video streams in the first set of N most desirable source video streams not replaced by the at least one new source video stream have different desirabilities from the first ordering.