Patent ID: 7724780

Claim:
A method comprising: synchronizing to a common reference timeframe between a sender node and a plurality of receiver nodes connected over a packet-based network; sending, by the sender node, Real-Time Protocol (RTP) frames to the receiver nodes via a multicast transport or multiple unicast transports; sending, by the sender node, an RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) sender report (SR) to each receiver node, the RTCP SR containing an offset value, each receiver node rendering each of the RTP frames at a rendering time approximately equal to a sampling time of each RTP frame, as measured in units of the common reference timeframe, plus the offset value, the offset value being greater than a maximum delay between a sample time of an RTP frame at the sender node and a rendering time of the RTP frame at any of the receiver nodes; receiving receiver messages from each receiver node, each receiver message containing associated rendering delay information; computing a maximum current rendering delay from the rendering delay information received from the receiver nodes; adjusting the offset value to be substantially equal to the maximum current rendering delay; and sending, by the sender node, a new RTCP SR to each receiver node that contains the adjusted offset value.