Patent ID: 7671893

Claim:
A system for capturing video of an event, comprising: a set of video cameras simultaneously capturing streams of images of the same event from different viewpoints and angles, wherein one camera of the set of video cameras is a master camera and the other cameras of the set are slaves to the master camera, wherein all cameras can be driven to point to the same point viewed by the master camera and synchronized by a synchronization unit that causes all cameras to trigger and shoot at the same instance in time, in order to simultaneously capture the same event from different viewpoints; control computers for controlling said set of video cameras and receiving and compressing the simultaneously captured streams of images from said set of video cameras; a connection connecting said set of video cameras to one or more control computers for sending control commands to said set of video cameras and for transferring said simultaneously captured streams of images from said set of video cameras to said one or more control computers, the one or more control computers compressing and transferring the streams of images; a server for, storing the simultaneously captured synchronized streams of images from the one or more control computers in the form of a video beam, consisting of the synchronized streams of images of the same event taken from different viewpoints and angles at the same time, indexed in a layered video index so that multiple clients can access one or combinations of the simultaneously captured streams of images, wherein the layered video index comprises a first layer comprising a time stamp, an offset of video index data, a high address, a flag indicating whether there is a transition to a high address pointer and a number of cameras employed, and a second layer comprising the same time stamp as the first layer, camera ID, a frame coding type and a low address pointer, further compressing the streams of compressed images by exploiting the spatial and temporal characteristics among them, and providing said simultaneously captured streams of images to one or more clients; a first network connecting said server and said one or more control computers for transferring said simultaneously captured compressed streams of images from said control computers to said server in real time; and a second network for communicating between said server and one more clients.