Patent ID: 7475112

Claim:
A method in a computer system for presenting videos of a conference, the conference having videos of participants in the conference, the method comprising: analyzing audio signals associated with the videos to determine participants who are currently engaged in a dialog, wherein each of the videos has an associated audio signal; selecting to display prominently a video of a conference leader and videos of the participants who are currently engaged in a dialog and whose contributions to the dialog are not short utterances; assigning the video selected of the conference leader and the videos selected of the participants to adjacent faces of a three-dimensional object; identifying a view location from which to view the three-dimensional object, the view location being a location from which a face displaying the video selected of the conference leader and faces displaying the videos selected of the participants are prominently displayed; generating an image of the three-dimensional object from the identified view location with the assigned video selected of the conference leader and videos selected of the participants displayed on the adjacent faces of the three-dimensional object; and changing the view location so that a face depicting a video of a new participant is prominently displayed when the new participant begins speaking, unless a contribution of the new participant is a short utterance, while continuing to prominently display the face displaying the video selected of the conference leader, wherein the view location does not change when a contribution of at least one of the participants or the new participant is a short utterance, which prevents rapid changes of videos that are prominently displayed; wherein changing the view location includes reassigning the videos selected to faces of the three-dimensional object so that the face displaying the video selected of the conference leader is always visible and continues to be prominently displayed.