Patent ID: 8749612

Claim:
A method of conducting a video conference with reduced bandwidth usage, comprising: receiving an audio stream at a server station connected to a plurality of participants in the video conference, at least one participant being a client station connected to the server station by a network and supplying the audio stream, the server station including a first memory and a first processor configured to execute instructions stored in the first memory, and the client station including a second memory and a second processor configured to execute instructions stored in the second memory; performing a mixing algorithm using each of the first processor and the second processor, the mixing algorithm determining which video streams of the participants to mix to form a conference video stream for display by at least one of the participants; selectively transmitting the client video stream from the client station to the server station over the network when a result of the mixing algorithm performed by the second processor indicates that the client video stream would be one of the video streams of the participants to be mixed to form the conference video stream responsive to performing the mixing algorithm using the first processor; receiving a client video stream from the client station that is selectively transmitted to the server station over the network responsive to the mixing algorithm; and transmitting at least one of the conference video stream or the video streams of the participants to be mixed to form the conference video stream from the server station to the client station.