Patent ID: 6989856

Claim:
An apparatus for performing distributed video conferencing, comprising: an audio bridge operable to receive audio data from a first and a second end point; and a video bridge operable to receive video data from the first and second end points, wherein the first and second end points are operable to connect to a video conference, the audio bridge being operable to identify a size of a first and a second jitter buffer for the first and second end points respectively and to send audio data from the first and second end points to the first and second jitter buffers, the audio bridge being further operable to sum together outputs of the first and second jitter buffers to create a single mixed audio output stream, the audio bridge determining an input-to-output mapping for each input audio output stream to the mixed audio stream, whereby the audio bridge can communicate the mapping to the video bridge, the video bridge being operable to receive one or more video streams and to delay each of the video streams such that the mapping may be reproduced, the video bridge being operable to identify which of the video streams are arriving at a latest time and to delay all of the other video streams such that an input-to-output matching of each individual video stream is matched to the mapping of a corresponding audio stream, a mixed output video stream may be created by mixing the delayed video streams, whereby the mixed outputs from the audio bridge and the video bridge may be communicated back to each of the first and second end points such that the video conference is facilitated.