Patent ID: 7692683

Claim:
A transcoder for use in a videoconferencing system, comprising: a plurality of video source inputs for receiving video signals, wherein the plurality of video source inputs comprises a first video source input for first receiving video signals corresponding to a first participant of a videoconference, wherein the first video signals are of a first input resolution, wherein the plurality of video source inputs comprises a second video source input for receiving second video signals corresponding to a second participant of the videoconference, and wherein the second video signals are of a second input resolution that is different than the first resolution; a plurality of decoders coupled to the video source inputs for decoding the received video signals; a first plurality of scalers for scaling the received video signals and scaling the received video signals to produce scaled video signals, wherein the first plurality of scalers comprises a first scaler configured to scale the first video signals to produce first scaled video signals, wherein the first plurality of scalers comprises a second scaler configured to scale the second video signals to produce second scaled video signals, and wherein the first scaled video signals have a resolution that is different from a resolution of the second scaled video signals; a memory for storing the scaled video signals; one or more compositors coupled to the memory for receiving the first scaled video signals and the second scaled video signals and compositing the first and second scaled video signals to produce a composite image; one or more output scalers, each of the one or more output scalers coupled to one of at least a subset of the one or more compositors; wherein at least one of the one or more output scalers is operable to scale down a composite image output from one of the plurality of compositors to produce a scaled down composite image; and a plurality of video source outputs for providing output composite images, wherein the output composite images comprises the composite image at a first output resolution and the scaled down composite image at a second output resolution that is different from the first output resolution.