Patent ID: 8125531

Claim:
A video signal combining apparatus comprising: a video signal processing unit which is adapted to combine an output video image stream from first and second input image streams by dividing an image area of an image of said output video image stream into two regions and applying to said first region image information extracted from said first video image stream and applying to said second region image information extracted from said second input video image stream, a first camera providing said first input video image stream and a second camera providing said second input video image stream, each camera having a view finder for displaying at least one of said input and output video image streams and a control unit having first switch means for triggering a wipe procedure and second switch means for setting the border to be displayed in the view finder, wherein the control unit of each camera is coupled to said video signal processing unit to transmit control instructions to said video signal processing unit for initiating the wipe procedure or receive control instructions from said video signal processing unit for implementing the wipe procedure initiated by another camera, the video signal processing unit is adapted to generate the combined output video image stream in an intermediate phase of the wipe procedure, after a wipe command, at the beginning of which the output video image stream is identical to one of said input video image streams and at the end of which it is identical to the other one of said input video image streams, and each view finder is adapted to display a border between said first and second regions superimposed upon an image from one of said input video image streams at a time prior to the wipe procedure, after a wipe test request from a camera person operating one of the cameras, to allow said camera person to judge whether the result of the wipe procedure is satisfactory or not before the wipe procedure is carried out.