Patent ID: 8397265

Claim:
A method executed by a server for the continuous transmission of one video from the server to a number of client machines over a communication network, the video being constituted of successive images of pixel data, the pixels of each image being encoded in the form of a set of digital data according to an encoding method allowing at least a random access to any spatial zone of pixel data of interest inside the image of pixel data of said video without requiring any decoding and re-encoding process, comprising: obtaining a request from the client machine, said request specifying at least one spatial zone of pixel data of interest inside one or more of the successive images of pixel data of the video, wherein each spatial zone of pixel data of interest is a partial area of a total area of the corresponding image of pixel data and corresponds to a subset of the set of digital data corresponding to the image of pixel data; determining a current spatial zone of interest covered by said request; comparing said current spatial zone of interest with other spatial zones of interest coming from preceding requests so as to determine at least one two dimensional intersection of pixel data in the specified spatial zones of pixel data of interest of the video; for each determined two dimensional intersection of pixel data in each image of pixel data of the one or more successive images of pixel data, determining a corresponding subset of digital data in the set of digital data corresponding to the image of pixel data, the determined subset of digital data corresponding to digital data of the image requested by a plurality of client machines; extracting from the set of digital data of the one or more images of pixel data, the subset of digital data corresponding to the determined two dimensional intersection of pixel data; and creating a multipoint network session to which the plurality of client machines for which said request specifies the spatial zone containing said two dimensional intersection of pixel data may subscribe, and transmitting the subset of digital data corresponding to said two dimensional intersection of pixel data in said multipoint session.