Patent ID: 8208004

Claim:
A conferencing device for providing multi-point conferencing unit functions, comprising: at least one input interface that receives a plurality of video signals from a plurality of video conferencing end-points, wherein at least one of the plurality of video conferencing end-points is an embedded multi-point conferencing unit (EMCU) end-point equipped with an EMCU that has processing capabilities, and that receives a visual layout from the EMCU end-point; a processor that selects a subset of the plurality of video signals received from the plurality of video conferencing end-points and processes a first portion of the subset of the plurality of video signals for incorporation into the visual layout; and at least one output interface that sends the subset of the plurality of video signals to the EMCU end-point for using the processing capabilities to process a second portion of the subset of the plurality of video signals for incorporation into the visual layout and that sends the visual layout with the subset of the plurality of video signals processed by the conferencing device and the EMCU end-point to the plurality of video conferencing endpoints.