Convedia Corporation

Susan Elizabeth Wilson

Paul Robert Russell

Paul Joseph Geofroy

Raymond Edward Jang

A multimedia conferencing system has a plurality of remote user terminals, each of which may be different from any other, and each of which may communicate to a central processing hub using different communications protocols. The central processing hub receives, processes, and sends video and audio data from and to the plurality of remote users, and comprises a media bus for handling video and audio data signals, a packet bus for handling data and control signals, a shelf controller card which issues control messages in keeping with incoming management signals, a bus controller card which provides clock and bus arbitration signals, at least one media processor card for processing video and audio signals, and video encoding means for receiving video data from the one or more media processor cards and delivering video data signals to the packet bus. Video and audio data signals may be received by or delivered from any of the at least one media processor card and the at least one physical interface card. A management node communicates through the shelf controller card to permit management signals to be delivered, which may come from a session manager so as to control the nature of the output video and audio data signals which are sent to the remote user terminals. A video link and a video router permit summing of video data signals, and the resultant summed video data signal is passed to a further video data link via the video router so that the video data signal which is returned to the remote terminals is derived from a cascade of video links.

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Burnaby, Canada

Susan Elizabeth Wilson