The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 04, 2001
Filed:
Jan. 28, 1998
Qin-Fan Zhu, Wilmington, MA (US);
Louis J. Kerofsky, Acton, MA (US);
PictureTel Corporation, Andover, MA (US);
Abstract
A multipoint control unit (MCU) includes a plurality of segment processors arranged to extract segment data from a corresponding plurality of input video streams and a plurality of data queues, each one of the data queues being coupled to a corresponding one of the plurality of segment processors for storing segment data provided from the segment processors. The (MCU) also includes a data combiner coupled to the data queues for combining output data from the data queues and a controller coupled to the combiner for selectively providing data to the combiner in accordance with the amount of the data in the data queues. Several different approaches for determining what queues to obtain data from are described to reduce insertion delay Asymmetric picture rates are also used to reduce the video mixing delay. In addition, the multipoint control unit can optionally have the segment processors including a rate reducer and have the combiner controller send bit rate control information to the reducer to control the operation of the reducer.