Abstract: Facilitating a distributed multipoint conference using, for example, the ITU-T H.323 protocol may involve establishing a connection (e.g., that supports a unicast stream) between multiple endpoints, including at least a requesting endpoint and one or more other participating endpoints, and initiating a connection from the requesting endpoint to at least a third endpoint. The requesting endpoint identifies to the third endpoint the one or more other participating endpoints. A connection is established between the third endpoint and the one or more other participating endpoints identified by the requesting endpoint. The third endpoint identifies the requesting endpoint to the one or more other participating endpoints. At each of the endpoints, unicast streams received from each of the other participating endpoints may be mixed to form a logical multipoint conference.

Abstract: A system includes a camera that may be used for multiple applications including an application to measure the ambient light. The camera may include an automatically set a gain or an aperture as well as a shutter speed. The shutter speed and the gain or aperture from the camera may be used to determine the ambient light. Brightness of a display may be adjusted based on the ambient light.

Abstract: Systems, methods, and software share an output of a video capture device, such as a video camera, amongst more than one application. Some embodiments comprise writing video frames to a shared memory buffer that is accessible by one or more applications. Some applications are virtual device drivers that appear as actual device drivers of the video capture device producing the video data. Some embodiments comprise acquiring exclusive control of a video capture device driver, allocating a shared memory buffer, receiving a video frame from the video capture device driver, and writing the video frame to the shared memory buffer. In some embodiments, the shared memory buffer comprises two shared memory buffers that are written to and read from in an alternating fashion.

Abstract: According to an embodiment of the present invention, a method is presented for controlling a video image compression system. In this method a video frame of raw video image data is compressed using a processor. Then it is determined whether the processor is limited in its ability to compress video image data. Then, a target frame rate is adjusted based on a current amount of time taken to compress said video frame of raw video image data.

Abstract: An Internet Protocol (IP) telephony system includes a lightweight stimulus client configured to receive user input requesting an IP telephony service (e.g., an ITU-T H.450 supplementary service) and communicate the received input over a packet-based network using a standard call control protocol (e.g., Media Gateway Control Protocol or ITU-T H.248). A call agent, executing on a remote server connected to the packet-based network, is configured to perform the requested IP telephony service based on the received input.

Abstract: Facilitating a distributed multipoint conference using, for example, the ITU-T H.323 protocol may involve establishing a connection (e.g., that supports a unicast stream) between multiple endpoints, including at least a requesting endpoint and one or more other participating endpoints, and initiating a connection from the requesting endpoint to at least a third endpoint. The requesting endpoint identifies to the third endpoint the one or more other participating endpoints. A connection is established between the third endpoint and the one or more other participating endpoints identified by the requesting endpoint. The third endpoint identifies the requesting endpoint to the one or more other participating endpoints. At each of the endpoints, unicast streams received from each of the other participating endpoints may be mixed to form a logical multipoint conference.

Abstract: In a video image compression and transmission system, quantization parameters for a block transform based video compression algorithm can be controlled by a quantizer selector so as to control compressed video frame size. The selection of the appropriate quantization parameter for the nth macroblock of a current frame is based on the cumulative number of compressed bits appearing in the first n-1 macroblocks of a current frame and a previous frame. By controlling the quantization parameter is such a manner, the overall system reacts more quickly to changes in complexity in the video sequence and allocates bits more accurately to different parts of the video frame according to a past history of bit allocation. To efficiently utilize the bandwidth of a transmission medium (such as POTS), a bit count of the contents of the transmit buffer is sent to a buffer regulator in a video controller where it is compared to a low water mark threshold.