Video Stream Quality Adjustment Based on Virtual Space Position
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional videoconferencing technologies face challenges such as loss of social interaction, audio overlap issues, and performance degradation with multiple participants, leading to a lack of immersive experience and inefficient bandwidth usage.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method that determines the distance between users in a virtual conference space and adjusts the video stream resolution or bit rate accordingly, texture-mapping the video onto avatars, allowing for efficient bandwidth allocation and enhanced social interaction by simulating spatial relationships and volume adjustments.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If video stream resolution and bit rate are maintained at high quality for all participants, then video quality is improved, but network bandwidth consumption increases and system performance degrades with many participants
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by transmitting video streams at different resolutions and bit rates based on the spatial relationship between participants. Users closer to the camera receive higher quality video streams, while those farther away receive lower quality streams. This resolves the contradiction by optimizing video quality locally for each user's position rather than uniformly for all users, reducing overall bandwidth consumption while maintaining acceptable quality for each participant.
2Device complexity
If all audio streams are mixed equally in virtual conferences, then all participants are heard, but private conversations become impossible and audio overlap increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality to audio streams by adjusting the volume and prominence of different audio streams based on the virtual spatial position of participants. Users closer to a speaker hear that speaker's audio more clearly, while users farther away hear them less clearly. This enables private conversations between nearby participants while still allowing all participants to be heard in the overall mix, resolving the contradiction between uniform audio mixing and private conversation capability.
3Manufacturing precision
If video streams from many participants are transmitted at high resolution, then video quality is maintained, but computing device performance slows down
Solution Approach 1:
The patent reduces system performance degradation by transmitting video streams at different resolutions based on participant position. Users receive video streams at resolutions appropriate to their distance from the camera, rather than all receiving maximum resolution streams. This significantly reduces the total computational load on devices while maintaining high video quality for users who need it most, resolving the contradiction between video resolution and system performance.
4Adaptability or versatility
If uniform bandwidth allocation is used for all video streams, then fairness is maintained, but efficient bandwidth utilization is reduced when participants are at different distances
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements adaptive bandwidth allocation that assigns different bandwidth resources to different video streams based on the spatial position of participants. Video streams from participants closer to the camera are allocated higher bandwidth, while those farther away receive lower bandwidth. This resolves the contradiction by making bandwidth allocation adaptive to the specific conference scenario rather than uniformly fair, thereby improving overall bandwidth utilization efficiency while maintaining perceived fairness through spatial-based differentiation.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed herein is a web-based videoconference system that allows for video avatars to navigate within the virtual environment. The system has a presented mode that allows for a presentation stream to be texture mapped to a presenter screen situated within the virtual environment. The relative left-right sound is adjusted to provide sense of an avatar's position in a virtual space. The sound is further adjusted based on the area where the avatar is located and where the virtual camera is located. Video stream quality is adjusted based on relative position in a virtual space. Three-dimensional modeling is available inside the virtual video conferencing environment.