Vaudeville: A High Performance, Voice Activated Teleconferencing Application

We present Vaudeville, a voice-activated, hands-free, ATM-based video conferencing application. This system is scalable; although video bandwidth is normally a limiting factor in the number of conferences participants, the bandwidth attributed to the video is not a function of conference size. This is achieved through an automatic, distributed floor control mechanism that gives the appearance of an open floor. Audio and video are encoded in hardware using a platform-independent, ATM hardware multimedia interface. Vaudeville features digitally transmitted NTSC video, voice-activated audio transmission, audio bridging of two audio streams, and voice-activated video switching. Multiple simultaneous multiparty conferences are supported. Users can move freely among conferences without knowledge of the underlying network structure. We describe how Vaudeville was built using a component-based distributed programming environment. We also describe the algorithms used to control the audio and video of the application.