SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR INTERCONNECTING AND MIXING MULTIPLE AUDIO AND VIDEO DATA STREAMS ASSOCIATED WITH MULTIPLE MEDIA DEVICES

摘要

A system (10) has a pipeline (12) comprised of a multi-channel bi-directional video bus (14), multi-channel bi-directional audio bus (16), and a digital interprocessor communications bus (18). The pipeline (12) is equipped with a number of ports (20) where media controller (microprocessor) printed circuit cards (22) can be connected, thus providing a convenient method for connecting media devices (24) to the pipeline (12). In this manner, a media device's video input and output can be optionally connected to any of the video pipes (26) of the video bus (14). Similarly, the media device (24) audio inputs and outputs can be optionally connected to any of the audio bus (16) pipes (26). The switching is accomplished through a pair of analog multiplexers (28) whose connection options have been commanded by local microprocessor (30) resident on the media device microprocessor control board (22). The local microprocessor (30) receives instructions for the pipeline switch interconnections through the interprocessor serial communications bus (18 ). The pipeline (12) is constructed on a motherboard printed circuit board (32) that additionally contains a microprocessor (34) that serves as the local area network controller for the interprocessor communications. A software driver interconnects the multiple video and audio devices (24) in different configurations in response to user inputs to a host data processing system so that physical assignments of the device communications on the pipeline (12) are transparent to the user.