SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR VISUALLY IDENTIFYING SPEAKING PARTICIPANTS IN A MULTI-PARTICIPANT NETWORKED EVENT

摘要

A method of visually identifying speaking participants in a multi-participant event such as an audio conference or an on-line game includes the step of receiving packets of digitized sound from a network connection. The identity of the participant associated with each packet is used to route the packet to a channel buffer (52-1) or an overflow buffer (54). Each channel buffer (52-1) may be assigned to a single participant in the multi-participant. A visual identifier module (60) updates the visual identifier associated with participants that have been assigned a channel buffer (52-1). In some embodiments, the appearance of the visual identifier associated with the participant is dependent upon the differential of an acoustic parameter derived from content in the associated buffer channel and a reference value stored in a participant record.