Avoiding nostril-cam and postage-stamp people in mobile video conferences

Abstract

We would like to provide high-quality video conferencing so that people can communicate comfortably with each other anywhere, anytime. This is not a new goal, and there are now several applications such as Skype#8482; and FaceTime#8482; on mobile platforms that bring us closer to achieving anywhere, anytime video communications. Alas, these mobile conferences are often of poor quality due to the many challenges presented by mobile devices, such as constrained networks, limited processing power, small displays, and uncontrolled view angles and lighting. These challenges mean that simply porting existing desktop video conferencing solutions to portable devices does not provide the best user experience. Fortunately, these mobile devices also have many advantages that we can exploit to enable better-quality portable video conferences. In this paper we describe how we exploit the devices' mobility and embedded sensors to detect and fix two problems that are often ignored but that adversely affect user experience: bad view angles and too-tiny views of people and content, especially in multi-party conferences. Please note that what we describe is very much an experimental prototype and not a finished project.