BANDWIDTH CONSERVING NEAR-END PICTURE-IN-PICTURE VIDEO APPLICATIONS

A method, system and article of manufacturer is provided to improve the quality of service and image display in videotelephony systems by combining digital zooming techniques and picture-in-picture functionality to conserve bandwidth and enhance selected portions of the video display. A portion of the videotelephony image is selected to be zoomed and re-transmission of the videotelephony image source is limited by preventing instructions to zoom the defined portion from being transmitted to the videotelephony image source. Zooming of the defined portion is performed by using an interpolation-based digital zooming technique independent of the zooming capabilities of the videotelephony image source. The zoomed portion is then displayed in a window on a display screen. The zoomed portion can be displayed in an in-place window over the defined portion such that the zoomed portion overlaps adjacent non-zoomed portions of the videotelephony image or in a separate floating window on the display screen. The separate window can be a floating window or a fixed/docked window on the display screen. Additionally, a freeze-frame technique can be used to capture (“freeze”) the zoomed image such that re-transmission of the image source does not overwrite the zoomed image. The same techniques used to create a first zoomed image window can be used to create multiple zoomed image windows.