This paper reports a joint work between the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the Brandenburg Technical University of Cottbus, Germany, in developing a global video conferencing framework called OCTOPUS that interconnects local conferencing systems over long distances. The system makes use of both high level information provided by the participants (to decide which videos are more important to them) as well as low level adaptive mechanisms to perform media scaling as the network and the processor intensities change. It is possible to provide customized service to each conference participant according to hisher needs and the resources available at each site. OCTO-PUS itself makes no assumption on the architecture of the local video conference systems. The paper presents the architecture and the design philosophy of the OCTOPUS framework.Index termsmultiparty video conferencing systems, media scaling, scalability, floor control, adaptive resource management, quality of service, group communication.