Best Live Video Call SDK for You

Live video call has so standard that you use them as an alternative to telephone calls. If, one day, your company assigned you a task to build a live video call feature for your company’s app, how would you proceed? This article will teach you how to choose the most powerful live video call SDK to build your app.

Why Shall We Use Live Video Call SDK

Cracking WebRTC or FFmpeg requires a lot of time and human resources, and the learning curve of multi-media theory and technology is steep. It won’t be a good idea to hire a new team with the right expertise to develop the technology in-house because of the high cost of human resources. Even if you are determined to invest the time and money, the quality of an RTC technology based on open-sourced projects cannot be guaranteed.

The most feasible choice for you would be to choose a good live video call SDK from technology vendors and build the live video call feature by calling video call APIs while focusing on your business. There are four significant advantages of using live video SDK to make the live video call feature:

• No investment in human resources: You must set up a 6-member team to develop live video technology. And it is a long-term matter to maintain and grow the team. The investment in the team would be stunning.
• No investment in backend infrastructure: To accelerate data transmission and guarantee live video call quality, construct a data transmission network to transmit multi-media data. The data network will consist of many data centers and dedicated leased lines.
• No investment in system maintenance: System maintenance is an ongoing task, and it will involve continuous investment in a maintenance team. System accidents like breakdowns are inevitable headaches.
• Fast go-to-market: It is paramount to be quick in market competition. When you observe a trend or develop an idea, it is essential to implement and verify it promptly. Your fortune will be gone if it is delayed for a long time.

What Are the Use Cases of Live Video Call SDK

There are many use cases of live video SDK. The way that you are going to use it will fall into one of the categories.

1. Online Social and Entertainment

Live video dating and live video streaming both fall into this category. In the live video dating scenario, a live video call allows the two people to see each other through interactive video and build stronger relationships leading to offline meetings. In a live video streaming scenario, a live video call allows the host to interact with audience members or guests. Live video streaming helps hosts build a more sticky and interactive atmosphere and drive revenue growth.

2. Online Education

Small classes and medium classes require interaction between teachers and students. The teacher asks questions, and students compete to “stand up” and answer the question through a live video call. Students raise their hands for questions, and the teacher allows a student to “stand up” and ask questions. The whole class will be able to see the teacher and the speaking student in conversation on video.

 3. Video Conferencing

A video conference is a typical scenario where all participants expect to see and hear anybody in the forum. Therefore, it is essentially a multi-party live video call. What makes video conferencing different is that it allows participants to turn on or off their video camera and mute or unmute their microphones; the hosts can control participants’ voices and video status.

4. Video Customer Services

Traditional customer services are based on telephone calls. One specific pain point is that it is inconvenient for the customer to submit documentation to the customer service staff. Another typical pain point would be that the customer service staff cannot authenticate identity by looking at the customer’s face. Live video calls can help online customer services become more effective and efficient. For example, It has become popular that stock brokers adopt video customer services to help new customers to sign contracts and open new trading accounts.

5. Telehealth

Usually, the telehealth scenario requires a one-on-one live video call. The doctor and patient can speak plainly in the live video call for diagnosis. It is different because the patient might need to submit historical reports to the doctor. If it is a diagnosis conference among doctors, it will require sharing medical statements of super high definition. And doctors may want to look at the extra sound scanning video remotely through the live video call. ZEGOCLOUD Telehealth App API has successful customer cases like this in the telehealth field.

 6. Live Online Events

Typically, events are hosted offline for advertisement and branding purposes. However, hosting live events online through live streaming has become popular during the prolonged pandemic. Well-design events invite audience members or VIP guests to go on stage to speak. In live online events, interactive live-streaming technology allows hosts to invite audience members or other VIP guests to join an interactive video call. All the audience members can see the video conversation.

The Typical Features of Live Video Call SDK

Understanding what typical features a live video call SDK shall offer is pretty straightforward. It must support one-on-one and multi-party live video calls, and voice calls are supported simultaneously by default. Here are some typical features of a live video call SDK you should know.

Video Stream Mixing

It allows you to mix two or even more video streams into one single stream (voice stream is included by default). Typically, stream mixing is used in a broadcasting scenario, i.e., Live video streaming to a large audience.

Stream mixing consists of a few steps. First, multiple streams are decoded and de-capsulated. Second, they are mixed and synchronized with time stamp alignment. Finally, the mixed streams are encoded and capsulated as an RTMP stream. The mixed stream will be forwarded to a CDN for high-concurrency distribution.

There are a few benefits of video stream mixing. First, it reduces the complexity of receiver-end development since there is only one stream to proceed, and the video layout is fixed already. Second, it reduces the processing workload at the receiver end and, more importantly, the bandwidth cost. Finally, it makes stream processing, like forwarding to CDN, easier. It is simpler to process one single stream than many streams individually.

Playing Stream From Media Files

Typically, Live video call SDK providers, like ZEGOCLOUD, will offer you a media player that is much more powerful than an ordinary media player. For example, the ZEGOCLOUD media player can allow you to play a media file loaded from local storage and publish it to ZEGOCLOUD’s real-time data transmission network simultaneously.

In addition, during a live video call, if you load a background music file to play by the media player, it will mix the music audio stream with the vocal audio stream captured from the microphone and then publish the mixed stream to the real-time data network.

Playing Stream From Network URL

ZEGOCLOUD’s media player can also play voice/video streams with network URLs. It works similarly to playing streams loaded from local files. If the network resource is a video, the media player can play and render it.

In addition, the media player will mix it with the live video captured from a local camera device and publish the mixed stream to the real-time data network. In that sense, you can implement a scenario where users can watch a movie together while on a live video call.

Screen Sharing

It has been a standard feature of video conference systems or online classrooms. It seems so ordinary, but you may not know what is behind it. Despite looking similar to the remote screen control feature, it is different. The remote screen control feature offers a screen view where the remote screen is rendered progressively. The screen-sharing feature captures the screen pictures and generates a stream to be played at the receiver. The sender screen will be used as a video source or a virtual camera. The receiver watches the live video stream on the sender’s screen.

Local Media Recording

The feature lets you record video streams and save them locally as media files. You can start previewing and recording the video source as a media file without publishing the video as a stream. Of course, it will allow you to post the stream while recording during the live video call.

How to Choose the Best Video Call SDK

After reviewing the above sections, you have already developed a comprehensive overview of the live video call SDK. You should already be savvy about choosing the live video call SDK itself. However, to make a good decision, you must think outside the box and look at a few other dimensions.

• Quality and Performance: Live video call technology is a tough one, and it is difficult to test, either. The good thing is that ZEGOCLOUD has provided comprehensive demo APPs for you to compile and test right away, and those demo APPs are not open-source. You must design complete test cases to try the demo APPs, compare various vendors’ metrics, and evaluate them.
• Successful Customer Cases: If you are an entrepreneur who owns a startup, it is tough for you to test the demo APPs thoroughly. Testing itself posts some cost, and it requires technological expertise. You can indeed leverage the vendor’s successful customer cases in that case. Big customers are vital in technology, experienced in business requirements, and very strict with vendor evaluation.
• Easy to Integrate: Ensuring the live video call SDK is easy to integrate is essential. The market is changing rapidly at the startup stage, and competition is hot. It is paramount for you to verify your idea, get funding, or convince big customers. You cannot bear that burden of wasting weeks integrating.
• Comprehensive Support: This aspect is quite hidden. However, it is essential. To make integration quick and easy, you need comprehensive documentation, nicely designed demo APPs and their source code, and a professional technical support team.

Best 3 Live Video Call SDK You Can Choose

 1. ZEGOCLOUD

It is a cloud-based real-time video call SDK that allows developers to integrate video call functionality into their applications. The ZEGOCLOUD SDK provides high-quality audio and video transmission capabilities and supports multiple devices and operating systems, including iOS, Android, and Web. Additionally,  ZEGOCLOUD  offers a range of rich features such as beauty filters, screen sharing, recording, and live streaming to enhance user experience.

2. Agora

Another noteworthy real-time video call SDK is Agora.io. It is a cross-platform real-time audio and video communication solution that can be used in gaming, education, healthcare, social, and other fields. Agora.io provides high-quality, low-latency audio and video transmission capabilities and can provide a smooth user experience under different network conditions. Additionally, it offers a range of rich features such as audio and video recording, screen sharing, and multi-party video calls.

3. Twilio

Twilio is a cloud-based platform that provides communication APIs for building voice, video, and messaging applications. Its Programmable Video API enables developers to easily integrate real-time video call functionality into their applications. The API offers advanced features such as multi-party video conferencing, screen sharing, recording, and live streaming. It also provides high-quality audio and video transmission capabilities with low latency.

Conclusion

There are many great choices of live video call SDK on the market to help you build live video call features within a few hours. Just get the one that suits your need best to start building your live video call app now!