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AWS Releases 'Live Connector' for the Chime SDK
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced today the general availability of live connector, a new feature of the Amazon Chime SDK designed to allow organizations to add live streaming capabilities more easily to their Web and mobile applications.
The Chime SDK is a set of real-time communications components developers can use to add messaging, audio, video, and screen sharing capabilities to their Web and/or mobile applications. Chime makes it possible to develop a single secure application that allows its users to meet, chat, and place business phone calls; the users don't need to switch between apps to collaborate, and they can go from a chat to a call, share their screens, and invite more participants to join the meeting.
Using live connector, developers using the SDK can create and send a video stream from a multi-party video session to streaming platforms for distribution to a global audience, the company said. Developers can enhance the livestreaming experience by formatting video layouts, choosing and combining multiple video streams into a single stream, and using machine learning (ML) to uplift audio and video quality. Video streams can be captured into a single file for video on demand (VoD) playback, offline consumption, or archiving. Developers can also use live connector to broadcast virtual events, webinars, education classes, fitness sessions, product demos for live commerce, online games, and sports.
The live connector feature is being offered to address the rise of the hybrid workforce, the skyrocketing popularity of real-time video platforms (such as Twitch), and the virtual ubiquity of offsite trade show audiences, the company said in an email.
"As the hybrid work environment becomes the new normal, livestreaming has had to fill in for remote workers and audiences as a way to jointly watch and engage," the company said. "But for developers, adding livestreaming capabilities typically introduces long and costly development cycles that are hard to estimate and allocate in appropriate infrastructure."
Live connector is built on AWS infrastructure and elastically scales, the company said. VoD files are automatically created after the completion of the video session in an Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket designated by the developer. Native ML) services from the Amazon Chime SDK reduce background noise and echo without requiring the developers to use third-party apps.
MICE Platform Co., Ltd., was an early user of the live connector feature. "We have implemented the Amazon Chime SDK live connector so that multiple remote speakers can join to present together seamlessly, and without the need for special software," said Tsuyoshi Suzuki, the company's CTO, in an AWS blog post. "With live connector, it's easy for us to send video to Amazon Interactive Video Service (IVS) to stream the meeting, so thousands of viewers can attend the event."
More information is available here.