June 2021 Summaries

The Agora Low Code Initiative introduces the Agora UIKit for Flutter, enabling users to build video streaming applications with just a few lines of code. This tutorial guides you through using the Agora UIKit for Flutter to create your video streaming application and add customizations. The default functionality includes automatic layout of all video streams, displaying active speakers in larger displays, buttons for disabling camera or microphone, switching cameras, and more. Prerequisites include an Agora developer account, Flutter SDK, VS Code or Android Studio, a testing device, and basic knowledge of Flutter development. The AgoraClient class is used to initialize the Agora RtcEngine with required parameters such as agoraConnectionData and enabledPermissions. The AgoraVideoViewer class dynamically adjusts UI for users joining or leaving, while the AgoraVideoButtons class allows customization of buttons in the layout.

Joe Pritchard, a Solutions Architect at Agora, discusses how companies are integrating live streaming features into their applications across various industries such as social media, dating, education, and healthcare. He outlines key steps for successful integration, including forming partnerships with vendors' technical teams, picking the right development foundations, considering security best practices from the start, having clear requirements and responsibilities across teams, testing using different devices and networks, providing users streaming advice and test tools, and preparing carefully for launch. Agora provides a reliable Real-Time Engagement Platform with easy-to-embed APIs, SDKs, and partner ecosystem to help businesses integrate live streaming solutions quickly and cost-effectively.

Tony Zhao, founder and CEO of Agora, reflects on the company's journey since its founding in 2014. He shares how they created an API Platform company focused on real-time engagement (RTE) innovations, which now powers over 50 billion minutes per month across various industries. Zhao emphasizes Agora's commitment to being developer-first and providing a highly customizable platform for developers worldwide. The company has expanded globally, with offices in multiple countries and customers in over 100 nations.

This tutorial demonstrates how to develop a web application that supports speech-to-text transcription using JavaScript's Web Speech API, Agora Web SDK, and the Agora RTM SDK. The application allows users to join video calls and transcribe their voice into text, which can be read by others in the channel. The tutorial covers setting up the HTML structure, adding CSS for styling, implementing core functionality using JavaScript, and integrating voice-to-text services with Web Speech API and RTM. The final application allows users to join video calls, transcribe their speech into text, and send the transcriptions to all other users in the channel.

This tutorial explains how to check in-call statistics during an Agora video call on Android devices. It covers four major statistics callbacks: onRtcStats, onNetworkQuality, onLocalVideoStats, and onRemoteVideoStats. These callbacks provide information about local and remote video statistics, network quality, and other important call aspects like bandwidth and CPU usage. The tutorial also demonstrates how to display these stats using a TextView in an Android application. By understanding the in-call statistics from the Agora Android SDK, developers can improve their video calling applications' performance and user experience.

This tutorial guides developers on how to add cloud recording to their React Native video chat app using Agora Cloud Recording. The process involves setting up an Agora developer account, creating an AWS account and an Amazon S3 bucket for storing the videos, deploying a Golang server to handle requests from the React Native app, and building the app with the necessary credentials and code for fetching tokens, starting recording, stopping recording, and checking recording status. The resulting project allows developers to record and save video calls from their application to an Amazon S3 bucket for later access.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to an exponential increase in communication between students, parents, and teachers, boosting the demand for parent-teacher communication channels and creating new business opportunities for EdTech companies. Effective communication builds respectful relationships among stakeholders, leading to student success. Parental involvement is associated with improved academic performance, while educators benefit from collaborative relationships with engaged parents. Businesses like ClassDojo, Remind, and Clever have experienced rapid growth by integrating teacher-parent communication channels into their platforms. Building a customizable parent-teacher communication portal can enhance product offerings, improve customer satisfaction, and contribute to students' academic success.

The pandemic has forced a shift towards distance learning, presenting new challenges for students and educators alike. As schools reopen, it's important to reflect on the lessons learned from remote education and how they can be used to improve future online learning experiences. Agora, an EdTech company, developed two new products - Flexible Classroom and Interactive Whiteboard - aimed at enhancing real-time engagement in virtual classrooms. These solutions allow educators to create customized learning platforms with advanced features such as interactive whiteboards, recording capabilities, and scalability for various group sizes. By addressing the pain points of distance learning, Agora aims to empower education providers and improve student outcomes through innovative online learning solutions.

In this tutorial, we will develop a web application that supports voice calling among multiple users using the Agora Web SDK. The prerequisites for this project include basic knowledge of JavaScript, JQuery, Bootstrap, Font Awesome, an Agora developer account, and the Agora Web SDK. We begin by setting up the HTML structure with necessary UI elements such as buttons for joining, leaving, muting, and unmuting audio streams. Then we add custom CSS to match the site with a blue Agora-based theme. The core functionality is implemented using JavaScript, which uses the Agora Web SDK to create clients, microphone audio tracks, and handle user interactions such as joining, leaving, and muting/unmuting audio streams. Finally, we test the application by running it in multiple browser tabs to simulate multiple users on the call. The finished code is available on GitHub, and a demo of the code in action can be found at https://agora-voice-calling.netlify.app/. For more resources, refer to Agora's developer guide or join their Slack channel.

This tutorial guides developers through creating a live streaming web application using Agora's SDK, supporting multiple hosts and audience members. The prerequisites include basic knowledge of JavaScript, JQuery, Bootstrap, Font Awesome, an Agora developer account, and the Agora Web SDK. The project setup involves creating an HTML structure with necessary UI elements such as video streams, toolbar for audio/video controls, and a way to leave the chat. Custom CSS is then added to match the site with an Agora-based theme. JavaScript functions are used to mute and unmute video and audio, while core structures of JS use the Agora Web SDK to create clients, specify audio and video tracks, set user roles, subscribe and publish streams, and end the stream. The final application can be tested using multiple browser tabs as hosts and audience members. The tutorial also provides GitHub links for the code and a demo in action, along with additional resources such as developer guides, documentation, and community support.

In his recent Kranky Geek WebRTC presentation, Ben Weekes debunked several misconceptions about real-time communication (RTC). He demonstrated that multiple selective forwarding unit (SFU) architectures connected by a software-defined and managed virtual network can significantly outperform peer-to-peer connections over the public internet. Agora's unique solution involves placing their own servers into every ISP network globally, using machine learning to continuously probe for the most direct and robust routes between them. This architecture provides twice the speed of the public internet on average, allowing all participants to experience ultra-low latency and high-fidelity video streaming. Agora's reliable, very high-quality real-time engagement (RTE) platform is scalable and can be easily integrated into any app using their native and web SDKs.

The article introduces Agora UIKit, a tool that simplifies adding video chat functionality to iOS applications without requiring extensive documentation reading or knowledge of complex concepts beyond basic iOS development. It provides a brief guide on how to set up and use this kit in an Xcode project, including the necessary prerequisites such as an Agora developer account and CocoaPods. The author also explains how to integrate tokens for security purposes and mentions additional resources available for further learning about building applications using Agora SDKs.

In this tutorial, we will set up a cloud recording feature for a video chat web app using Agora Cloud Recording API. The architecture consists of a client-server setup with all communication through REST APIs. We will use the Agora NG SDK for the front end and GoLang backend. Prerequisites include cloning the quick start repo, an Agora developer account, an AWS account, and a Heroku account or another service to deploy the back end. The tutorial covers setting up Agora and AWS accounts, creating environment variables, and configuring the front-end and back-end code. The final result is a video chat web app with cloud recording capabilities.

William Du, Developer Program Manager at Agora, shares tips on how to win a hackathon by understanding the judges' perspective and focusing on the right project. He emphasizes researching the technology, setting realistic expectations, and aligning your project with the sponsor's goals. By analyzing the prompt, conducting thorough research, and narrowing down key features, participants can increase their chances of success in hackathon events.

Agora has updated its agora_rtc_engine to version 4.0.1, compatible with Flutter 2's new features. The update includes null safety support, extension libraries for reducing app size, a virtual metronome feature, and improvements in video encoding. Additionally, users can control playback progress of audio effect files and set degradation preferences to manage audio quality during limited bandwidth situations.

In a tutorial by Carlos Lucas, CEO of Nexplayer, he guides developers through the process of using NexPlayer SDK integration with Agora Video Chat on Android. The purpose is to enable live streaming across multiple platforms while maintaining superior streaming quality. Key requirements for implementation include downloading the Agora Video Chat, signing up for an Agora account, and requesting the NexPlayer Android Player SDK demo. The tutorial covers initialization of both SDKs, setting up local and remote videos, joining a channel, creating app UI, implementing control views, controlling player volume, testing the chat functionality, and more.

Agora has introduced the world's first no-code solution for creating live video chat and streaming apps, called Agora App Builder. This design studio enables users to create, personalize, and publish their own purpose-built, live video applications without any coding knowledge. The platform is aimed at supporting the creation of virtual experiences in a growing "creator economy." It features superior customization, go-to-market speed, all essential features for real-time engagement, and quality, scalability, and reliability. Agora App Builder also supports additional templates for various applications and seamless integration with existing applications through its SDK.