October 2021 Summaries

On October 14, 2021, Agora released version 3.5.1 of its Native SDK. The update includes new features such as Super Resolution (beta), Background Blurring, device flash support for iOS and Android, media stream relay pausing/resuming, external audio frame positioning, and music file updates. Additionally, the release introduces improvements in 5G quality testing. For more information on these updates, visit Agora's downloads page to get the latest SDK now.

In this tutorial, we learn how to build a video-calling desktop app using the Agora Electron SDK for macOS and Windows. The Electron framework allows developers to bundle websites as standalone desktop apps, enabling them to create cross-platform desktop applications with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript knowledge. To get started, users need to sign up at https://console.agora.io, set up a project, and generate an App ID. The app's structure consists of four files: index.html for markup, index.css for styling, render.js for application logic, and index.js for bootstrapping Electron. The Agora SDK uses an event-based approach to handle actions like joining a channel, setting up video feeds, and leaving a channel.

The article discusses how to build a live video broadcasting app using the Agora Video SDK and React Native. It covers creating an Agora account, setting up a project, obtaining an App ID and token, and structuring the application. The author provides step-by-step instructions on running the app and explains how it works by delving into the Permission.ts, App.tsx, and Style.ts files. The article concludes with a brief overview of additional features that can be added using the Agora React Native API Reference and invites readers to join the Agora Developer Slack Community for further assistance.

This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to build a social networking application similar to Houseparty using Android. The core features of this app include user account creation and login, virtual room setup for video calls, accessibility configuration for rooms, private messaging during video calls, and chatting with friends not in the same room. The author uses Java and Android SDK along with Agora's RTC and RTM SDKs to implement these features. They also provide a Github demo app as a reference.

Streaming bitrate is a measure of how many bits of information it takes to represent one second of video, expressed as kilobits per second (Kbps) or megabits per second (Mbps). It is an important consideration when streaming because while higher bitrate may seem to equate to higher quality, this is only true if there is sufficient end-to-end bandwidth to support it. Bitrate is just one of four principal components of streaming video quality; the others are resolution, frame rate, and compression. Video resolution represents the height and width of the video image, while frame rate is the frequency at which consecutive images (frames) are displayed or captured. Compression is the process of encoding a digital stream in a way that requires less bandwidth than the original. Bitrate impacts streaming quality by determining the size of the video file and the speed of data transfer, but it must be balanced with other factors such as bandwidth, resolution, and frame rate to ensure optimal performance.

The article discusses building a collaborative live streaming application using Agora's SDK, Flutter SDK, and Agora RTC package. The app allows multiple users to join and stream their video to a streaming platform while being managed by a host application. It covers the participant view, RTM messaging for controlling participants, director controller, muting and disabling video of other users, moving users between stage and lobby, and transcoding each video before pushing it to streaming platforms. The author provides detailed explanations on how to implement these features using Agora's SDK and Flutter.