August 2022 Summaries

Daily has added support for multi-bitrate HLS when live streaming calls, allowing developers to stream and store recordings simultaneously on their own infrastructure. This feature gives users more control over how they stream, distribute, and store video, with benefits including lower storage costs, reduced latency, and increased flexibility. To use this feature, developers need to set up a CloudFront distribution with an S3 bucket, configure the HLS endpoint, and authenticate with AWS. The process involves generating private and public keys, setting up a CDN, configuring Daily's API, and starting the live stream. With this new feature, users can also store recordings in their own infrastructure, reducing reliance on external services.

The testRTC-client repository is a customizable tool for integrating WebRTC video and audio into applications, allowing developers to measure performance indicators in a video API. The repository comes bundled with an app that can be deployed to Netlify, two fundamental test scripts, and instructions on how to run tests against the deployment. To use the tool, developers need to set up free accounts with GitHub, Daily, Netlify, and testRTC, obtain a Daily API key, deploy the application to Netlify, and import the test scripts into their testRTC account. Once deployed, users can run performance tests, customize the tests, or even write their own, and view detailed results that include scores, CPU and memory usage, jitter, packet loss, and more.

Daily, a developer platform, has partnered with CometChat to provide a comprehensive list of products and extensions for building an enriched chat experience in apps. The integration allows developers to quickly enable chat functionality without compromising on features or user interface. This tutorial uses Daily's React Hooks custom video app as an example, demonstrating how to swap out the custom chat UI with CometChat's chat widget, create a CometChat user synced with the Daily local participant, and launch the chat widget. The integration also enables optional extensions such as whiteboarding, class polling, collaborative documents, live transcription, and more. Developers can turn on these extensions by visiting the CometChat dashboard and toggling them on in their app. To clean up tasks when users leave the call, developers can log them out of CometChat or delete the user from the chat. The integration provides a powerful way to add an enriched chat experience to Daily apps with minimal code changes.

At Daily, our mission is to help developers and teams harness the power of video to build interactive and immersive experiences by leveraging the best-of-breed video and chat to create differentiated experiences without building these elements themselves. We're thrilled to partner with CometChat, a leading Chat API provider, to accelerate the development of next-gen real-time communications experiences. CometChat offers an advanced in-app communications platform, robust SDKs for all languages, and prebuilt UI kits, extensions, and templates. By combining Daily's best-in-class video and voice with CometChat's messaging and chat APIs, developers can ship virtual experiences in minutes. The partnership enables the creation of incredible live apps with features like telehealth, fitness and education, live events, chat-powered live streams, and more. These integrations quadruple in-app engagement, retention, and satisfaction by providing seamless digital experiences, intelligent workflows, and immersive interactions. Developers can get started today by integrating CometChat's advanced chat functionality with Daily in minutes.

We are seeking to assist developers in selecting a WebRTC provider that safeguards the data protection and information privacy of customers and end-users. Key considerations include whether the provider offers end-to-end encryption, restricts data flow by country (geofencing), has robust security practices, implements risk management and rapid response measures, and complies with relevant privacy laws. A comprehensive approach to security is essential for building customer trust in products and services over time.

Daily's Video Component System (VCS) allows for customization of video layouts, including adding splash screens, toast animations, and watermarks to live streamed and recorded videos. To add a frame to the host's video, either with a margin offset or a background image can be used. The baseline composition is Daily VCS's default collection of layouts and graphical options that can be applied to daily live streamed or recorded video. Adding a "push back" margin to the host's video gives it some room to breathe, while adding a styled frame with a background image provides more flair. This can be achieved by using an image with a transparent center, which is then overlaid on top of the video and displayed using composition parameters such as showImageOverlay, image.fullscreen, and image.assetName.

Daily's "app-message" events facilitate sending and receiving messages between video call participants, up to 4096 bytes in size, via a peer-to-peer approach using RTCDataChannel or Daily's own WebSocket when in SFU mode. This is sufficient for many applications, but users should be mindful of data sizes and spamming. A server component can be beneficial for features like game state synchronization, performance impact, creating rooms, and server-side validations, as seen in the example of Code of Modern Wordfare using WebSockets. Daily's "app-message" events can also be used client-side without a server, but this requires more logic and processing on the client to validate data and handle potential issues like tampered client data or out-of-sync state. Another alternative is using HTTP for bidirectional communication, which may involve features like long polling, streaming, or server push depending on the use case, with benefits and tradeoffs varying between them.