Today, we’re excited to bring support for 720p HD to our Recording and Live Streaming features. With this release, our APIs will provide developers an option to record OpenTok and live stream OpenTok sessions in high definition, and as a result create more engaging live video experiences.
Live video sessions on OpenTok already support 720p, but until today, customers could only record and live stream at 480p. With a growing number of education, webinar and media and entertainment customers, demand to support HD resolution for recording and live streaming has been gaining momentum and we are pleased to finally make this available for our customers.
The evolution of the OpenTok platform
A quick jog down memory lane to show how our feature-set has evolved beyond core video and voice:
Through these capabilities, customers have benefitted from unmatched audience reach and creating interactive experiences to engage millions of viewers at scale. Together with our industry leading core video & voice offering, these capabilities have made TokBox the one-stop-shop to meet all your live video needs.
Recording with OpenTok
OpenTok offers a variety of video recording options to fit our customers’ use cases and businesses.
- Composed Archiving: Allows you to record OpenTok sessions in a single MP4 file composed of all streams and is optimized for instant playback (this is a major differentiator of our platform).
- Archives are available immediately after the session is complete. Customers can customize the layout and select resolution of the composed archive to be SD (640×480) or HD (1280×720).
- The majority of our customers use this because of convenience and ease of use. This includes:
- E-learning courses, tutoring sessions and online seminars
- Large-scale interactive broadcasts
- Healthcare and financial services with security requirements
- Individual Stream Archiving: Creates multiple individual media files for each stream. This gives customers complete control over post-processing, serving use-cases with the need for advanced cognitive services, such as:
- Sentiment analysis
- Jargon.ai transcribes, records and analyzes conversations. They leverage our Individual Stream Archiving to analyze individual media files for an in-depth analysis.
- Audio transcription
- Voice/object recognition
- Sentiment analysis
- Encrypted Composed Archiving: Ensures that archived data is never unencrypted at rest or in transit, so providing the highest level of security. This enables customers to meet the most stringent of compliance and regulatory requirements, particularly for healthcare and finance customers.
Cambly, a tutoring app, uses Composed Archiving to record every learning session so students can capture and playback their conversations at any time, to really hone in and refine their fluency.
interested in learning more about Recording?
Interactive Broadcast
The Interactive Broadcast API allows customers to embed large-scale interactive video experiences into their branded websites and applications. Broadcasters can host their event for 3000 participants to interact simultaneously in real-time and stream to an unlimited number with HLS capabilities.
Additionally, broadcasters can also stream directly into any video platform, including Facebook Live, Twitch.tv, YouTube Live and more through RTMP streaming. HLS & RTMP streaming is now available in 720p HD providing high quality viewing experience for a variety of use-cases:
- Webinar playbacks
- Interactive webinars
- Online auction
- Education
- Social interactive broadcast
- Sports, Media & Entertainment
- Interactive gaming
Crowdcast makes it possible to live stream content into any video platform and broadcast to up to 3,000 participants in real time with Live Streaming and Interactive Broadcast from TokBox.
“HD recordings and HD broadcasts are essential for delivering a great experience to our Crowdcast hosts and end users. These features paired with custom layout management allow us to deliver a top notch experience that maximizes screen real estate and results in all users consuming the best possible stream on all platforms, both in real-time and in the recording.” – Dylan Jhaveri, CTO, Crowdcast
Interested in learning more about Live Streaming or Interactive Broadcast?
HD Recording and Live Streaming Available Today
With the introduction of support for HD Recording and Live Streaming, we are also making changes to our pricing to accommodate this new format. Please refer to our pricing page for more details. Additionally, API documentation for recording and live streaming has been updated with information on how to set the resolution of the recordings and live streaming.
If you’re interested in learning more about HD Recording, HD Live Streaming or other platform features, please contact us.
Resolution 101
The resolutions you see— 480p, 720p —represent the number of horizontal lines a video has from top to bottom. So, a 480p video is made up of 480 lines stacked one on top of another, with each line being 640 pixels wide.
True HD starts at 720p, where a 720p video has 720 lines that are each 1,280 pixels wide. It is more than three times as sharp as 480p. It can be viewed on a much larger screen resulting in a more crisp viewing experience.
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