How to live stream video: Experience in-app live video streaming in minutes

When we launched Sendbird Calls in 2020, we were thrilled to launch a new product, but we also wondered how to make it easy for users to experience in-app video calls without involving a developer. Why? Because while our highly abstracted API makes it easy to code video calls into any web or mobile app, this task would only be possible for a programmer. Not everyone has this background.

To solve this problem and make Sendbird Calls accessible to all, we developed a calls studio in our dashboard. The calls studio allows anyone to understand how to live stream video, experience our video products, and start a live video stream directly from our web or mobile applications.

Today, we are happy to provide a similar capability for anyone looking to experience live video streaming using the Sendbird video platform.

How to live stream video: Setting up a live event

To set up a live event, follow these simple steps:

1. Login to the Sendbird dashboard

2. Create or use an existing application

3. Head to the live studio

4. Create users for the live event. Then follow the steps on your screen

5. Invite users to log in to the Sendbird mobile or web demo apps

• Web users will need the web link available in the dashboard
• Mobile users will need to download the Sendbird iOS and Android demo apps before logging in using the QR code you will share with them

Now users can easily and quickly experience Sendbird Live without the cumbersome development process of integrating the API in a test application that users would otherwise need to install on their devices with a package kit.

Here is a quick video example of a user creating a live video streaming event using the Sendbird studio.

Streamlining the live video demo process with the Sendbird Live studio

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a live demo is infinitely more convincing than a picture or textual description. By removing the need for using precious development resources, product managers, user experience designers, and other non-technical folks can experience together the engagement and quality of a live video event in web and mobile applications with the Sendbird low-latency WebRTC cloud infrastructure. Besides, showing a simple proof of concept only takes a few minutes rather than hours of coding and debugging for your developer. Here is a quick comparison of the workflow using the Sendbird Live studio and the Sendbird Live SDK.

Which other benefits does the Sendbird Live studio provide?

​The benefits of the Sendbird Live dashboard-based demo include:

1. Larger user base: Increase accessibility for anyone to review and demo the features of Sendbird Live
2. Time savings: Save 95% of the time needed to set up a live event and share the experience with teammates and stakeholders
3. High demo reliability: Perform successful and repeatable demos 100% of the time

How to host a powerful live event demo with live chat & moderation

Familiarizing yourself with the Sendbird Live demo apps

Below is an example of the host user interface on a mobile phone and a participant web view on a PC. These interfaces include:

• A live video stream, including camera and audio controls
• The live chat, overlaid on the mobile device’s UI and to the side for the web app. The chat provides rich cues for social context with the participants’ profile icon, time stamps, and message authoring information
• The list of events from which to select

Note that the Sendbird Live iOS and Android mobile and web apps include live chat and moderation out of the box.

The Sendbird Live studio in the dashboard: Moderating live stream chat

Once you have started a live stream, you can moderate the live stream chat from the dashboard by:

• Editing or deleting content in real-time
• Muting or banning participants to prevent them from making any more unsafe comments
• Freezing the live chat channel
• Viewing event stats such as the number of viewers, duration, peak view, and cumulative views
• Creating custom item metadata

Host a live video stream in your app with Sendbird Live

Choosing a live video API doesn’t have to be a long and tedious process. To evaluate Sendbird’s live streaming cloud video platform, start by testing firsthand the experience you want to offer on your website and mobile applications. Once you’re happy with it, think about how to build; encourage your developers check out our documentation to learn about how to implement our live event capabilities. The Sendbird Live API supports RTMP transcoding, screen sharing, live video reactions, camera filters, and cloud recording. In addition, the Sendbird Chat and Sendbird Calls APIs provide developers with more unique video and chat platform capabilities that can enhance engagement with your events – and thereby monetization. Explore Sendbird Chat and Sendbird Calls to create private side watch parties, among many other activities, for all your events. You can also launch real-time marketing and sales campaigns at scale to increase revenue in addition to fostering your community and building brand equity.

If you’d like to leverage our technical staff’s expertise, contact us! We will be happy to review your project and provide you with the best in-app conversation capabilities you need to create the live experience your brand needs.