Interactive Live Streaming: The Game-Changer for High-Quality Live Streams

As the live streaming industry intensifies, specialized niche streams are rising. Faced with a diverse range of live stream rooms, users now have higher expectations for their live streaming experiences than ever before. As a result, users are demanding higher quality, more interactive streams, with less tolerance for poor quality and frequent stuttering.

At the same time, live streaming platforms face a common challenge: viewers often complain about stuttering and poor video quality, leading to a significant loss of paying users and even impacting revenues. Through gradual optimization processes with multiple clients, ZEGOCLOUD has discovered limited optimization opportunities for CDN live streaming. To address such experience issues, comprehensive monitoring throughout the entire distribution process and the provision of more stable, higher quality live distribution products are essential.

With this in mind, ZEGOCLOUD’s Interactive Live Streaming product has been developed to provide a higher-quality live streaming experience.

Unlike traditional CDNs, it stands out as the “Hexagon Warrior” of live distribution products with six key features:

• Ultra-Low Latency
• Superb Synchronization
• Resilient in Extreme Weak Network Conditions
• Ultra-Low Stuttering
• Ultra-High Quality Video
• Instant Time to First Frame

After deploying Interactive Live Streaming on some live streaming platforms, viewers enjoyed a high-quality experience, resulting in positive growth in platform performance metrics. VIP user complaints about the audiovisual experience have decreased by over 70%, average viewing time has increased by over 6% and there has been an increase of over 2% in paid users. In addition to live streaming scenarios, Interactive Live Streaming’s service expertise has been replicated in diverse settings such as large online educational classes and gaming streams.

Ultra-Low Latency & Superb Synchronization & Resilient in Extreme Weak Network Conditions

Interactive Live Streaming effectively addresses the experience pain points encountered by traditional CDN live streaming, such as high latency, poor synchronization, and unstable playback in weak network conditions.

In terms of latency and synchronization, it achieves viewer-side millisecond-level latency as low as 600-1000ms, with synchronization differences between viewers <400ms. This means that interactive feedback is more immediate, allowing viewers to receive quick responses from hosts after sending gifts or topping charts, satisfying emotional needs promptly. Additionally, different viewers experience strong synchronization in what they watch, enabling seamless interactions like group viewing and live e-commerce on the same frame.

In terms of weak network resilience, a major drawback of CDNs is their lack of resilience and unstable playback in weak network conditions. Interactive Live Streaming, on the other hand, maintains smooth audio streaming with up to 80% packet loss and smooth video streaming with up to 70% packet loss, leading the industry in this aspect. Even in regions such as Africa with less than ideal network infrastructure, Interactive Live Streaming provides stable services to local customers.

Ultra-Low Stuttering: Cut Stuttering by Over 75%

The improvement in smoothness is a result of systematic underlying technological optimizations. ZEGOCLOUD monitors every aspect that affects the smoothness of live streams, implementing end-to-end stuttering optimizations based on self-developed UDP protocol, Massive Serial Data Network MSDN (MSDN), and adaptive bitrate streaming. This addresses the pain point of stuttering, ensuring that audiences worldwide can enjoy seamless viewing experiences.

A leading live streaming platform in the Middle East once reported frequent complaints from paying viewers about stuttering issues, significantly impacting user retention. After integrating Interactive Live Streaming, compared to traditional CDN live streaming, the global stuttering rate on average decreased by over 75%, with a 70% decrease in audiovisual experience complaints from VIP users. Subsequently, ZEGOCLOUD conducted targeted optimizations using Interactive Live Streaming for high-income regions such as the Middle East and South Africa covered by this application, achieving a globally smooth and stable live streaming experience.

Ultra-High Quality Video: Comprehensive Optimization for Both Hosts and Viewers

Expectations and demands for video quality from both viewers and hosts continue to rise. However, solving quality issues is a complex task. For viewers, network conditions and device performance vary widely depending on their location. On the other hand, hosts typically lack professional lighting and staging capabilities but aim to maintain a good look anytime.

To address these challenges, Interactive Live Streaming achieves “intelligent adaptation for HD restoration” on the viewer side—automatically adjusting resolution and compatibility for lower-end devices to overcome network and device limitations. Leveraging AI super-resolution algorithms, H.265 encoding, and other capabilities, it restores higher quality for clearer visuals, achieving high definition with low bitrate. For hosts, achieving “algorithmic enhancement for ultimate clarity” means maximizing the advanced features of capture devices, with support for up to 4K 60fps and HDR. Algorithms like low-light enhancement make host visuals more naturally clear, effectively lowering the barrier to starting live streams.

Recently, a top live streaming product in Southeast Asia aimed to launch a new bullet screen game scene, but the resolution, frame rate, and bitrate for typical live streaming fell short due to the game’s intricate animations, leading to a blurry display at launch.

In response, Interactive Live Streaming provided the optimal solution with H.265 encoding, cloud-based high-definition low-bitrate streaming, and ultra-low latency stream playing. This effectively enhanced the game graphics at the same bitrate, resulting in improved user experience. Following this upgrade, both user payment rates and viewing durations increased. After experiencing benefits in the barrage game scenario, the client also used this service in their live show broadcasting setting. Through AI super-resolution and other algorithms, they successfully addressed issues with unclear host faces and poor image quality, leading to additional benefits.

Instant Time to First Frame: Experience a 99% Success Rate

In live streaming scenarios, large map feeds combined with up and down scrolling scenes are very common. If the first frame takes too long to load when entering a room, users can easily lose patience and choose to leave. ZEGOCLOUD uses an exclusive decoupled underlying architecture that allows users to watch without waiting for successful room entry, and offers various strategies such as pre-loading live streams, achieving a 99% instant success rate with an average initial frame duration of only 200ms. Users can experience fast room entry and transitions, reducing room entry bounce rates and helping multiple clients improve retention and revenue metrics.

Previously, feedback from a client serving users in India, Pakistan, and the Middle East highlighted issues such as slow initial frame loading and delays in 1v1 interactions and live scene transitions during live streaming. After implementing Interactive Live Streaming, this product experienced a 36.8% reduction in time to the first frame and a 10.77% increase in instant open rates during live streaming in the UAE.

Additionally, ZEGOCLOUD’s Interactive Live Streaming also offers a rich set of value-added features to support various common live streaming functions, including stream mixing, transcoding, cloud recording, screenshots, content moderation and more, facilitating a smooth transition from traditional CDN live streaming.

In the future, we will present detailed use cases of our low-latency live streaming products in various scenarios such as entertainment live streaming, live streaming classes, gaming live streaming, and event live streaming. Stay tuned for these applications to learn more about ZEGOCLOUD’s solutions and best practices for diverse live streaming environments.