Talk to us
Talk to us
menu

10 Best Live Streaming SDK Providers

10 Best Live Streaming SDK Providers

Live streaming has become an integral part of our lives, with its popularity skyrocketing in recent years. Live streaming apps have revolutionized the way we consume content and interact with others in real-time. If you’re looking to build a live-streaming app, choosing the right live streaming SDK is crucial. In this article, we’ve rounded up the 10 best live streaming API providers that you can use to develop high-quality, feature-rich live streaming apps.

What is Live Streaming SDK, and Why Is It Useful

A Software Development Kit comprises tools that enable developers to create a mobile application. These tools are helper libraries, precompiled modules, relevant documentation, code samples, processes, and guides for use on specific platforms or programming languages.

The live streaming SDK is a shortcut by which developers avoid rewriting thousands of lines of code. Furthermore, SDK helps improve mobile app features such as analytics, advertising, or handling push notifications instead of building them from scratch. Live streaming SDK is intended explicitly for live streaming video solutions.

Surely, another crucial tool that will resonate with many is the API or Application Programming Interface. This is the vital software intermediary that enables two applications to communicate with each other. In the realm of video, a live-streaming video API represents a collection of specialized APIs focused on video, playing a key role in facilitating effective and efficient video interactions and communication.

Live Streaming SDK vs API Comparison

The SDK, compared to the API, acts as a comprehensive starter kit. While the live streaming API provides a set of instructions, the live-streaming SDK for video encompasses practical examples of how to correctly implement these instructions. Essentially, the SDK enhances and extends the API’s functionality.

Live streaming SDKs and APIs are instrumental in crafting native video and audio experiences across various platforms, including software and mobile applications, websites, and web applications. They are pivotal in developing a range of applications, such as web and video conferencing tools, virtual event and live-streaming platforms, and video calling features.

The process begins with identifying the necessary functionalities for your application and selecting the appropriate API to construct these features. Subsequently, you choose a suitable live streaming SDK, which facilitates rapid and efficient operationalization of the application.

zegocloud live streaming sdk

What Should Include When Choosing a Video Streaming SDK

Selecting the right live video streaming SDK is a crucial decision that impacts the quality and success of your streaming project. It’s important to consider factors like platform compatibility, video quality, scalability, features, security, and support, as these will determine the overall effectiveness and user experience of your live streaming solution.

  • Platform Compatibility: The SDK should integrate seamlessly across various operating systems and devices, ensuring a consistent user experience.
  • Video Quality: High-quality video and audio streaming with minimal latency are crucial. Look for SDKs supporting high-definition streaming and robust performance under different network conditions.
  • Scalability: The SDK must manage increasing viewers and streams efficiently, adapting to varying bandwidths and user loads without performance loss.
  • Feature Richness: Essential features include adaptive bitrate streaming, DVR capabilities, analytics, and support for multiple video formats to enhance viewer experience and provide insights.
  • Security: Ensure the SDK offers strong encryption and secure access controls to protect content and user data.
  • Support and Documentation: Comprehensive documentation, a supportive developer community, and responsive customer support are vital for easy integration and maintenance.

By focusing on these aspects – platform compatibility, video quality, scalability, feature richness, security, and support – you can select a live streaming SDK that meets current needs and adapts to future challenges.

Top 10 Live Streaming SDK and API Vendors

SDK and API vendors for video and live-streaming offer toolkits such as WebRTC that facilitate the creation of custom live-streaming platforms within the web and mobile applications. Let’s look at the best video streaming SDK and API providers for live streaming.

1. ZEGOCLOUD

ZEGOCLOUD is a powerful live streaming SDK solution that provides a high-quality, real-time streaming experience for users. With its advanced features such as adaptive bitrate streaming, low latency, and easy-to-use APIs, ZEGOCLOUD is a popular video live streaming SDK choice for developers looking to integrate live streaming into their applications.

ZEGOCLOUD’s live streaming API for video streaming allows developers to easily integrate video streaming into their applications with a wide range of customization options. With ZEGOCLOUD’s live streaming SDK, developers can quickly build powerful video streaming applications that can scale to millions of users. Additionally, it provides pre-built UKIits for developers to save time and cost at a quick and easy live streaming app development.

2. Agora

agora live streaming api

Agora is a popular live streaming SDK that offers a comprehensive solution for developers. It features low latency, high-quality audio and video, and real-time messaging, making it a great choice for applications.

Agora streaming API for video streaming also supports cross-platform development, allowing developers to integrate it into their applications for various platforms, including iOS, Android, and the web. It is widely used in the gaming industry and has been praised for its stability and reliability. With real-time analytics and monitoring, Agora allows developers to keep track of the performance of their streams and make adjustments as needed, making it a powerful and flexible live streaming SDK solution.

3. Wowza

wowza streaming service

Wowza Live Streaming SDK is a powerful and flexible software development kit designed for live video streaming. With Wowza, developers can easily integrate live streaming capabilities into their applications, enabling them to deliver high-quality video content to audiences across the globe.

This stream SDK supports a wide range of streaming protocols and video formats, including HLS, MPEG-DASH, and RTMP, making it a versatile solution for various use cases. The SDK also provides features like adaptive bitrate streaming, real-time analytics, and secure streaming to ensure a seamless and secure streaming experience.

4. Kurento

kurento live streaming api

Kurento is an open-source multimedia server with live streaming API technology that enables real-time communication and processing of audio, video, and data. It provides a comprehensive set of features for building advanced video applications, including WebRTC-based video conferencing, live broadcasting, and media processing.

Kurento is highly extensible and allows developers to add custom processing modules and integrate them with third-party tools and services. It supports a wide range of programming languages and platforms, making it easy to integrate with existing applications.

5. Vonage

vonage live streaming api

Vonage offers a comprehensive live streaming API solution that delivers an exceptional real-time streaming experience for users. Developed with powerful stream APIs and comprehensive documentation, Vonage is an ideal choice for developers who want to create live streaming applications.

The live streaming API provided by Vonage offers a vast range of customization options that give developers greater control over video quality, resolution, and frame rate. The video streaming API is user-friendly and the SDK is compatible with a broad range of platforms such as iOS, Android, and the web. As a result, developers can easily create high-quality live streaming applications and integrate Vonage’s capabilities into their existing applications.

6. MUX

mux live streaming api

With the developer-friendly video streaming API of MUX, building web and mobile apps with live-streaming video functionalities is simple. Moreover, it is highly scalable, and it can quickly grow with your needs. The platform accepts live broadcasts and output streams using RTMP and HLS. MUX’s API also enables live broadcasting to social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, among others.

7. Vimeo

vimeo streaming api

Using Vimeo’s accessible video streaming API, you can quickly implement live video streaming into your business model without having to obtain and dedicate the necessary technological resources. Moreover, Vimeo API, libraries, and SDKs are available in various languages, such as PHP, Python, and Node.js. Furthermore, it also enables you to launch a branded subscription service and securely upload, stream, and share content.

8. VideoSDK

videosdk live stream sdk

VideoSDK Live’s live streaming SDK allows you to easily build live streaming apps on the web, iOS, and Android. Moreover, the platform provides an interactive live streaming solution that uses adaptive live streaming to enhance the quality and experience of live streaming. When recording live streams, VideoSDK Live allows you to record video and audio streams separately. During live streaming, users can easily change their backgrounds and layouts and invite guests.

9. Brightcove

brightcove live streaming api

Providing features like analytics, live transcoding, and CMS integration, Brightcove offers a comprehensive live-streaming SDK. With Brightcove’s APIs, you can simultaneously reach your audience with RTMP and HLS outputs. Moreover, you can stream videos from your favorite CMS, effortlessly add player plugins, and automate CDN publishing. Moreover, it also supports the customization of the video player using CSS and JavaScript.

10. Muvi

muvi live streaming sdk

Muvi live video streaming API empowers you to build live-streaming web and mobile apps with support for HLS and RTMP feeds. Moreover, it offers a straightforward process to embed live videos and allows you to record live streams. Furthermore, users can enhance the security of their live streaming using different options like screen recording protection, geo-blocking, and watermarking.

How to Build an App with ZEGOCLOUD Live Streaming SDK

Building live video streaming applications from scratch is quite tricky. The story differs from a top-notch live video streaming service like ZEGOCLOUD SDK With the ZEGOCLOUD video streaming SDK, you can build reliable and highly scalable video calling and interactive live video streaming features into applications irrespective of the platform. The setup and integration process is easy and straightforward.

zegocloud live video streaming sdk

There are many reasons why you should build live video streaming applications with the ZEGOCLOUD SD for many reasons.

Below are some powerful features that the ZEGOCLOUD SDK offers.

1. Supports massive concurrency

Are you worried about how to scale applications when the user base rises? That’s never been a problem with the ZEGOCLOUD SDK. This live-streaming service can serve over 10 million concurrent users with a single implementation.

2. Instant messaging

ZEGOCLOUD SDK is fully featured. It comes with all the features you could ever want in a live video streaming application. It supports instant messaging; users can have a text chat or send bullet-screen messages while watching a live stream.

3. Comprehensive streaming media processing

ZEGOCLOUD SDK is extremely powerful, as it comes with a full array of streaming media features. You can set up live video streaming applications that feature stream mixing, snapshotting, super-resolution, recording, and lots more.

4. Multiple live engagement formats

The programming has been done for you by ZEGOCLOUD. With minimal configuration, you can set up live video streaming apps with different customization options for users. You can create single-host, multi-host, and cross-room co-hosted live streaming sessions with Zego Live.

Preparation

  • A ZEGOCLOUD developer account — Sign in
  • VS Code or any other IDE or editor.
  • A decent computer with a camera (webcam)
  • Browser compatibility checks: See Web SDK compatibility.
  • Basic understanding of web development

Web ZEGOCLOUD Live Streaming SDK Integration for Live Video Stream

To build our live video streaming web app, we have to integrate the ZEGOCLOUD SDK for live streaming into our project. We can do so through the following steps :

Create a new project.

Creating a project is the starting point of our application. You can skip this step if you already have the project. Follow the steps below to create a project :

  1. Create a folder with the name of your project.
  2. Create these three files: index.html,index.jsinside the js directory, and index.css inside the css directory, all inside the folder created in step (1).

Here’s a breakdown of what the files we created do:

  • index.html file: The front page file of the audio and video call application.
  • index.js file under the js directory: The JavaScript code that is used to implement the audio and video features
  • index.css file under the css directory: used to set the page style.

After creating these files, open them with your favorite IDE or text editor. I will be using Visual Studio Code. Your folder structure should look like the one in the image below after adding the files we created in step (2).

├── index.html
├── js
│   └── index.js
└── css
   └── index.css

Follow the steps below to create root files and test the setup:

1. Copy the following code to the index.html file:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>Zego RTC Video Call</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="./css/index.css">
</head>
<body>
    <h1>
        Zego RTC Video Call
    </h1>
    <h4>Local video</h4>
    <video id="local-video" autoplay muted playsinline controls></video>
    <h4>Remote video</h4>
    <video id="remote-video" autoplay muted playsinline controls></video>
    <script src="./js/index.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
2. Copy the following code to the index.css file:
*{
    font-family: sans-serif;
}
h1,h4{
    text-align: center;
}
video {
    width: 300px;
    height: auto;
}
#local-video{
    position: relative;
    margin: 0 auto;
    display: block;
}

#remote-video{
    display: flex;
    height: auto;
    margin: auto;
    position: relative !important;
}
3. Run and test out your project on the local Web server.

You can do this by simply opening the index.html file we created with any web browser of your choice as long as it passes the Zego Live compatibility test or by using the live-server extension.

Run the code below to install Live-Server:

npm i live-server -g

Enter your root directory and run a live-server command to test the project.

Import the SDK

Follow the steps below to import the ZEGOCLOUD SDK into our project:

  1. Run the command below to install ZEGOCLOUD SDK.
npm i zego-express-engine-webrtc
  1. Import the ZEGOCLOUD SDK by copying the code below to the index.js file.
import {ZegoExpressEngine} from 'zego-express-engine-webrtc'

Implementation steps

We have so far imported our ZEGOCLOUD SDK, which we are going to use to set up our live video streaming.

The diagram below shows the working principle of the ZEGOCLOUD SDK when User A plays a stream published by User B:

live video stream sequence

Create a ZegoExpressEngine instance.

Create a single instance of the ZegoExpressEngine class and pass in your app ID as the appIDparameter and the server URL as the server parameter. You can obtain them from the ZegoCloud Admin Console.

// Initialize the ZegoExpressEngine instance
const zg = new ZegoExpressEngine(appID, server);

Log in to a room

To log in to a room, call the loginRoom with the following parameters:

  • Enter a unique room ID in the roomID parameter.
  • Enter the login token in the token parameter. See User Privilege Control for more details.
  • The user ID and user name are the roomID userName parameters.
  • Optional: Pass the corresponding object to the config parameter based on the actual situation.
// Log in to a room. It returns `true` if the login is successful.
// The roomUserUpdate callback is disabled by default. To receive this callback, you must set the `userUpdate` property to `true` when logging in to a room. 
const result = await zg.loginRoom(roomID, token, {userID, userName}, {userUpdate: true});

Note: If the roomID you entered does not exist, a new room will be created, and you will log in automatically when you call the loginRoom method.

We’ll create some callback events that return information on the status of a room. Below are some common event callbacks related to room users and streams:

  • roomStateUpdate: Callback for updates on the current user’s room connection status. ZEGOCLOUD SDK sends a notification event when the current status of the user’s room changes. for instance, when a login authentication fails or a user is disconnected.
  • roomUserUpdate: This callback is for information or an update on the current status of other users in the room. When other users join or leave the room, the SDK sends out the event notification through this callback.
  • roomStreamUpdate: Callback for updates on the status of the streams in the room. When new streams are published to the room or existing streams in the room stop, the SDK sends out the event notification through this callback.
// Callback for updates on the current user's room connection status.
zg.on('roomStateUpdate', (roomID,state,errorCode,extendedData) => {
    if (state == 'DISCONNECTED') {
        // Disconnected from the room
    }

    if (state == 'CONNECTING') {
        // Connecting to the room
    }

    if (state == 'CONNECTED') {
        // Connected to the room
    }
})

// Callback for updates on the status of other users in the room.
zg.on('roomUserUpdate', (roomID, updateType, userList) => {
    console.warn(
        `roomUserUpdate: room ${roomID}, user ${updateType === 'ADD' ? 'added' : 'left'} `,
        JSON.stringify(userList),
    );
});

// Callback for updates on the status of the streams in the room.
zg.on('roomStreamUpdate', async (roomID, updateType, streamList, extendedData) => {
    if (updateType == 'ADD') {
        // New stream added, start playing the stream. 
    } else if (updateType == 'DELETE') {
        // Stream deleted, stop playing the stream.
    }
});

Publish streams

You can create a local audio and video stream on Zego Live by calling the createStream method. This activates our camera and microphone for real-time video and audio data capture.

// After calling the CreateStream method, you need to wait for the ZEGO server to return the local stream object before any further operation.
const localStream = await zg.createStream();
// Obtain the video tag of the local video.
const localVideo = document.getElementById('local-video');
// The local stream is a MediaStream object. You can render audio and video by assigning the local stream to the SrCObject property of video or audio.
localVideo.srcObject = localStream;

Note: After calling the createStreammethod, you need to wait for the ZEGO server to return the media stream object (localStream) before any further operations.

If you wish to start publishing a local audio and video stream to remote users, call the startPublishingStream method with the following parameters:

// localStream is the MediaStream object created by calling creatStream in the previous step.
zg.startPublishingStream(streamID, localStream)
  • a stream ID as the streamID parameter
  • The media stream object obtained in the previous step is passed as the localStream parameter.

You can get information about your published streams with the following callbacks:

zg.on('publisherStateUpdate', result => {
    // Callback for updates on stream publishing status.
    // ... 
})

zg.on('publishQualityUpdate', (streamID, stats) => {
    // Callback for reporting stream publishing quality.
    // ... 
})
  1. publisherStateUpdate: Callback for updates on stream publishing status. After stream publishing starts, if the status changes, the SDK sends out the event notification through this callback.
  2. publishQualityUpdate: Callback for reporting stream publishing quality. After stream publishing starts, the SDK sends out the streaming quality data (resolution, frame rate, bit rate, etc.) regularly through this callback.

Play streams

To start playing a remote audio and video stream from the ZEGO server, call the startPlayingStream method with the corresponding stream ID passed to the streamIDparameter.

You can obtain the stream ID of the streams published by remote users from the callback roomStreamUpdate.

const remoteStream = await zg.startPlayingStream(streamID);

// The remoteVideo object is the <video> or <audio> element on your webpage.
remoteVideo.srcObject = remoteStream;

Stop publishing and playing streams.

We are done streaming; how then do we terminate it? You can easily do so with the command below.

Stop publishing stream command:

zg.stopPublishingStream(streamID)

Destroy stream command:

// localStream is the MediaStream object created when calling the createStream method.
zg.destroyStream(localStream)

stop playing stream command:

zg.stopPlayingStream(streamID)

Log out of a room

You can see that the ZEGOCLOUD SDK is very straightforward. To log out of a room, just call the logoutRoom method with the corresponding room ID passed to the roomID parameter.

js zg.logoutRoom(roomID)

Conclusion

Incorporating a live streaming SDK in your live streaming app is essential for ensuring a smooth and uninterrupted video streaming experience for your users. By selecting the right video streaming SDK, you can provide high-quality live streaming and engage your audience. Consider factors like scalability, customization options, and pricing before choosing the best option for your app’s needs.

zegocloud sdk

Read more:

Live Streaming SDK FAQ

Q1: Can a live streaming SDK support multiple platforms?

Many live streaming SDKs are designed to be cross-platform, supporting various operating systems like iOS, Android, and web platforms, enabling a consistent streaming experience across different devices.

Q2: Is it difficult to integrate a live streaming SDK into an existing app?

The difficulty varies depending on the SDK and the existing app’s architecture. However, most SDKs are designed for ease of integration and come with detailed documentation and developer support to assist in the process.

Q3: Do live streaming SDKs offer analytics and reporting features?

Many SDKs like ZEGOCLOUD provide analytics and reporting capabilities, allowing developers and businesses to track viewer engagement, streaming quality, and other metrics to optimize the streaming experience.

Talk to Expert

Learn more about our solutions and get your question answered.

Talk to us

Take your apps to the next level with our voice, video and chat APIs

Free Trial
  • 10,000 minutes for free
  • 4,000+ corporate clients
  • 3 Billion daily call minutes

Stay updated with us by signing up for our newsletter!

Don't miss out on important news and updates from ZEGOCLOUD!

* You may unsubscribe at any time using the unsubscribe link in the digest email. See our privacy policy for more information.