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2022 of the Video streaming industry: a year of undergoing changes and trends

ZEGOCLOUDDev — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 10:54:18 +0000

2020 has been a catalytic year of significant change. As mentioned previously, the pandemic has changed our communication habits, from work and education to business and health. We noted how the video had become the new normal, undermining traditional communication methods and opening the door to the massive universe of video communication.

The same direction has also gone in the way we consume content. The long months of quarantine have dramatically increased the demand for online video content, establishing a global video streaming industry trend. Live streaming has become the preferred way to consume content. Many OTT and social platforms such as Facebook and Youtube have experienced massive growth in live viewership, especially in eSports and video games.

Current statistics indicate that the video streaming industry will make up 82 percent of Internet traffic by 2022 (Interdigital, 2020), and by 2030, the live streaming industry will reach $534 billion. However, there is no shortage of challenges, of course, for significant competitors who must adapt to this world in constant turmoil and change to survive, accelerated in part by new forms of disintermediation and de-verticalization, the result of digital transformation and the shift to Web 3.0.

So let's look at the main trends, characteristics, and essential players in the large and profitable video streaming industry.
Over-the-top (OTT): between new opportunities and challenges

Over-the-top (OTT): between new opportunities and challenges

Even before the pandemic, people have increasingly adopted over-the-top (OTT) services for entertainment, live sports, educational video streaming industry, fitness streaming, and more. OTT refers to streaming video and media delivered over the Internet without a cable or satellite provider subscription via a website or app.

Their offers of unlimited and instant access to high-quality original content made them popular, especially during the lockdown months when millions of people worldwide spent full days binge-watching TV series and live events. Famous ones include Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and HBO, among many others.

Netflix, the undisputed top global provider of OTT video services, now has 73.28 million paid subscribers in the United States and Canada and 220.67 million worldwide. It owes its success to original programming. But this enormous spending on content drives many competitors toward new business models, especially when 2022 revealed data in the first trimester that was not particularly enticing.

Netflix reported a decline in subscribers for the first time since the service launched in 2008. With 221.6 million customers certified as of March 31, the year's first quarter ended with 200,000 fewer paying viewers than the last count, and further declines will occur next quarter.

But it is not the only one; according to Deloitte, more than 150 million users terminated their subscriptions worldwide, such that 2022 got labeled 'the year of the great abandonment.' The leading cause is increased competition within the video streaming industry, a veritable 'platform war' that has made it difficult for consumers to afford multiple services. The churn rate has become a severe concern for streaming operators, who have spent considerable resources on producing new content as a key to retaining subscribers. Other reasons include niche streaming services, such as Crunchyroll, the streaming platform for anime, which are increasingly capturing a slice of traffic.

Overall, OTT industry estimates remain optimistic, with a CAGR of 29.4 percent from 2020 to 2027. Subscription video on demand (SVOD) will remain the most significant revenue segment, and user penetration of streaming video platforms will rise to 35% by 2025. More conservative estimates project a mere CAGR of 7% in the 2022/2025 period (ITMediaConsulting 2022/2025), predicting a transition from SVOD to AVOD, advertising video-on-demand.

The same young people who have skyrocketed the numbers of SVOD paid video services are now transiting to ad-supported platforms, given their increased involvement in social media and their more voracious consumption of video games. Therefore AVOD, particularly in the live Fast variant, asserts itself as a means of diversification to build user loyalty.

The new frontiers: from social media and live streaming to gaming and metaverse

Social media, games, live streaming platforms, and the metaverse drive viewers away from linear TV and VOD content resembling TV.

In social media, short-form videos are popular, particularly on the video platform of the moment, Tiktok. This content is taken up more than TV offers and entertains as much if not more than OTT platforms. Even Netflix admits that TikTok is one of its biggest competitors.

Live streaming platforms and apps have become sought-after during the pandemic, and today streamers are known as Hollywood stars. Amazon's largest live-streaming platform, Twitch, has seen its viewing hours increase by 101 percent throughout 2020. It’s among the best known, along with social media that have integrated such functions as Tiktok Live, Instagram, Facebook Live, and Youtube Live.

Meanwhile, new consumer demand for the so-called metaverse is beginning. The recent rebranding of Facebook to Meta has generated much noise around the topic. However, this technology is still in its infancy, and there is no precise prediction about future impacts in the entertainment industry and beyond. One thing is sure: for younger people, entertainment is increasingly social, interactive, personalized, and brings real-world characteristics that the endless possibilities of digital extend.

Social media and social gaming already resemble metaverse much more than video streaming, where consumers increasingly want to interact with content and personalize their experiences.

This trend is reflected in the gaming industry's growing entertainment market share, thus incentivizing tech giants to invest in the sector. Sony just bought Bungie and Microsoft signed an agreement with Activision Blizzard. Also, Netflix has recently entered the games space, offering new video game exclusives and interactive content alongside its 'TV alike' content.

Speaking of television and linear content, the boom of Video on Deman (VOD) had led some analysts to predict its death, while the opposite has happened. The rise of live streaming consumption affirmed in 2020 does not seem destined to diminish. At its epicenter is sports.

Live streaming Sports takeover the video streaming industry

Live sporting events are back, and even though TV remains the preferred option, some of the most prominent players in the online video streaming industry have struck deals with major sports leagues and organizers of global sporting events. In the United States, for example, giants such as Disney, Hulu, and Amazon have expanded their streaming agreements with the National Football League, with Amazon getting exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football.

For sports content delivery, OTT platforms remain in the lead, the most relevant being Dazn and Sky in Europe and Espn in the United States.

Tremendous opportunities for the video streaming industry competitors, especially in this 2022 year of sports, were ushered in by the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Fans can watch major global events like the Commonwealth Games or the FIFA World Cup in Qatar next winter. But there will also be enormous challenges for content providers and live sports streaming services, the main one being ensuring low latency, which an implemented intelligent multi-CDN strategy can achieve.

The critical technologies

Low latency is the technology behind the trends described above. Low latency streaming has become crucial since the pandemic, as all daily activities have depended on real-time video.

However, most live streaming is not technically live, given the delays of several seconds in live transmissions. Since interactivity is the watchword today, content distributors hope for sub-second delivery very soon, while today, we still hover around three to forty-five seconds!

Connection speed is essential for smooth content delivery, and 5G comes to the rescue in this. The year 2022 is the year that sees further pushes for urbanization which will act as a catalyst in aiding companies looking to expand their subscriber base attentive to low-latency video playback. Equal importance also has streaming protocol used to transmit a live stream, and today the next-generation formats such as WebRTC, SRT, and HLS have improved performance.

The difficulty of achieving smooth, low-latency video distribution goes beyond good connectivity and new streaming protocol; it requires a consistent digital infrastructure, which ZEGOCLOUD's solutions enable.

On the image quality front, HD video is a standard, and viewers are looking for Ultra HD (UHD) compatible devices and related content. Ultra HD will become a significant growth driver for streaming services, even more so than 4K. All major streaming platforms have included premium content in 4K in their offerings, and some also offer a higher resolution to view the video in 8K. Demand for high-quality video content has experienced unprecedented growth over the past three years due to devices that support 4K video playback, such as large-diameter televisions, laptops, and especially smartphones.

The mobile phone is the most preferred device.

The smartphone is now the preferred video broadcasting dev, surpassing TV in terms of growth, and this is partly due to mobile networks offering broadband and LTE services. Partnerships between streaming services and mobile networks are also trending, offering customers incentives for increased content consumption, which further boosts the video streaming industry.

As 5G continues to grow and hybrid and decentralized work increases, live contributions through mobile phones are rising. As we just mentioned, 5G seems to be having its moment this year, and mobile networks, which include 5G and cellular bonding, have surpassed satellite for live contribution (Haivision Broadcast IP Transformation Report, 2022).

According to Statista, global viewers spent 548.7 billion hours with live streaming apps in 2021, up from 482.5 billion in 2020, a trend expected to accelerate as new streaming apps and upgraded devices are constantly released.

Summing up

The year 2022 has paved the way for innovative inclusions and trends in the video streaming industry, becoming one of the most widely used technologies of the 21st century. Once considered an entertainment medium has now expanded into critical business areas. Today, video streaming - along with music - dominates the landscape. OTT streaming platforms keep growing but must attend to the audience's need for interactivity, especially younger audiences.

Social media platforms and video games have enhanced live streaming, making it an interactive medium bordering on the metaverse.

Millions of companies around the world have undergone positive changes using streaming technology. Live streams to market products and services are a growing trend in the video streaming industry that suggests significant business established in East Asia. Therefore, companies must equip themselves with solutions that facilitate online shopping and retail streaming, such as those proposed by ZEGOCLOUD.
Streaming allows for enhanced marketing, social media presence, and customer experience. We will discuss this, live streaming retail market, and interactive e-commerce soon.
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3 Ways to Boost DAUs for Karaoke Apps

ZEGOCLOUDDev — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 09:18:31 +0000

Booming market

As per the karaoke market research analysis, the expected CAGR of 2.41% is to reach USD 6,127.8 Million during the forecast period from 2022 to 2030.

Karaoke is becoming a famous form of entertainment in which a singer with the help of a karaoke machine performs the prerecorded music using a microphone.

The karaoke industry is growing like anything. The popular musical lyrics are shown on a video screen and images, with changing colors, and recognizable symbols guide the avid singer during the performance.

Extensive mass entertainment

Music is a great source of relaxation and enjoyment. People have been performing the art of music from the earliest times.

If someone is interested in discovering the best platforms to relax and enjoy, then karaoke is the best application.

Karaoke is a kind of interactive entertainment, generally available at clubs and bars, where people sing along with music recorded through a microphone.

Three ways to boost DAUs

In a market brimming with prospects, how should we drum up more daily active users (DAUs) for our apps?

The key is to mobilize people. In other words, we need to connect users and make content more interactive. That's exactly what top apps such as Facebook and TikTok are doing to keep their DAUs at a high level.

How do we connect users of karaoke apps and boost user engagement?

Traditional karaoke apps only support singing, recording, uploading, and sharing. Users are connected only through likes and comments. And the content refers only to songs. When users have no time or lose interest in these apps, such fragile connection falls apart.

Now let me introduce three new karaoke modes that can help you boost DAUs.

Solo

Users can live stream their solos. The audience can make their comments in real time, which helps motivate the singer.
This mode is achievable, and the only technical challenge is to ensure that accompaniment and voice are simultaneously transmitted to the audience.

ZEGOCLOUD provides a complete stream mixing solution to solve this problem. In this solution, the voice and accompaniment are mixed to form a single stream, which is then pushed to the audience. Therefore, the voice and accompaniment are heard by the audience synchronously.

Singing game

Each round of the game contains 10-12 songs. The host first plays a snatch of each song (3s or so), and then participants race to preempt the mic and sing the remaining part of that song.

By adding fun to solos, this mode enhances the connection among users and thereby keeps them engaged with the app.

The technical difficulty of this mode lies in how to ensure the consistency of "preemption", which can be achieved through business background control.

Real-time chorus

As the most popular karaoke mode nowadays, real-time chorus enhances the connection among users and between users and content.

This mode endows karaoke apps with a social function, and makes chorus a social topic. Real-time chorus allows users to quickly connect with others and expand their social networks, thus building up user stickiness to the app.

However, this mode has a high technical threshold. You might think that it just uses the same technology as voice calling. But if accompaniment is added, the technical difficulty will increase exponentially.

For a voice call, a latency of less than 500 ms will basically not compromise the user experience. But for chorus, a latency of over 100 ms will pack a real punch, because accompaniment serves as a reference point.

The 100 ms threshold has been the stumbling block to the development of karaoke apps. No longer. Today, the karaoke chorus solution proposed by ZEGOCLOUD realizes a latency of as low as 70 ms, making real-time chorus possible.

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How ZEGOCLOUD's Low-Light Image Enhancement Technology Helps You Improve User Experience

ZEGOCLOUDDev ・ Jun 23 ・ 7 min read

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How ZEGOCLOUD's Low-Light Image Enhancement Technology Helps You Improve User Experience

ZEGOCLOUDDev — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 08:57:23 +0000

When visibility is low at night and you turn on your smartphone camera, the video preview is full of darkness, and the visibility is even lower than what you can see.

With the surging of real-time video apps, we have seen various video enhancement technologies (such as beautification or AR stickers) that make a video look better than it is. You may wonder if there is a technology that can make video look clearer than it is in low light conditions.

General Scenarios of Low-light Image Enhancement

The answer is surely a YES. And there are a few more scenarios where there are strong demands for low-light image enhancement technology as follows.

1) Visibility enhancement for night-time inspection or monitoring

There are some nighttime scenarios where the video quality and visibility are critical, such as surveillance cameras or car security cameras.

Surveillance cameras are set up at public spots to monitor and record. However, nighttime video recordings are mostly dark and unclear in low light conditions, and cannot provide clear and strong support as clues or evidence in criminal cases.

Video recordings of car security cameras are crucial for traffic accidences. You would wish your nighttime video recordings were clear enough to convince a traffic policeman.

2) Video enhancement for live streaming or video chat

When it comes to internet entertainment and social scenarios, you would wish to see the other participant's faces clearly in the video even if it is dark.

Let me tell you a true client story of ours. It is a sizable internet dating platform, and it has a user who doesn't like to turn the lights on in her bedroom. As a result, her cyber pals cannot see her face when it is very dark and her skin is dark too. The client respects the user's preferences but wanted to improve the user experience.

3) Image enhancement for AI-enabled content recognition

We have an in-house AI team who are dedicated to video effects and avatar technology. Both the AI-powered technologies require face recognition abilities based on video inputs, and the output effects rely heavily on the quality of video input.

It is challenging to recognize faces and body outlines when the video pictures are dark and blurry. As a result, the video effects and avatar fidelity might be compromised.

Traditional practices for low-light image enhancement

To resolve the issues, we need to brighten low-light videos through intelligent algorithms.

1）Traditional Algorithms to Brighten Video

The primary requirement is to enhance the lightness of pixels that are recognized as low-light ones. Meanwhile, there are other requirements as follows:

a) High-light pixels shouldn't be over-brightened;
b) Image noises shouldn't be magnified(similarly in voice noise suppression);
c) Valid information should be retained to the maximum.

Traditional algorithms brighten all the pixels regardless of conditions.

Deep machine learning can be used for low-light image enhancement too. But It will bring some overheads:

a) The framework and models are pretty big;
b) The computational volumes are large;
c) The power consumptions are significant.

2) Common Issues of Traditional Algorithms

If we brighten all pixels regardless of conditions, some high-light pixels would become dazzling, and image noise would be amplified as well.

Deep machine learning models cannot run on inferior mobile devices or IoT devices because of their overheads. And as a result, only a small proportion of devices can satisfy the requirements, and the application scenarios are very limited.

ZEGOCLOUD's Solution and its Advantages

1) How Did ZEGOCLOUD Resolve the Common Issues?

To cope with the issues, we took a couple of measurements as follows:

a) Not all video pixels should be brightened since some are already light enough. We will scan through a video frame by frame, and find pixels of different categories:
Some video pixels are fairly light and need no brightening.
Some video pixels are of low light and need brightening to different volumes accordingly.
We avoid over-brighten pixels that are already light enough.

b) We don't load deep machine learning framework and models fully. Instead, we load the 2D/3D LUK (a.k.a. Look Up Table) only. We train deep machine learning models offline. Once the models are ready to work, we extract the 2D/3D-LUTs and implant them into our algorithm. As a result, we can achieve the same effect of using a deep machine learning model without the burden of fully loading it.

2) What're The Advantages of ZEGOCLOUD Solution?

a) FHD Real-time Video
The solution supports FHD quality video communication in real-time because of the deep machine learning 2D/3D-LUT. FHD quality video refers to FHD video with a high frame rate, and it lays the foundation for a superior user experience.

b) Comfortable and Natural Visual Experience
We believe in the philosophy that less is more. We do different levels of brightening accordingly and avoid over-brightening to make the video look natural and comfortable. We don't even take any action if we detect that a video picture is light enough.

c) Full Device Coverage, including the low-ends
Thanks to the offline deep machine learning approach and other innovative measures, the solution demonstrates outstanding performance even on low-end or old edition smartphones such as Mi 2S or iPhone 4S, and IoT devices.

d) Robustness in Extreme Lighting Conditions
The solution has been tested with a large number of extreme lighting cases and has been proven to be able to work well under extreme dark or bright conditions. We have also conducted a comparison test of other competition solutions and found that in extreme lighting conditions there were exceptions such as dazzling or flashing.

How Did ZEGOCLOUD Achieve These Advantages?

ZEGOCLOUD has an AI team that is dedicated to video enhancements. They have built a set of sophisticated AI algorithms systematically. The team has concluded a list of points that they have applied in the algorithms to achieve the advantages.

1) Light-load deep machine learning approach

Deep machine learning is certainly an advanced technology to enhance low-light videos. However, its overheads will increase latency and slow down processing speed. Low-end smartphones cannot even be able to run the model.

We extract the 2D/3D LUT for runtime table lookup purposes. The overhead of this lookup table is very small, and the approach has demonstrated great performance.

2) Brighten to different levels appropriately

The algorithm will scan video pictures, and evaluate the lightness levels of different areas. We brighten the areas that are low-light but contain valid information and leave those areas that are already light enough.

You may say that it is dark in the picture, and you can see nothing. This is because the light of valid objects are so low that you just cannot see them with your naked eyes. However, the information about the valid objects is still there.

We increase the light of different areas to appropriate levels accordingly, and you could see these objects with your naked eye comfortably and naturally.

3) Smoothly increase the light level to avoid flashing

We don't want to make the change very quickly. You will see a flashing video if we make a sharp brightening. We will do the brightening in a few frames bit by bit. then you will see that the light level is increasing gradually. It makes you feel natural and comfortable too. The philosophy behind all these endeavors is people-oriented.

4) Avoid detecting inter-frame light changes

In actual situations, light could be flashing, and the light level between two consecutive frames could be very different. We don't want to change light levels, nor do we even want to detect the inter-frame changes. These are actual situations, and what we can do is be adaptive.

Detecting the changes is heavy computational work, which will slow down processing speed and introduce latency. Also, detecting algorithms is complicated and its judgment could be wrong pretty often.

Given the constraints, we decided that we should avoid detecting inter-frame light changes, and shouldn't do any light changes accordingly as well.

5) A conservative but optimized approach to process image noise

Image noise is certainly an issue. There are various methods to handle image noise in the market. After thorough experiments and comparisons, we conclude a few principles:

a) Restrain from amplifying the light level of image noise while we are increasing light levels of pixels carring valid information. We have constructed sophisticated algorithm to detect image noise and cope with them differently.

b) Try not to do image noise supression job because it is a heavy computational task and will slow down processing speed as well. In addition, it is very likely that the result is not satisfactory.

c) Take some conservative measures do supress image noise if you have to. For example, to suppress a pixel of image noise, you can use the average value of light level of its surrounding pixels to replace its value.

If there is low-light situation in your application scenarios, and you want to improve user experience. Please contact us and ask our experts for specific advice.

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Live Streaming Platform Inke: How to Build an Immersive Metaverse Karaoke Rapidly

ZEGOCLOUDDev — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 08:45:47 +0000

People speak with each other through voice and get a full view of thoughts and meanings by watching each other's gestures, postures, and facial expressions. It is very likely that you get more profound information from non-voice signals in an important conversation, say a business negotiation or a dating argument. It won't be an easy job in a two-dimensional virtual space hosted on the internet. However, it has been so natural to us in our daily lives since we live in a three dimension space called the "real world".

It has been a totally different story for online entertainment platforms that want to improve user engagement for monetization. Internet companies started from text and photographic messages to motion and video messages, and to real-time voice and video. User engagement has been improved significantly by real-time communication, however, it can be better with reference to what we can do in the "real world". Dare we say that we want a virtual world that replicates the real one? Literally, we want a metaverse virtual reality.

According to WWDC 2022 on metaverse, our "real world" has been increasingly interwinding with virtual realities. Inke, one of the world's biggest live streaming platforms, has been following this trend closely.

Inke had won over 200 million registered members as of 2018 when it launched its IPO in the Hong Kong stock market and has been doing whatever it takes to improve its user experience. A metaverse-based product, called Metaverse Karaoke, is one of its recent bold and innovative moves.

On May 18, 2022, the Inke app launched the first metaverse-based product, called the "full view karaoke", upgrading from an online karaoke for an unparalleled user experience.

Inke Metaverse Karaoke Scenarios

1 Have fun in a metaverse karaoke room as a pretty avatar

The Inke app offers a metaverse-based karaoke room, which is pretty luxuriously decorated. The karaoke room looks very big from a 3-dimensional perspective, it won't become crowded even if you put 20 people into it. There is a big theater-style screen, a few lounges, and a mini-stage with spotlights. As a user, you will be endowed with a pretty good-looking avatar and you are allowed to change its face, body, and cloth as you wish. Your avatar will be born in the karaoke room, and you will enjoy rich movements as you can do in a 3D online game. Also, you will see many peer-users like you, some of them even have similar appearances as you. Overall, the metaverse karaoke room and the anthropomorphic-looking avatars make you feel like you are just in a typical karaoke room in our real world.

2 Real-world-like 3D-spatial social interactions open a new door for user engagement

In an ordinary video chat room, you can speak with and see your friends through real-time voice and video, which is much better than a telephone chat or text chat room. However, compared with our real-world conversations, there is still something missing. Yes, 3D-spatial social interactions are absent, such as posture, gesture, and facial expressions. Anyway, with 2D video pictures, an ordinary video chat room can only take us so far. Things are different in the Inke metaverse karaoke room. you are allowed to do a lot of movements or actions in the luxurious room. You can run, or even chase with your cyber pals for fun, and then you guys can sit down as a group on one of the lounges for a quick talk. You will feel that the audio follows real-world physical rules. For example, people's voices will be fading out when you move away, and you won't hear their voices if you are far away enough.

3 Your avatar's posture, gesture, and facial expression can be synchronized with your actual movements

You can do a lot of common actions like what you can do in the "real world", such as jumping up and down, sitting down, running around, waving or clapping hands, etc. When you speak with your cyber pals through real-time voice, you can make social interactions funnier with rich postures and gestures, adding one more important element to making a pleasant conversation. Currently, your avatar cannot be sync-ed with you for facial expressions. According to Inke's product iteration plan, its metaverse karaoke product will support avatar facial expression synchronization. Since Your voice is closely correlated with your mouth and lip movements and facial muscle movements, your avatar will be able to sync-ed with you for facial expressions when the system monitors the critical points on your face and your vocal signals.

4 Multiple perspectives allow you to see your cyber pals from different angles

You are allowed to explore the metaverse from various perspectives, looking at people from different angles, such as first-person perspective and third-person perspective. You can rotate your view all around, up and down, also you can zoom in and out as you wish. when someone is performing on the mini-stage, you can switch your view to a close-up perspective on the stage. You will feel a sense of spatial freedom and would like to explore and play especially under the global pandemic restrictions.

5 Metaverse karaoke offers you the same experience as real-world karaoke

Inke's metaverse karaoke is an upgrade version of a previous online karaoke product, like Kugou KTV. You are allowed to search and select songs. The karaoke is equipped with a rich music repository, and you are guaranteed to be able to find your favorite songs. Hot or trending songs are ranked and listed in a few category panels for your easy selection. Once you select a song, the song will be listed in a queue. Once your turn comes, your avatar will be guided automatically onto the mini-stage by the system, and you will enter a performing mode. A panel will appear at the top-centric part of the screen, showing rolling lyrics of the current song. You can choose to sing along with an accompaniment of pure music or original singing. Other users in the karaoke room can wave, show likes, or clap hands around the stage. It is exactly like what you can do in a real-world karaoke room.

Immersive Metaverse User Experience

The true meaning of the metaverse karaoke is that you can live a brand new life with an avatar appearance that you chose, and you are encouraged to earn cheers, applause, and friendship with a confidence level that you may not have in the real world.

1） Real-world-like spatial freedom brings an authentic immersive metaverse user experience

The metaverse karaoke releases you from the constraints of a 2D cyber world and endows you with the feeling of being alive in a brand new 3D spatial world, where you can stick your cyberpals side by side, and you are not alone any longer. Plenty of elements are added together to create an authentic immersive user experience, including various spatial movements, gestures, facial expressions, 3D spatial voice, and proximity voice. You can read someone's thoughts by looking at his or her facial expressions, and also you can identify voice source locations without looking around. The feeling is so immersive that you will feel that you are so much into it, and cannot help staying longer time than you originally wanted.

2） With the cover of a customized and pretty avatar, your social fear will be gone

Like many other youngsters, you may be afraid to socialize with first-time strangers. Why is it so? Perhaps you just don't feel confident about your appearance, like a few acnes make you uncomfortable when facing strangers, or you are desperate about reducing your weight. Or perhaps you just don't want to show your true identity in case you run into acquaintances. Inke's metaverse karaoke allows you to generate an anthropomorphic avatar initially based on your true appearance, and then you can change your facial characteristics, like making eyes bigger or lips thicker. and also you are allowed to change your decorations and clothes. The avatar is customized by you according to your taste and will cover all of you up, presenting you as a pretty good-looking avatar appearance. Your social fear will surely be eliminated.

3） Metaverse karaoke brings you the sense of a superstar with spotlight, applause, and cheers

I assume that most of you are not celebrities or superstars of any sort. The Inke metaverse karaoke offers you a stage in a luxurious big room and a friendly and casual audience that you have been familiar with after some mingling. You are encouraged to perform your best. If you are talented and good at singing, you will earn applause and cheers in the spotlight. if you aren't a good singer, never mind, most chances are that neither of your cyber pals is a good singer but will embrace you with cheers as well. You will enjoy the feeling of being a superstar surrounded by fans with applause, flowers, and cheers in the spotlight, which you have never experienced in the real world.

The Inke app is empowered with the ZEGOCLOUD metaverse karaoke solution

Inke has long been a loyal client of ZEGOCLOUD's for 7 years. With the mutual trust and confidence built up in the 7 years, Inke built the "full view karaoke" into its app with the ZEGOCLOUD metaverse karaoke solution.

According to the person in charge of the Inke "full view karaoke" product, since the first cooperation between Inke and ZEGOCLOUD in early 2016, the two companies have joined hands to create many internet entertainment and social products that have been loved by Inke's users. This time, Inke and ZEGOCLOUD worked together again to create the "full view karaoke" for the Inke app, which has been proven to be a big success. Since its launch, user statistics have shown positive feedback, generally, users have shown great interest in the interesting and novel metaverse karaoke.

The person in charge of the Inke "full view karaoke" product also expressed that what truly impressed the Inke team was the values that ZEGOCLOUD has brought to them and their users. He summarized ZEGOCLOUD's values as follows:

ZEGOCOUD's metaverse karaoke solution enables them to launch the "full view karaoke" product rapidly without sunk cost on Unity and avatar technologies. You don't have to maintain a Unity team to build a virtual world, and nor do you need to invest in an AI team to develop avatar technology. The solution helps you get rid of all these costs. Even better, your time-to-market will be reduced significantly.
ZEGOCOUD provides a one-stop solution that saved them from the burden of managing at least 3 vendors for metaverse, avatar, and RTC technologies. ZEGOCLOUD encapsulates the metaverse, the avatar, and the RTC technologies to offer a unified interface to your app. You don't have to struggle with compatibility issues among them.
ZEGOCOUD combines Unity, avatar, and RTC technology to create great synergy and brings a full view and immersive user experience to Inke's users. The Unity-powered virtual world allows spatial interactions. The avatar enables the sync of facial expressions; The RTC offers real-time voice with spatial effects; All of these create a fantastic immersive user experience that has never been seen before.

4 How to build a metaverse karaoke product

The person in charge of the ZEGOCLOUD metaverse karaoke solution stated that the solution can help our clients to build metaverse karaoke products rapidly for various metaverse-based scenarios, and achieve outstanding and immersive user experience. We have been working to polish the solution for quite a long period, going through rounds of testing and conquering difficult technical issues. We aim to provide the market with an outstanding, stable, and innovative solution, and help our clients to upgrade their user experience. We have taken plenty of measurements to save our clients from cost burdens.

For example, we have provided a metaverse editor that allows clients to load design assets, and preview how their metaverse will look like. The metaverse editor also allows clients to edit the objects in the metaverse, adding new objects, repositioning objects, replacing objects with new ones, etc. The metaverse editor can lower the development barrier, and reduce development costs significantly.

In Inke's "full view karaoke" product, ZEGOCLOUD provides real-time voice and video, 3D spatial voice, 3D avatar, 3D metaverse, ultralow latency online karaoke, and copyrighted music repository. All these abilities empower Inke's "full view karaoke" product, upgrading the immersive user experience to an unparalleled level that has never been seen before.

If you would like to build a metaverse karaoke product like Inke's, and want to know more about it, please come signup or contact us for consultation.

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WWDC 2022 - Increasingly Interwinding Virtuality and Reality

ZEGOCLOUDDev — Sun, 12 Jun 2022 09:19:46 +0000

WWDC 2022 - Increasingly Interwinding Virtuality and Reality

Many open-world racing games allow you to race on world-famous city courses that have been reconstructed on a one-to-one scale. Gamers are enthralled with exploring exotic locations or driving fancy automobiles on familiar local roads, and game developers love to advertise how their large productions come to life.

However, in the last two years, we have witnessed some new scenarios on the path to exploring the convergence of virtuality and reality.

The Interwinding Virtuality and Reality

At last year's WWDC (Apple Worldwide Developers Conference), Apple Maps makes it easier to get around cities with a 3D map that shows details about neighborhoods, business districts, marinas, buildings, and other places. Elevation details across a city, new road labels, and hundreds of custom-designed landmarks are available to users.

At this year's WWDC, Apple has added a more refined and comprehensive 3D City Experience as well as broader city support.

There are more and more indications that the virtual and physical worlds are becoming increasingly intertwined and converged. Rather than restoring realities in isolated video game kingdoms, the major technology companies are using creativity to link and even expand the world's boundaries. Meta even went all out to launch metaverse early on.

Metaverse, A People-oriented Virtual World

In addition to the virtual expansion of the real world, how the living individuals in the scene exist, behave, feel and express themselves attract our attention and deserve our observation.

The virtual world breaks through the various limitations of people's "existence" and "expression". You can change your image and clothing, and even play the role of God to create new creatures. However, for more advanced topics such as how to feel and express yourself, you need to break through the threshold.

We typically utilize a set of commands to control people and creatures in the virtual world, similar to how we use a joystick to operate a car in a racing game. The puppet-mode interaction won't be the end of technological growth, just as the integration of the virtual and reality has been accelerating.

With the increasing popularity of wearable gadgets, including smart devices such as mobile phones, people are surrounded by an increasing number of sensors, extending their sense of touch and allowing us to integrate into the world of virtual reality more naturally.

ZEGOCLOUD maintains a keen sense of smell and deep insight into the development trend of the virtual world. Focusing on the concept of being people-oriented, starting from the user's natural perception and self-identity, ZEGOCLOUD not only builds a complete and realistic metaverse ecology but also builds avatars based on and higher than the self for users. The ultimate goal is to allow users to integrate into virtual reality more naturally.

For example, ZEGOCLOUD launched metaverse karaoke last year, presenting a luxurious and spacious karaoke room in the metaverse, allowing users to entertain and socialize with friends in the KTV room with their avatars. This solution allows customers to freely customize the environment design of the karaoke room in the metaverse, modeling and generating the user's initial avatar based on the user's real appearance, and also allowing the user to modify the look and outfit of the avatar.

To make the metaverse and avatar the natural extension of the user in the virtual world, ZEGOCLOUD's solution allows the user's body movements and expressions to be synchronized in real time to the avatar in the metaverse karaoke room through wearable devices, smartphones, and sensors. Let users experience a new life journey and living space in the metaverse.

Everyone Can Be a Metaverse Builder

With the Metaverse upsurge, we have seen all kinds of connectors, builders, and enablers of the virtual reality world. Social giants are building their emerging online worlds, hardware manufacturers are extending human vision and touch, and cloud computing service providers are busily expanding and redistributing computing power, RTC companies are bringing a richer audio and video experience to users.

ZEGOCLOUD is a pioneer in the real-time audio and video industry. Since its establishment in 2015, it has been committed to building a virtual space for people to combine the real and virtual worlds.

ZEGOCLOUD transformed real-world studios, karaoke rooms, schools, and conference rooms into virtual spaces based on its ultra-low latency and high-quality real-time audio and video technologies, allowing users to have a "face-to-face" interaction in virtual space. At the time, users only saw music and video in this virtual realm, which was only two-dimensional.

But ZEGOCLOUD intends to go further. It developed a completely integrated metaverse ecology to suit users' intuitive needs for three-dimensional space perception and social interaction. The Metaverse may host concerts, karaoke, classes, work, and meetings. At the same time, following the laws of the real world, the sound can also change in intensity as the spatial distance changes. In the metaverse, users can obtain the same perception as in the real world.

ZEGOCLOUD's metaverse construction is also people-oriented, so anyone can contribute to its development. ZEGOCLOUD mimics the behavior and appearance of real-world users in the metaverse using AI algorithms and intelligent terminal devices. This allows users to live in the metaverse and obtain enhanced abilities over the real world. ZEGOCLOUD can synchronize a user's real-world activities and expressions in real time, allowing them to express themselves and understand others more naturally and intuitively. The ultimate idea is to encourage users to reside in the metaverse so they may establish a vibrant biosphere.

Users can modify their image and talents and give birth to numerous life entities in the metaverse. They can also sing, create songs, work, and innovate products in the metaverse. And as a positive feedback cyle, rich material and a magnificent civilization in the metaverse make people more willing to live there.

At last, let me give you an update on ZEGOCLOUD's progress on metaverse. INKE, the largest live video platform, has used ZEGOCOULD's metaverse karaoke solution to construct a panoramic karaoke offering in May 2022. There will be more progress to come very soon, we will keep you updated.

Also, please check out the following articles for more details about ZEGOCLOUD's progress on the metaverse realm.

ZEGO Avatar, an Indispensable Key Piece of the Metaverse Puzzle!

A First Glimpse into the Metaverse—Oasis Enables More People to Find a Second Life

Would you like to become a builder of your own metaverse using ZEGOCLOUD's metaverse and avatar solutions, please contact us or signup now!

Build a Live App in 10 Minutes with ZEGOCLOUD's ZEGOLive

ZEGOCLOUDDev — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 11:21:02 +0000

The live streaming market is booming

As an industry, live streaming is already worth billions of dollars and it’s only expected to grow.

According to various projections, including one by Grand View Research, the live streaming industry is expected to climb from $70 billion in 2021 to almost $224 billion in 2028. That’s a projected three-fold increase over seven years!

How to get involved in the live streaming market?

With the rapid development of the live streaming industry, many technology companies have been derived to serve the live streaming industry by providing mature technologies to help users quickly build their own live streaming apps.
Here I will introduce how to quickly build your own live streaming app by using ZEGOCLOUD's ZEGOLive SDK.

What features does ZEGOLive SDK provide?

The ZEGOLive SDK provides all features that required by a live streaming app, such as creating and join a live stream room, co-hosting, face beautification, audio effects, virtual gifting, sending bullet-screen messages, and more. And all these features can be tried out by simply experiencing and integrating ZEGOCLOUD's Demo App for Live Streaming.

The following table shows ZEGOLive SDK's features:

Feature	Description
Real-time audio and video	You can use to build smooth live streaming experiences with ultra-low latency.
Room list	Room list shows the current ongoing live streaming. Users can enter the live room on the list to watch live streaming as wanted.
Create a live room	You can create a live room and start your live stream after becoming the host of a room.
Log in to a live room	Users need to log in to a live room first to play streams and join co-hosting.
Request to co-host	Participants can request to take a co-host seat to be a co-host, and participants can speak and join the live streaming once the host accepts the request.
Make co-hosts	The host can invite any participants in the room to co-host, and participants can decline or accept the invitation.
Manage co-host seats	The host of a room can remove the co-hosts from the co-host seat, disable or enable the text chat for all participants, and more. 。
Real-time quality analysis	Before the live starts, automatically conduct the microphone, camera, and speaker tests. During the live, the streaming quality data and network data are updated in real time. After the live ends, ZEGOCLOUD provides you with the quality analysis platform Prism and quality report for you to review and check the streaming quality.
Instant messaging	With the ZEGOCLOUD IM service, participants can send, receive real-time messages, get notified when new participants join the room or existing participants leave the room, and also can see the interactive notifications in the room.
Audio effects	Support setting up the music accompaniments with genuine music, and provide rich audio effects, including reverb, voice changing, and more.
Face beautify	Provide Face beautification feature to make you look more presentable: skin tone enhancement, skin smoothing, image sharping, cheek blusher, and more.

How to use ZEGOLive SDK

step 1. Create a ZEGOCLOUD account

Create an account in ZEGOCLOUD Official.

step 2. Create a new project

Create a project in ZEGOCLOUD Admin Console.

step 3. Understand the process

The following diagram shows the basic process of creating a live room and a participant (user B) playing a stream published by the host (user A).

step 4. Integrate the ZEGOLive SDK

To integrate the SDK, do the following:

Download the Sample codes, and copy the ZEGOLive folder to your project directory (create a new project if you don't have an existing project).
Add the Podfile file to your project directory.
```
pod 'ZIM'
pod 'ZegoExpressEngine'
```

Open Terminal, run the install command.
```
pod install
```

step 5. Add permissions

Permissions can be set as needed.

Open Xcode, select the target object, and then click Info > Custom iOS Target Properties.

Click the Add button (+) to add camera and microphone permissions.

Privacy-Camera Usage Description
Privacy-Microphone Usage Description

step 6. Initialize the ZEGOLive SDK

To initialize the ZEGOLive SDK, get the RoomManager instance, pass the AppID of your project.

// Initialize the SDK. We recommend you call this method when the application starts.
// YOUR_APP_ID is the AppID you get from ZEGOCLOUD Admin Console. 
RoomManager.shared.initWithAppID(appID: YOUR_APP_ID) { result in
    // Callback for the result of init. 

};

To receive callbacks, set the corresponding delegate to self, or call the addUserServiceDelegate method to listen for and handle event callbacks as needed.

RoomManager.shared.roomService.delegate = self
RoomManager.shared.userService.addUserServiceDelegate(self)
RoomManager.shared.messageService.delegate = self

step 7. Log in

To access the ZEGOLive service, you must log in first.

For business security, you will need to provide a token for the ZIM SDK to validate the login privilege. For details, see Authentication.
For debugging, you can refer to our Sample code to generate tokens on your app client.

let userInfo = UserInfo("YOUR_USER_ID", "YOUR_USER_NAME", .participant)
let token: String = "YOUR_TOKEN"
RoomManager.shared.userService.login(userInfo, token) { result in  
     // Callback for the login result. 

}

step 8. Start the local video preview

Before creating a live room to start live streaming, you can call the playVideoStream method to start the local video preview.

// The [userID] can be used to specify which user's view you want to view. 
// To preview your own local video view, pass in your userID.
// streamView view is a view for the local video preview.
RoomManager.shared.deviceService.playVideoStream(userID, view: streamView)

step 9. Create/Join a live room

You become a Host after creating a live room, and you can take a seat and start live streaming upon creating.
You become a Participants after joining a live room, and you can watch the live streaming and be a co-host to interact.

To prevent the participants from speaking directly without co-hosting, you will need to provide a Token for the RTC SDK to validate whether you have the privileges to create or join a room. For details, see Use Tokens for authentication.
This Token can be the same as the Token you provided for login.

To create a live room, call the createRoom method.

RoomManager.shared.roomService.createRoom("YOUR_ROOM_ID", "YOUR_ROOM_NAME", token) { result in
    // Callback for the result of create a live room. 

}

After a live room is created, to start live streaming, the host will need to call the takeSeat method to speak. And the SDK automatically publishes the streams when the host takes a seat successfully.

RoomManager.shared.userService.takeSeat { result in
   // Callback for the result of take a seat. 

}

To join a live room, call the joinRoom method.

RoomManager.shared.roomService.joinRoom("YOUR_ROOM_ID", token) { result in
   // Callback for the result of join a live room. 

}

After joining a live room, for a participant to watch the live streaming, he will need to call the playVideoStream method to play the host's published streams.

// The [userID] can be used to specify which user's view you want to view. 
// You can get the userID of the host in room info. 
// streamView is the view to be displayed.
RoomManager.shared.deviceService.playVideoStream(userID, view: streamView)

step 10. Send/Receive text messages

To send text messages in the room, call the sendTextMessage method.

RoomManager.shared.messageService.sendTextMessage("MESSAGE_CONTENT") { result in
    // The result of send messages. 
}

To receive the text messages, listen for the callback receiveTextMessage.

func receiveTextMessage(_ message: TextMessage) {
    // Implement the handling logic when receiving the text messages.
}

step 11. Renew a Token

30 seconds before a Token expires, the SDK sends out a notification through the onRoomTokenWillExpire callback.

Upon receiving this callback, you need to get a new Token from your app server first, and then pass the new token to the renewToken method.

func onRoomTokenWillExpire(_ remainTimeInSecond: Int32, roomID: String?) {
   let token: String = xxxxx ///new token
   RoomManager.shared.roomService.renewToken(token, roomID: roomID)

}

step 12. Leave a live room

Before the host leaves the live room, he will need to call the leaveSeat to leave the seat first. And the SDK automatically stops publishing streams when the host leaves the seat successfully.

RoomManager.shared.userService.leaveSeat { Result in
     // Callback for the result of leave a seat. 
}

To leave the live room, call the leaveRoom method. And the SDK stops all the stream publishing and playing operations simultaneously.

RoomManager.shared.roomService.leaveRoom { Result in
     // Callback for the result of leave a live room. 
}

step 13. Log out

To finish the ZEGOLive service, call the logout method.

RoomManager.shared.userService.logout()

If you want to learn more about live broadcast-related technologies.

You can follow me or send me email

Email:zegoclouddev@gmail.com