The world has reached a turning point in internet video engagement where the ubiquitous need for instant access to interactive audio/video communications can’t be satisfied by the usual approaches to video conferencing.
Good as they might be at supporting traditional video conferencing, and even there they leave a lot to be desired, the likes of Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex , etc. fall far short of what’s required as a new era in live video streaming takes hold. To put it bluntly, they’re simply not designed to accommodate a world where spontaneous face-to-face social engagement is becoming an intrinsic component of live streaming across the consumer, enterprise and institutional landscapes. See our latest white paper for an examination of the major trends driving the need for a new video communications paradigm.
Of course, the more ubiquitous demand for infrastructure supporting such capabilities becomes, the more needs to be done to ensure that demand is met. Which is why, along with platforms like Red5’s Experience Delivery Network (XDN) Architecture that heavily rely on WebRTC and its enhancements for current transport needs, there’s an industry-wide standard informally known as MOQ nearing competition under the guidance of the Internet Engineering Task Force. With widescale industry engagement including full support from Red5, MOQ is set to drive faster emergence of a global marketplace connected by real-time interactive streaming.
As next-gen streaming infrastructures take hold, it’s clear that from now on the live mass market streaming and video calling components must act as a single piece as opposed to remaining locked into the bifurcation that currently persists. This requires a video meeting platform built on global real-time streaming architecture that can support point-and-click activation of fully synchronized unscheduled interactive A/V communications in any use case reaching any number of users at 250ms or lower end-to-end latencies.
We at Red5 met this challenge by introducing a set of open-source software modules comprising the TrueTime Meetings™ toolset. Now service and applications providers can make A/V communications an intrinsic, readily accessible part of live streaming UX at these performance levels in virtually any scenario.
The options start with TrueTime Meetings™ default parameters supporting a more scalable, higher quality version of a conventional conferencing solution, with or without appointment requirements. Out of the box, TrueTime Meetings™ is more or less a Google Meet clone in terms of functionality with features like live transcriptions, save recordings, virtual background replacement, and more. Those looking to customize a solution to meet their goals can leverage the flexibility of this open source software stack to implement whatever approaches to real-time A/V communications fit their use cases. Relying on in-house and/or Red5 development teams, they can create their own ground-breaking communications environments from a deep well of open-sourced TrueTime Meetings™ functionalities together with any of the tools available with other TrueTime solutions.
TrueTime Meetings™ tools are available like the other Red5 TrueTime toolsets at no added costs beyond the usage-based pricing that makes the Red5 Cloud managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and the self-managed Red5 Pro implementations of the company’s Experience Delivery Network (XDN) Architecture a cost-effective approach to real-time interactive streaming. In addition, Red5 customers have access to major advancements that are shaping the next generation in interactive video communications. These include support for:
- AI-assisted Large Language Model (LLM) applications ranging from real-time analytics and voice-to-text and text-to-voice language translation to execution of the creative capabilities driven by AI Vision Language Models (VLMs).
- A/V connectivity with use of HEVC and, soon, AV1 to attain 4K quality levels and beyond;
- Spatially realistic audio and video experiences with immersive tie-ins to extended reality (XR) applications.
The Unique Capabilities of the TrueTime Meetings™ Platform
With TrueTime Meetings™ we’re addressing the need for a video meetings platform with global reach that can be easily configured to accommodate the vast range of socialization strategies that are becoming more and more expected in modern live video streaming experiences.
While the need for capabilities akin to what’s available from conventional video conferencing platforms will persist, a rapidly expanding share of the interactive video communications strategies coming into play require what’s not available from the conventional platforms, including:
- adaptability to any strategy,
- unlimited scalability,
- ease of use supporting instantaneous appointment-free participation,
- A/V quality levels matched to current expectations, and
- support for the new technologies reshaping the communications landscape, from AI to innovations like LiDAR, spatial audio and the many permutations of AR and VR.
For the first time, we have made it possible to meet all these requirements with the freedom and cost benefits that come with using the open-source frontend code base underlying the tools and SDKs comprising TrueTime Meetings™. The license-free possibilities range from a default mode that adds unlimited scalability and high A/V quality for users requiring a conventional video conferencing platform to easily structured combinations of TrueTime Meetings™ elements in support of any use case.
Critically, the tools and functionalities comprising TrueTime Meetings™ don’t entail any kind of forklift departure from the fundamental capabilities that have long characterized XDN Architecture as a foundation for real-time interactive streaming. Abundant documentation on our website describes the full range of XDN capabilities that go into enabling real-time streaming in any direction from any number of originating sources to any number of receivers with end-to-end latencies at or below 250ms over any distance. See, for example, these blogs on the keys to the XDN performance advantage over all other real-time streaming platforms, the role Red5 is playing supporting distributed collaboration in live production, and the capabilities achieved in collaboration with Red5 partners whose solutions have been integrated to work with XDN Architecture.
Mirroring the convenience that comes with building apps using our other toolsets, including the TrueTime MultiView™, Watch Party™, Studio™ and DataSync™ toolsets Red5 created to facilitate building specific applications on XDN infrastructures, TrueTime Meetings™ consists of a stack of open-source software tools with easy-to-follow guidance on how to use them on a customer portal, ensuring enough functionalities are embodied in the stack to take video communications anywhere a customer wants to go.
All TrueTime Solutions™ are available to XDN customers at no extra costs, which in the case of TrueTime Meetings™ applies whether customers choose to utilize the tools as structured in the feature-rich video conferencing default mode or to use them to build interactive communications systems precisely tailored to their use cases. Red5 Cloud customers can customize their uses with their own branding through direct access to Meetings in the TrueTime Apps section on their Red5 Cloud dashboards.
For those deploying in their own environments, Red5 Pro customers can put TrueTime Meetings™ to use by downloading whatever tools they need from the TrueTime apps repository.
In all cases, customized usage is facilitated through the Red5 Pro Conference SDK, which provides a high-level API for building video calling applications while abstracting the complexities of WebRTC management, media handling, and connection management. Settings applied with custom builds can be modified, added or deleted without requiring a full application rebuild.
Red5 Pro users can launch real-time streaming with customized applications enabled by TrueTime toolsets, including Meetings, using the free Java-coded Red5 Media Server with its simple plugin architecture, which has been installed by the likes of Amazon, the U.S. Department of Defense, Akamai, Harvard University and many other entities in over one million instances of XDN usage worldwide. Or they can use their own server software to accomplish the same things.
Red5 Cloud and Red5 Pro customers can integrate into their existing workflows the pre-packaged TrueTime Meetings™ tools comprising the default video calling mode or they can integrate whichever tools they need to build their own custom calling applications. This helps to ensure that whatever approaches they take, the calling functions work in holistic alignment with their real-time streaming operations.
TrueTime Meetings™ users also benefit from our latest support for AI.
AI-assisted multilingual speech-to-text captioning and large language model (LLM) multilingual generation of speech from text are included in the TrueTimes MeetingsTM default mode with the Red5 Cloud and Red5 Pro Enterprise subscription tiers. They are also available on a per-user negotiated cost or no-cost basis with the Red5 Cloud Pay-as-You-Grow and Growth plans and the Red5 Pro Developer Pro, Start-Up and Growth Pro plans.
More broadly, use of TrueTime Meetings™ is enhanced by virtue of Red5’s integration of XDN Architecture with an ever-expanding array of LLMs and VLMs, which are available to work with any Meeting use case. At the same time, customers can arrange for integration of any other AI models that employ open interfaces compatible with the industry standards used with Red5 APIs.
Adding to the AI functionalities available to TrueTime Meetings™ users, for the first time anywhere we’re enabling virtually instant extraction of A/V frames at any frequency down to sub-second intervals from content delivered to Red5 Cloud infrastructure over any supported ingest, including WebRTC / WHIP, SRT, Zixi, RTMP, and RTSP. This is vital to thorough analysis of payloads in surveillance operations and in any other real-time streaming scenarios involving granular enhancements to metadata, avoiding unwanted content elements and monitoring user behavior.
TrueTime Meetings™ Video Calling Default Mode
For customers who simply want to be able to support a better version of conventional video conferencing systems, the TrueTime Meetings™ default mode is easily activated by responding to prompts on their dashboards. The automated video calling setup creates an easy-to-manage conferencing adjunct to any streaming scenario.
The platform can be used as a standalone center for appointment-based group meetings or as a video communications overlay integrated for access as an appointment-free component of the customer’s real-time streaming UX. TrueTime Meetings™ can also be activated with a seamless transfer from an HTTP-streamed live sports or other event to real-time XDN streaming to support viewer participation in video conversations during post-event programming.
Whatever approach is taken in the use of XDN Architecture, TrueTime Meetings™ allows viewers, remote commentators or any other category of collaborators and participants to be brought into video conversations associated with webinars, trade shows. live sports and newscasts, esports competitions, game shows, live-shopping programs – the list is endless. And the platform can be used in audio-only group meeting applications as in the case of live-streamed talk radio programs and audio podcasts.
Some of the features included with the core default video conferencing mode include:
- Scalability – Multiuser participation with up to 30 on-screen users at any one time with managed access available to any number of others extending into the millions as Meetings users are rotated in and out of a given streaming session.
- Participation Monitoring in Appointment-Free Applications – Conferencing managers’ ability to track what’s happening on the platform is facilitated by automated participant updates when users enter or leave a session and by signals that let organizers know when someone turns a camera on or off or mutes or unmutes a microphone.
- Video Quality Control – The H.264 default encoding used with TrueTime MeetingsTM can support any level of screen resolution through management of the bandwidth allocated to the A/V streams. Whereas conventional conferencing platforms typically top out at 720p with some charging premium fees to enable HD 1080p, display resolutions in TrueTime Meetings™ sessions can surge to 1080p HD and beyond based on whatever bandwidth is made available by session managers. Side-by-side comparisons with conventional streaming show that at any given bandwidth allocation, image clarity in the Meetings display windows is much greater than the alternative. Moreover, the quality is persistent with the real-time streaming support provided by XDN architecture, which frequently isn’t the case with the freezes and fluctuations common to HTTP-based streaming.
- Audio Control – Along with benefitting from superior consistency in audio performance mirroring what’s achieved with video on the TrueTime Meetings™ real-time XDN streaming infrastructure, session managers can keep tabs on user-controlled audio levels to ensure satisfactory UX on the part of all participants. Exploiting the Meeting software client’s periodic registering of each participant’s audio level, managers can activate a “talking indicator” to display how audio is playing out in conference conversations.
- Support for Text and Emoji Messaging, Screen Sharing, Hand Raising and Meeting Recordings – All of these functionalities are built into the default platform, eliminating the need to engage third-party services or in-house developers.
- Layout Flexibility – Operating in auto mode, the TrueTime Meetings™ platform adjusts the display layout based on the participant count. Alternatively, session managers have other options allowing them to set up tiled layouts that allocate equal-sized video tiles to all participants or implement sidebar layouts where the main speaker is prominently displayed with others in a participant sidebar. They can also choose hands-on control over shifts in participant focus throughout the session.
- UI Styling – The TrueTimes Meetings™ software stack includes a broad range of styling and branding options that can be easily implemented on user dashboards.
Custom Use of TrueTime Meetings™
Beyond default mode TrueTime Meetings™ can be configured in unique ways as an integral part of any real-time streaming scenario to enable usage formats that depart from the traditional video conferencing structure. Of course, all the capabilities enumerated above for the default mode can be applied in customized applications as well.
Here is where TrueTime Meetings™ meets the full scope of challenges in the new live streaming era, unleashing the unlimited possibilities that emerge when interactive video communications and multicast streams share the same real-time infrastructure. In this hybrid environment any viewer in a live-streamed video audience of any size extending into the millions can seamlessly join in interactive video communications as configured on the TrueTimes Meetings™ platform.
In commercial operations ready-to-deploy face-to-face group interactions can be implemented with real-time XDN streaming in support of dispersed collaboration across a vast range of pursuits, from live sports productions, coordinated engagements of public safety units in emergency surveillance, engineering and architectural design and much else in the workaday world to every type of education and training environment. Anyone anywhere can be connected into the global Red5 Cloud XDN for a role as commentator or influencer in any of these use cases.
Adding to the cost-free versatility, our customers can work with other TrueTime Solutions™ integrated in their workflows to enhance their video calling with additional features related to multiviewing, watch parties, live production and use of telemetric data feeds in sports streaming and surveillance. Moreover, TrueTime Meetings™ users can integrate interactive video communications with the interactive data streaming capabilities enabled by the partnership between Red5 and global data platform operator PubNub.
Aggregations of meeting participants can be displayed anywhere. For example, our customers might prefer to put the TrueTime Meetings™ participation grid on display in a venue setting that makes users part of what’s transpiring at the location. LED walls used with live-streamed game shows, live shopping, reality TV, sports shows with call-in formats, and much else can display large numbers of participants while prominently projecting speakers chosen by the host.
Or maybe there’s no interest in creating multi-participant grids at all, as when customers simply want to accord a video presence to individuals speaking in Q&A sessions during corporate earnings calls and other types of meetings. Or, in another example of unitary displays involving big venues like sports stadiums, in-venue and remote smartphone users alike can participate in a mass shared experience where video generated from anyone’s phone at any moment can be displayed on the stadium screens, as is the case in multiple locations where The Famous Group is bringing such experiences alive in partnership with Red5.
Looking at another use case, ever since the Covid Pandemic, there’s been an interest in adding virtualized functionalities to remote participants in webinars and location-based trade shows, but the attempts at supporting such use cases proved to be too cumbersome and costly to take hold. Now it’s a different story for our XDN customers who want to use the open-source TrueTime Meetings™ tools to create multi-dimensional virtual extensions with their events featuring things like private rooms for booked meetings between remote attendees and vendors.
The Spatial Audio Option
There’s an unmatched level of realism that can be infused into group social interactions enabled by our support for spatial audio. In all situations involving virtualized group interactions, including virtual casinos, virtual sports bars and other online social meeting places, customers who utilize TrueTime Meetings™ can benefit from the value-added spatial audio solution whether or not the use of XR headgear is involved.
We have taken immersive spatial audio to a new level of versatility and scalability by exploiting unique characteristics of XDN Architecture to maintain real-time configurations of realistic audio experiences in 3D space no matter how many users are engaged or how complex the ambient environment might be. Individualized mixes of ambient sound are applied to realistically reflect each user’s position in the virtual space while personal conversational sound levels are raised with one-on-one communications.
A key element in the XDN toolset that makes this possible is our Cauldron transcoding engine, which supports blending of personally directed stream segments with the primary streams in real time. These segments, which we call Brews, can be added in the transcoding process without incurring delays usually caused by the need to translate coding to the languages understood by processors.
As for instances involving XR headgear, these and other unique attributes together with the simultaneous ultra-low latency connecting all participants in AR and VR use cases running on XDN Architecture ensure that TrueTime Meetings™ is readily available to support any socialized XR use case. That means advancements like spatial audio, light detection and arranging (LiDAR) used to add realistic dimensionality to visual displays, and any iteration of spatial computing technology can be effortlessly brought to bear as our customers adapt to next-gen operations in the new world of real-time interactive video streaming.
Conclusion
With flexibility and scalability in interactive video communications as enabled by our TrueTime Meetings™ taking hold over the next few years, the market for interactive video communications across all consumer and non-consumer market segments is likely to take up a much bigger, if not the lion’s share, of the $107.0-billion interactive streaming market Grand View Research projects will be in play by 2030. Leveraging the readily deployable capabilities facilitating implementations of the open-source TrueTime Meetings™ tools through Red5 Cloud or Red5 Pro, operators of live-streamed use cases can act now to bring the new era in video communications to life in their domains.
Try Red5 TrueTime Meetings™ today
Option 1:
Download the source from GitHub
Get the open source code, customize the front end, and deploy in your own environment. This is the best path if you want full control and deeper product integration.
Option 2:
Launch it in Red5 Cloud
Get the open source code, customize the front end, and deploy in your own environment. This is the best path if you want full control and deeper product integration.
Option 3:
Deploy with Red5 Pro
Prefer a self-managed setup? Red5 Pro users can download the source and deploy TrueTime Meetings™ in their own infrastructure, then extend it for their application and workflow needs.
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