Audio and Video Technology in the Cloud Computing Era

Date: Nov 1, 2022

With the advent of the 5G era, real-time audio and video technology will rise to a whole new level.

The great changes in the 5G era are far more than network speed. With the high bandwidth, low latency and large concurrency of the 5G network, audio and video application scenarios continue to break through the existing limitations and achieve a huge leap, thus driving the upsurge of developers' demand for RTC capabilities. .

In line with the development of the 5G era, in order to solve the audio and video needs of developers in application development, recently, the global communication cloud service provider Rongyun has comprehensively upgraded the real-time audio and video technology. In this regard, Adan had the honor to interview Rongyun CPO Ren Jie, who will conduct a comprehensive analysis on the upgrade, technical analysis, and enabling developers.


Rongyun CPO Ren Jie


Real-time audio and video performance has been fully upgraded, see how Rongyun achieves overtaking on curves

After a year, Rongyun real-time audio and video service starts from 3.0. After the new upgrade, it can use the integrated solution of "IM instant messaging + real-time audio and video + push", "use a set of SDK to solve all communication scenarios" , to create a first-class real-time audio and video service, enabling developers to catch up with the technical dividends in the audio and video field.

Rongyun CPO Ren Jie said frankly that in audio and video services, Rongyun responds to the huge changes in audio and video application scenarios through continuous running-in in many scenarios, and accumulates experience in business and continues to optimize. In terms of the overall network architecture, the deployment of the global distributed architecture has shortened the expansion time from the previous three or four hours to one hour today, and can easily cope with a 10-fold surge in traffic. The dual capabilities of the two business segments of real-time audio and video and instant messaging have become a new and upgraded version of the "killer". Its perfect integrated communication capability enables communication to expand from text, pictures, and voice clips to audio and video interaction, fully satisfying the needs of various Diversified demands for instant messaging and real-time audio and video in business scenarios.

Specifically, this upgrade is mainly aimed at the following aspects:

In terms of video, Rongyun provides a resolution of up to 1080P, and the high-definition picture is fully displayed, and provides a variety of high, medium and low resolutions for different business scenarios to achieve balance between pictures and traffic, and the frame rate supports up to 30FPS;
In terms of audio, Rongyun adopts the highest audio sampling rate of 48KHz, which truly restores the sound of the opposite end, making the calls between the two parties in online meetings, online customer service and other scenarios more focused; the upgraded version also provides a high-definition music mode, which is aimed at the high-frequency sound and weak sound of musical instruments. The scale is optimized to restore the details of the music to a high degree, bringing users an experience closer to the offline scene, with a wide sound range, high sound intensity, high pitch restoration, and good noise echo control... Strive to bring the ultimate experience of high-fidelity sound quality;
In terms of platform coverage, the real-time audio and video SDK covers all platforms, including iOS, Android, Web, Windows, macOS, etc., and fully adapts to various mainstream terminal devices in the market, fully guaranteeing the real-time audio and video of Rongyun on various terminals. good application;
In terms of the weak network optimization strategy, the anti-packet loss and anti-network jitter capabilities have been enhanced to achieve a minimum delay of 66ms, and the delay from the host to the audience in the live voice and video live scenarios is less than 350ms, ensuring good audio quality even in a weak network environment. For video interaction, the current anti-packet loss rate of audio can reach 80%, and that of video is 40%. After a large number of customer business verification, the service availability of Rongyun real-time audio and video services in terms of stability, connectivity, concurrency/load, etc. has reached 99.9%.
It is not difficult to see that Rongyun continues to improve its products and technologies, so that its real-time audio and video technology has many features such as low latency, high quality, and high smoothness. Keep up with the pace of technological innovation.

A set of SDK solves all communication scenarios, and behind the convenience is the contest of technical strength

The role of the foundation is only reflected in the height and firmness of the skyscraper.

"A set of SDKs can solve all communication scenarios and provide instant messaging and real-time audio and video cloud services for 300,000+ applications around the world." In order to provide developers with a more convenient experience, Rongyun has made "Leave simplicity to users, "Leave the complexity to yourself" choice, which is also a testament to the solid technical support behind Rongyun.



In this real-time audio and video technology upgrade, the consolidation of the underlying communication channel has greatly improved the stability and reliability of communication. in particular:

The real-time audio and video technology uses the Rongyun IM channel for signaling, so that the arrival rate and connection rate are more guaranteed, and the control instructions are not lost, heavy, or chaotic, ensuring the immediacy and high reliability of audio and video transmission;
Multi-data centers around the world, covering high-quality BGP nodes around the world, ensure that the network reaches the quality of private lines, and the transmission is more secure and efficient;
The Media Server is decentralized and can be connected to the nearest data center at any time, making the signal connection faster and more stable;
Provide a richer and more complete SDK interface, and easily access a variety of audio and video functions, so that developers can focus on creation and worry about other things.
Real-time audio and video RTC ensures the real-time nature of picture transmission. The picture is clear, smooth, and free of lag. Ensuring low latency is the top priority. For example, in terms of product experience, in the past, in the weak network state, there would be problems such as stuck audio and video calls and unclear pictures. In this regard, Rongyun achieves ultra-low latency through self-developed algorithms and technical strategies such as broadband evaluation, intelligent routing, network adaptation, and packet loss compensation.

Including the use of WebRTC technology to ensure the stability and smoothness of audio and video transmission at the communication protocol level; in terms of the underlying architecture design, Rongyun RTC intelligent routing can realize real-time network detection on the client side in a complex Internet environment, and select the nearest Media Server node access, greatly improving the connection speed.

According to Ren Jie, anti-weak network is the core part of audio and video services. When the broadband cannot guarantee the quality of audio and video, the core strategy of Rongyun is to quickly estimate the bandwidth and reduce the bit rate to ensure that the sound and smoothness are prioritized. principle to ensure the best user experience.

In terms of security, Ren Jie introduced that Rongyun complies with the international standards of the SRTP protocol in the audio and video field and provides custom encryption methods. After processing the corresponding audio and video stream, another encryption algorithm will be given to this audio and video stream before transmission, and this part of customers can use key distribution and encryption algorithm customization to achieve confidentiality. Therefore, no matter how many times this stream passes, others cannot see the content inside, so it has become the most flexible and secure method in the security level of the industry.

Better products are just the beginning, how to make it easier for developers to integrate SDK is the key

For developers, choosing different IM and RTC manufacturers to implement communication scenarios not only reduces development efficiency, but also greatly increases operating and service costs after the product is launched. A set of solutions can cleverly solve the above dilemma.

Ren Jie emphasized, "From the perspective of developer integration, Rongyun can cover the entire communication scene through a set of SDK, which is one of the outstanding advantages of this upgrade. What is used and what is used later, as long as a set of SDK is integrated, it can be used at any time by calling the interface, which facilitates later business development and saves the cost of integration.”

At the same time, in order to facilitate developers to quickly integrate the audio and video capabilities of Rongyun, Rongyun also provides a variety of audio and video demos such as SealRTC, SealLive, SealClass, and SealMeeting for various business scenarios. Developers can not only reduce the workload of integration, but also refer to the relevant development practices of Rongyun real-time audio and video, allowing developers to focus on innovation without worrying about long development cycles and high costs.

At the developer service level, in addition to providing developers with standard services such as 1-to-1 business support, 1-hour quick response to work orders, and 7x24-hour service guarantee, Rongyun provides developers with a team of technical experts more intimately. Developers can complete application innovation more efficiently and easily.

When talking about whether there is a threshold for using this SDK, Ren Jie said that since each scene has different interfaces, it is uncoupled and relatively independent, so developers do not need to consider other related interfaces and documents unrelated to the scene. This scenario-based integration method is very friendly even for entry-level developers.

According to reports, the upgraded Rongyun real-time audio and video service can bring a more intuitive and high-quality mobile Internet life experience to all walks of life, such as online education, social networking, games, finance, e-commerce live broadcast and video conferencing scenarios. The fields of IM and real-time audio and video applications are all covered by the capabilities of the Rongyun platform. In addition, Rongyun's real-time audio and video technology will also provide informatization empowerment for more application scenarios including intelligent hardware and government affairs.

Finally, Ren Jie concluded that Rongyun's "IM+RTC+Push" integrated solution can not only help developers to build low-latency, high-quality application communication capabilities more quickly, but also because of the dual capabilities of RTC+IM and more scenario-based It provides developers with convenient services, so as to achieve full-industry and full-scene coverage of audio and video communications. A series of capabilities have also greatly improved the quality of audio and video, allowing users to experience new audio and video experiences. In addition, the overall upgrade of audio and video can support global developers to use it with confidence, helping global developers to jointly create more new audio and video products. application scenarios.

In the rapidly approaching 5G era, Rongyun's comprehensive upgrade of real-time audio and video technology not only helps developers make the development process of audio and video applications easier, but also enables them to easily build more innovative applications. It is not difficult to see that Rongyun continues to increase investment in RTC real-time communication technology, products, and research and development, and always insists on providing developers with better SDKs and tools to help developers release more innovation capabilities.