Best Practices for Implementing Video Streaming Use Cases

This article introduces some best practices for calling an API or setting a parameter while implementing video streaming use cases.

Integrating the SDKs and services

The video streaming use case is built on the Agora RTC SDK, Agora RTM SDK, and the third-party image enhancement SDK.

Refer to the following

• Integrate the Agora RTC SDK
• Integrate the Agora RTM SDK
• Integrate the third-party image enhancement SDK

Pre-call tests

In scenarios with high security requirements, such as online education, Agora recommends every teacher and student test their network and device before a class begins. For details, see Pre-call Tests。

Initialization

Setting the channel profile

Different use cases require different channel profiles. For interactive video streaming use cases, call setChannelProfile and set profile as LIVE_BROADCASTING.

Setting the user role

A user can take the role of either broadcaster or audience. A broadcaster sends and recieves streams, while an audience member only recieves streams.

Before joining the channel, call setClientRole to set the intial user role. During the live streaming, you can also call setClientRole to switch the user role, in case an audience member wants to become a co-host.

Authenticating users with a token

To enhance communication security, Agora recommends authenticating your users with dynamic tokens and setting the expiration timestamp to a reasonable duration. For how to get and use dynamic tokens, see Set up authentication.

Audio settings

Setting the audio profile

For most video streaming scenarios, you can use the default audio profile.

Video settings

Setting the video profile

When calling setVideoEncoderConfiguration to set the video resolution, frame rate, and bitrate, Agora recommends setting them to a reasonable value. High resolution puts pressure on the codec CPU and leads to video freeze, particularly on lower-end devices. On the other hand, high bitrate compromises the uplink and downlink bandwidth. Therefore, under the premise that video quality can be guaranteed, we suggest setting a lower video resolution and bitrate to alleviate resource consumption and the downlink bandwidth.

For recommended video resolution, frame rate, and bitrate, refer to Set the Video Profile.

Rotating the video

In scenarios involving rotating the video, you can use the setVideoEncoderConfiguration method. For details, see Set the Video Profile.

Dual stream and stream fallback

In video scenarios with multiple users, Agora recommends using the dual-stream feature of the RTC SDK. To enable this function, call enableDualStreamMode from all clients that publish streams, and setRemoteVideoStreamType from all clients that receive streams. For details, see Video for Multiple Users。

Under limited network conditions where guaranteeing both audio and video is not possible, you can call setLocalPublishFallbackOption and setRemoteSubscribeFallbackOption to enable the stream fallback function. For details, see Stream fallback。

In-call quality statistics

To ensure user experience, you can monitor the network quality during the class, and report the statistics of the local or remote network quality in the user interface. For details, see In-call stats。

Troubleshooting

Setting the firewall

If a user fails to join the channel within 10 seconds, check whether the network environment has a firewall that restricts network access. If so, refer to Firewall Requirements to add firewall whitelist or use Agora cloud proxy.