What is a Video SDK?

Blog 3 min read | Nov 18, 2022 | JW Player

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Those of you who’ve always wanted to build a live video app for your website by employing a video SDK.

We’re going to take a few minutes to discuss what an SDK is, what it stands for, and how you can start building the ultimate live audio & video experience with real-time interactive features.

What is a Video SDK?

A video SDK is a software development kit (SDK) specifically built for creating video APIs that enable a unique video app or player on your own platform.

A developer can now create an app for you that’s easily applicable to your website in a matter of minutes. It’s one of the fastest ways to embed a live video streaming system onto your website for any specific event.

Many of these video apps can be designed in a simple way using minimal lines of code. They can be built with overall simplicity in mind, including using one-click functions for end users to use easily without confusion.

Video SDK use cases are either for non-live videos, or for interactive live streaming purposes, including screen sharing. 

Advantages to Using Video SDK for Recording Videos

Even if you’re not intending to use live streaming anytime soon, you can build a live streaming app right on your own website for your customers to use. For example, you can easily record a video in high quality using a video SDK and choose where you want to export it.

Plus, it’s easy to add things like watermarks and other essential tools that make your videos look professional during playback. You’ll even find it easy to capture still images from your videos for use in various types of presentations later.

Once you do stream your video, the SDK helps you make it compatible with iOS, Android, or any other mobile format. If you happen to use places like YouTube to stream your video, the SDK helps you easily simulcast from there or on social media. Other popular streaming apps like Periscope are also easy to integrate. 

Advantages to Live Streaming Video Events

The advantages here are plentiful when using the developer tools of a video SDK. The power of this lets you connect chat rooms together for the ultimate in live interaction. This is important if you want a real-time video event to gain as much as buzz as possible. 

Best of all, a video SDK has enough bandwidth to hold many participants in the chat room and easily relay messages at the same time. All of this is customizable so you can easily change backgrounds or other aspects of your live video in progress. 

Thanks to the interactive features, it’s even possible to invite guests during your live videos so they can attend your streaming event in the moment. 

Giving You Complete Control of Your Live Video

When you’re streaming a live video event,  you need to have as much control as possible to maintain a sense of quality and compatibility. A video SDK is designed to help you moderate incoming messages/chat in real-time. At the same time, you have all the control in what kind of video quality you want to simulcast. 

For instance, you have the power to choose whether you want to present your video platform in HD or SD. You can decide this based on the viewing preferences or devices of your viewers.

All other aspects of video and audio quality are at your fingertips, including whether you want to use bitrate streaming. With the use of the latter process, the video will automatically adjust in resolution quality based on the particular device a viewer is watching on.

At JW Player, let us help you create a video SDK that uses easy encoding and is easy to moderate on your website.