Amazon Web Services Inc. said today it’s bring livestreaming capabilities to its real-time communications service Amazon Chime software development kit.

With the new addition, Amazon said it is making it far simpler for all manner of developers to reach potentially millions of viewers by sending real-time video to streaming platforms such as Twitch.

Amazon Chime SDK is a set of real-time communications components for developers that make it easy to add messaging, audio, video and screen-sharing capabilities to web and mobile applications. For example, developers can use it to add video to a health app, enabling patients to enter into a video call with their doctor directly through the health provider’s application.

The addition of livestreaming is a natural extension of Amazon Chime SDK. In a blog post, Amazon explained that while the popularity of livestreaming has grown massively, it remains extremely difficult to send real-time video from applications to streaming platforms.

Developers are forced to use legacy products that are not suited to the task because they’re unable to scale,, or else create customized solutions, which means spending countless hours building. They also need to write tons of code for processing video, then more code for managing infrastructure, and yet more to send the video securely in the correct format to the livestreaming platform in question.

That’s no longer the case with Amazon Chime SDK’s live connector feature, according to AWS. It enables developers to create and send real-time video from a multiparty video session more easily to numerous popular streaming platforms, where it can be distributed to a global audience.

What’s more, it provides plenty of tools for developers to enhance the livestreaming experience, by formatting video layouts, choosing and combining multiple video streams into a single streaming, and through machine learning that can improve the audio and video quality. To simplify everything, video streams can be captured as a single file for video-on-demand playback, offline consumption or archiving, Amazon explained.

Amazon Chime SDK’s live connector can be used to broadcast virtual events, webinars, educational classes, fitness sessions, product demonstrations for live commerce sessions, online games, sports and more.

It also enables multiparty video sessions to be livestreamed. Developers can aggregate multiple streams into a single video stream directly within their apps. That stream uses the Real-Time Messaging Protocol Secure format that’s compatible with major streaming platforms, with the stream viewable either within the app itself or on social media platforms.

For instanc,e a developer building an application for a virtual event can use Amazon Chime SDK’s live connector along with the Amazon Interactive Video Service, making it possible to watch multiple videos of the event within that app. In addition to the live stream, a VoD file can be created once the session is over and made accessible for replays.

It’s this capability that caught the interest of the event management software provider Mice Platform Co. Ltd. “We have implemented the Amazon Chime SDK live connector so that multiple remote speakers can join and present together seamlessly, and without the need for special software,” said Mice Platform Chief Executive Tsuyoshi Suzuki.

Image: AWS