Announcing Adaptive Simulcast for Video Group Rooms

We are excited to announce the JavaScript SDK release of Adaptive Simulcast, a new feature that improves client performance by dynamically switching off unused simulcast spatial layers.

When using adaptive simulcast, a publisher will only encode video layers up to the highest spatial layer being used by subscribers.

For example, a common presentation layout in video chat will have the active speaker’s video in a large format and the remaining participants as thumbnails. In this situation, adaptive simulcast will encode all spatial layers for the active speaker and only the smallest spatial layer for the thumbnail participants. As speakers change, the respective publishing participants will automatically have their spatial layers turned on / off based on what is being used by subscribers in the room.

Compared to standard simulcast, adaptive simulcast will provide significant CPU and bandwidth improvements for your publishing clients, and we recommend all users switch from standard simulcast to adaptive simulcast.

This feature is currently only available in the JavaScript SDK. Please read our simulcast documentation to learn how to use this new feature.