TokBox today announced that it is extending its OpenTok WebRTC platform to include support for building native Android apps. This marks the first time developers using OpenTok can add real-time video and audio chat to their native Android apps. The company also announced that developers can now use the platform to archive video and play back these videos in their applications.
These features, the company says, are among the tools its developer community has been most actively asking for. It’s worth noting that TokBox launched an early version of its Android SDK almost exactly a year ago. This earlier version, however, didn’t actually use WebRTC.
The archiving feature, the company told me, will save conversations in a single H.264/AAC MP4 file and then allow developers to download it and stream it through whichever player they choose.
In addition to these two features, TokBox is also adding two new quality-enhancing features to its platform. With this release, OpenTok now allows developers to allocate frame rates to video streams in real-time to allow them to better manage bandwidth resources, something WebRTC itself doesn’t allow. In addition, TokBox is adding TURN over TCP support, which will allow WebRTC apps to run in environments that were previously restricted due to corporate firewalls.
With the WebRTC Expo and Conference happening this week, chances are we will hear a bit more about this new technology in the coming days. Weemo, for example, announced support for native iOS and Android apps earlier today, and while the technologies are similar, that company’s business model is a bit different from TokBox in that the company is mostly going after software vendors and not developers.