At yesterday’s walkthrough we focused on the drawing tools and the new “individual Jitsi” streaming method.We also enjoyed relaxing on the beach with cocktails.

The new “individual Jitsi” feaature makes it really easy to add your stream to the stage, without needing a third party application to send the stream. Our wonderful developer Phat had already developed the Jitsi Meeting feature, whereby we can embed a Jitsi meeting directly in the stage – this is great for workshops and discussions. Starting a Jitsi meeting invites everyone present on the stage – audience as well as players – to activate their webcam and mic, which is not always what you want in a performance.

Helen came across Chatmosphere, which also uses Jitsi, but lets each person present have an independent stream. In this platform, the audio reponds to the position of your stream: when you come closer to another participant, their volume increases; so it creates an atmosphere where you can join or leave circles of discussion. In UpStage, our goal is for everyone to be experiencing the performance together, rather than individual differences. So Phat, along with our new developer Giang, worked to introduce the independent stream windows that can be moved, resized and so on directly on the stage, with the audio staying the same.

We still have the original RTMP stream feature as well; this is useful when you want to have more advanced control over your stream – for exapmle to be able to change the video dimensions and resolutions, bitrates, add filters and mix sources. RTMP streams usually have 2-3 seconds lag so they are not so great for discussions – this is where the individual Jitsi streams are great!