Flashphoner, a developer of streaming video systems, has released an update of its Web Call Server 5 media server to work with Safari 11 on iOS and macOS High Sierra.
WebRTC is a technology that provides this capability, allowing users to make phone calls directly from a browser, share documents and data securely, and even do screen sharing easily. Well, Apple has agreed to put WebRTC into WebKit, which is the engine that powers Safari. The Web Call Server update allows developers to create streaming broadcasting apps, video chats, video calls and other web applications that work directly in Safari 11 browsers from Apple on iPhone and iPad.
Last month, Apple released an update of iOS 11 for iPhone and iPad. This update presented a new Safari 11 browser with support for the WebRTC technology. Prior to this update the Safari browser didn’t have access to the camera and microphone and could not broadcast live video streams. With the release of iOS 11, millions of iPhone and iPad devices based on iOS received a browser that could run video chats, broadcasts and Internet calls thanks to WebRTC support.
Flashphoner develops its own WebRTC media server Web Call Server 5, a software platform for browser-based broadcasts from web cameras and for online video calls. With the release of iOS 11, developers at Flashphoner added compatibility with the new Safari 11 browser and presented an update that now covers Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari and iOS Safari browsers. As a result, with WCS5 application developers can run cross-browser video broadcasting as well as online calls. This includes iOS Safari that previously was unable to do this due to technical limitations of the browser.
The lack of support for WebRTC in iOS Safari 9 and 10 was a serious limitation that prevented developers from running low-latency video chats and broadcasts in browsers of Apple mobile devices, says Alexey Trunov, a product manager at Flashphoner.. As soon as the support for WebRTC was added, the Safari browser instantly learned to broadcast and play video with low latency, less than one second, he adds. The WCS5 media server allows such broadcasts not only between Chrome, Firefox, Edge, IE or Safari browsers, but also surveillance IP-cameras and SIP-devices.
