Case Study: How InEvent used api.video to produce virtual and hybrid events

InEvent is a virtual and hybrid event platform that started by building innovative technology to help organizers with in-person enterprise events. Their goal was to integrate a vast array of tools and data on a single platform including websites, emails, registration scheduling, QR codes and more. If there’s something an organizer needs for an in-person event, InEvent offers it. Their product was distributed in the US, expanded to Europe, and then Covid struck. In-person events were at a halt, so they decided to expand their offering to include virtual events.

Planning for Live Streams

When InEvent decided to produce virtual events, they knew that they would need a way to offer live streams. They needed to be able to reach thousands of people with high quality video footage in real-time and provide that video for on-demand playback later.

“We have customers doing multiple sessions at the same time and they have thousands of users watching those sessions. We needed a platform to do a quick RTMP to HLS stream option that we could use on the fly. That’s what api.video does. We needed recordings with adaptive streaming quality. We chose you guys to be one of the providers, because we are growing and we need to have multiple providers for different locations,” said Mauricio Giordano, CTO of InEvent.

Using api.video, InEvent was able to quickly set up high quality live streams and make use of the recording feature, which allows for high quality HLS playback. InEvent uses WebRTC for a number of their sessions, but in order to broadcast those sessions to hundreds or thousands of people, they use an RTMP stream. And it’s this stream that gets saved so event attendees can come back to rewatch event sessions later or catch a session that they couldn’t attend in real time.

“We create a composite video from a webRTC session. Let’s say you have a meeting with 4 or 5 people, we need to get the video feed of each person and compile them into a layout. Then we need to create an RTMP stream. Then, you guys give us an HLS that we can distribute to thousands of people,” Giordano explained.

InEvent and api.video

Something InEvent finds extra useful about working with api.video is that it’s one of the few companies in the video space that creates simultaneous mp4 and HLS recordings. This allows InEvent to offer content for immediate download once everything has been recorded.

Now that Covid is slowing down a bit, Giordano says that InEvent will transition to offering hybrid event solutions. Their virtual event capabilities will be offered as part of their in-person events. The goal is to create experiences where people online can join in-person events from their computers and comment, chat and interact with the event in real-time. Along the way, api.video will be there to help provide beautiful video viewing experiences for everyone.