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A better alternative to Interprefy or Interactio for live streaming with simultaneous interpretation

Jan 25, 2021

A better alternative to Interprefy or Interactio for live streaming with simultaneous interpretation

For live streaming with Remote Simultaneous Interpretation (RSI), Clevercast Translate@Home is probably a better choice than platforms like Interprefy, Voiceboxer and Interactio. These platforms are designed to deliver low latency WebRTC streams to a limited number of participants in a meeting.

Clevercast Translate@Home (T@H), on the other hand, has a hybrid model:

To summarize: if you not only need real-time translation, but also a scalable solution for multilingual live streams over the internet, Clevercast Translate@Home is probably the better choice.

 

RSI Solution for Meetings: Interprefy, Voiceboxer, Interactio…

By design, the aforementioned RSI platforms serve a different purpose than live streaming. They are designed for only delivering interpretation in real time to a limited number of meeting participants.

For this reason they do not only use WebRTC for the simultaneous translation, but they also use WebRTC for delivering the video and audio streams to viewers. This way, the translated streams hardly have any latency. This allows meeting participants to hear the translated audio in near-realtime and react immediately.

However, this has some major drawbacks if your goal is to live stream high-quality video to a larger audience:

  • WebRTC delivery is much less scalable than HTTP live streaming (HLS). This makes it impossible to stream to large audiences.
  • WebRTC is sensitive to connection issues and interruptions (jitter, packet loss).
  • Because it is a real-time protocol, the video player is not able to do buffering for smooth streaming. This may cause players with a limited internet connection to regularly spin and stutter.
  • Viewing experience and video quality will be average at best. The video resolution will be the same for all viewers, regardless of screen size, bandwidth, GPU and CPU.
  • Since WebRTC is a recent protocol which is not yet established in a corporate context, it may be blocked by company firewalls.

Another major issue is that WebRTC delivery is currently not supported by all browsers and devices. Viewers either need to use these browsers or the company’s own mobile app. They can only watch the translated live stream using the RSI provider’s proprietary interface. It is not possible to embed the video player on their own site or in a third-party platform.

 

RSI Solution for Meetings and Hybrid Events: Translate@Home

Clevercast Translate@Home (T@H) is designed as a multilingual live streaming solution with support for remote simultaneous interpretation.

Just like Interprefy & co, Clevercast T@H uses WebRTC to let interpreters translate the audio in real time. Meeting participants who need to hear the translation in real time (with or without video) can receive the translated streams without latency, in the same way as on the aforementioned RSI platforms (via WebRTC). As a Clevercast administrator, you can send them a direct link to a player with the needed translation in Clevercast. They only need to open the link in their browser to hear the translation in real time. For event participants at home, both video and audio will be available without delay.

Additionally, Clevercast also has another form of live stream delivery to viewers, for those who don’t participate in the meeting. Clevercast uses HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) to livestream high-quality video over the internet to global audiences. In order to do this, Clevercast T@H transmuxes the different streams and transcodes the video in multiple resolutions for adaptive streaming. The resulting streams are published as HLS streams which can be delivered through any global CDN.

For live viewers, this has a number of advantages:

  • HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) is fully scalable. There is no limitation to the number of viewers, since this protocol is compatible with all global CDNs
  • HLS is designed for global live streaming without interruptions. By using global CDNs, the live stream is brought as close as possible to each viewer’s location.
  • HLS delivers the live stream with a latency between 12 and 30 seconds. This allows Clevercast player to do buffering which ensures smooth streaming at all times, even in case of an unstable connection or changing bandwidth conditions.
  • Viewer experience is optimal on all devices. Clevercast Player can choose between multiple resolutions (typically 1080p, 720p, 480p, 360p and 240p) and switch automatically to the most suitable one, depending on the screen size, bandwidth, GPU and CPU of each viewer.

Another advantage is that you can simply embed Clevercast’s multilingual player in your own website or in a third-party platform. You can also use its Javascript API for further customization. If you’re looking for a webinar platform instead, you can use Clevercast Webinar or embed Clevercast player in your favourite webinar platform.

Finally, Clevercast has many additional features which are not available in standard RSI platforms. Here are a number of them: