Rendering Video and Audio

In this guide, we’ll learn how to render and play participants’ video and audio by using the JS SDK provided primitives.

Playing Video

Our JS SDK exposes a low-level method that binds a video element to a participant’s video track. This method can be found in call.bindVideoElement. It takes three arguments:

  • the video element to bind to
  • the participant’s sessionId
  • the kind of video track to bind to (either videoTrack or screenShareTrack for screen sharing)

This method needs to be called only once, usually after the element is mounted in the DOM.

let videoElement = document.getElementById('my-video-element');
if (!videoElement) {
  videoElement = document.createElement('video');
  videoElement.id = 'my-video-element';
  document.body.appendChild(videoElement);

  // bind the video element to the participant's video track
  // use the returned `unbind()` function to unbind the video element
  const unbind = call.bindVideoElement(
    videoElement,
    participant.sessionId,
    'videoTrack',
  );
}

Playing Screen Sharing

Similar to the Rendering Video, a screenshare track can be rendered like this:

let screenElement = document.getElementById('my-screenshare-element');
if (!screenElement) {
  screenElement = document.createElement('video');
  screenElement.id = 'my-screenshare-element';
  document.body.appendChild(screenElement);

  // bind the video element to the participant's screen track
  // use the returned `unbind()` function to unbind the video element
  const unbind = call.bindVideoElement(
    screenElement,
    participant.sessionId,
    'screenShareTrack', // note the 'screenShareTrack' argument
  );
}

Playing Audio

Our JS SDK exposes a low-level method that binds an audio element to a participant’s audio track. This method can be found in call.bindAudioElement. It takes two arguments:

  • the audio element to bind to
  • the participant’s sessionId
  • the kind of track to bind to (either audioTrack or screenShareAudioTrack for screen sharing)

This method needs to be called only once, usually after the element is mounted in the DOM.

let audioElement = document.getElementById('my-audio-element');
if (!audioElement) {
  audioElement = document.createElement('audio');
  audioElement.id = 'my-audio-element';
  document.body.appendChild(audioElement);

  // bind the audio element to the participant's audio track
  // use the returned `unbind()` function to unbind the audio element
  const unbind = call.bindAudioElement(
    audioElement,
    participant.sessionId,
    'audioTrack',
  );
}
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