Virtual Background - iOS

Virtual backgrounds enhance your live stream experience by allowing you to replace your physical background with a digital image or apply a blur effect. This is ideal for creators and streamers who want to maintain privacy, reduce distractions, or add a personal touch to their broadcast. You can use a preloaded background image or supply your own via a CDN.

Virtual Background using VideoSDKBackgroundProcessor

This is the easiest way to enable virtual backgrounds in your app. VideoSDK provides a handy class called VideoSDKBackgroundProcessor that takes care of replacing your background for you. Here's a step-by-step guide:

Toggle Virtual Background

• Virtual background can be enabled by setting VideoSDK's VideoSDKBackgroundProcessor's instance using the setVideoProcessor method of Meeting class.

• To disbale the virtual background, simply pass nil in setVideoProcessor and virtual background will be replaced with the normal camera stream.

Example Code:

Swift

class MeetingViewController {
  //variable for keeping track of Virtual Background
  var isVirtualBackground: Bool = false

// source url for the background image (make sure background is in portrait, else might get undesired output).
 let backgroundSource = URL(string: "https://cdn.videosdk.live/virtual-background/cloud.jpeg")!
  //create an inctance of VideoSDKBackgroundProcessor
  let processor = VideoSDKBackgroundProcessor(backgroundSource: backgroundSource)
  
    // Button when tapped will toggle the virtual background for local participant
  @IBAction func toggleVirtualBackground(_ sender: Any) {

   if isVirtualBackground {
      // Turn off virtual background
      meeting.setVideoProcessor(processor: nil)
      isVirtualBackground = false
    } else {
      // Turn on virtual background
      meeting.setVideoProcessor(processor: processor)
      isVirtualBackground = true
    }
    }
}

Changing Background Image

You can also change the background image dynamically using the changeBackground method of the VideoSDKBackgroundProcessor class.

Swift

class MeetingViewController {
  // processor instance
  // let processor = VideoSDKBackgroundProcessor()

  // Button when tapped will toggle the virtual background for local participant
  @IBAction func changeBackgroundTapped(_ sender: Any) {
    // URL of new background image
    let backgroundSource = URL(string: "https://cdn.videosdk.live/virtual-background/san-fran.jpeg")!

    // Call changeBackground method of VideoSDKBackgroundProcessor
    self.processor.changeBackground(backgroundSource: backgroundSource)
  }
}

API Reference

The API references for all the methods utilized in this guide are provided below.

• setVideoProcessor()