Picture in Picture in Azure Communication Services video

Question

Hi Team,
And thanks for your good work.

I'm following this walkthrough to add video communication to my app
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/communication-services/quickstarts/voice-video-calling/get-started-with-video-calling?pivots=platform-android

I have a question: does ACS support picture-in-picture?
https://developer.android.com/develop/ui/views/picture-in-picture
and
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avkit/avpictureinpicturecontroller

The use case is: a mobile user is talking with video to another user.
One of the two users minimizes the video and can see the other party's video while they are navigating in the same app, or even in other apps.

Answer 1

Hi @Crest_91

Thanks for the question. Currently ACS does not support PiP. If you would like to see this as a product feature, please leave your feedback on the Azure feedback site which is closely monitored by the ACS engineering team.

Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have further questions

Thanks,
Grace

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Answer 2

Hi @Crest_91 thanks for posting this question.

You can enable PiP in your app using ACS. PiP in Android is done at the Activity level, and you can decide whether you want to enable PiP on the Activity when it goes to background or when your application triggers some specific business logic you want. The later allows you to have a PiP Activity running while you are using other Activities in your application (like a floating window inside your own application).

Since this is enabled on the Activity level, the Activity where the ACS call is in progress can enter PiP mode and you can customize how the PiP experience behaves depending on your use case. For example, you can change the UI on your Activity to show your video preview, a remote video from a participant, or show screenshare stream from a participant, or have mute and unmute buttons, etc. The Android developers link you posted on the questions explains how to setup your Activity to enter PiP mode and how your UI can react to entering / exiting this state, so that you can provide an experience according to the rest of your app.

Hope this helps you in adding PiP to your application using ACS.

Jose.