Posted On: Oct 21, 2021

The Amazon Chime SDK lets developers add real-time audio, video, and screen share to their web applications. Developers can now use video background blur to obfuscate their users’ surroundings, which can help increase visual privacy.

Video background blur runs locally in each user's browser, transforming video before it is shared into the meeting. Users can confirm their background is blurred prior to joining a meeting through video preview. The blur strength is adjustable, from a low-strength bokeh effect to a high-strength obfuscation.

The segmentation model used to separate the users from their background uses WebAssembly (WASM) and single instruction multiple data (SIMD) for efficient processing on most modern computers and browsers. The segmentation model can be substituted with other compatible models optimized for specific use cases or performance goals.

Video background blur is a turnkey feature built on top of video processing APIs in the Amazon Chime SDK for JavaScript and Amazon Chime SDK React component library. To learn more about the Amazon Chime SDK, video background blur, or other ways to process video, review the following resources:

* Amazon Chime SDK 
* Amazon Chime SDK Developer Guide 
Amazon Chime SDK for JavaScript - Using background blur