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Amazon Chime SDK FAQs

Amazon Chime SDK

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General

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The Amazon Chime SDK is a collection of client software development kits that use resources in your AWS account to make it easy to add collaborative audio calling, video calling, and screen share features to your web or mobile applications. 

Developer Guide for details. 
Please refer to the Developer Guide for details. 

No. The Amazon Chime SDK works independently of any Amazon Chime administrator accounts, and it does not affect meetings hosted on Amazon Chime. Instead, the Amazon Chime SDK provides builder tools for developers to use to build their own meeting applications.

No. The Amazon Chime application can only join meetings created or scheduled by the Amazon Chime application, and cannot join a meeting created for use with the Amazon Chime SDK.

AWS SDK to manage the lifecycle of meeting sessions and control how they are accessed. The Amazon Chime SDK client library for JavaScript, iOS, Android, or Windows is embedded into your client application to build a custom meeting experience. The Amazon Chime SDK includes methods to connect the client applications to cloud meeting sessions, manage microphone and camera selection, and control meeting features. Your server application will use the AWS SDK  to manage the lifecycle of meeting sessions and control how they are accessed. The Amazon Chime SDK client library for JavaScript, iOS, Android, or Windows is embedded into your client application to build a custom meeting experience. The Amazon Chime SDK includes methods to connect the client applications to cloud meeting sessions, manage microphone and camera selection, and control meeting features.

The following browsers are supported for applications created using the Amazon Chime SDK for JavaScript:

  • WKWebView for iOS (14.3 and later) also supported for audio and video only (no content sharing)
  • Mozilla Firefox (version 75 and later), for macOS and Windows
  • Mozilla Firefox for iOS (10.0 and later) also supported for audio and video only (no content sharing)
  • Google Chrome (version 78 and later), for macOS, Windows, and Ubuntu LTS 16.04 and later
  • Google Chrome for Android and iOS (10.0 and later) also supported for audio and video only (no content sharing)
  • Chromium-based Edge (version 79 and later), for macOS and Windows
  • Chromium-based Electron (Electron 7 and later, with Chromium version 78 and later)
  • Safari (version 12, audio and video only, no content sharing), for macOS
  • Safari (version 12.1.1 and later, audio and video only, no content sharing), for iOS
  • Safari (version 13 and later, content sharing with screen capture requires turning on the Develop, Experimental Features, Screen Capture feature in the browser), for macOS
  • Opera (version 66 and later), for macOS and Windows
  • Samsung Internet (version 12 and later, no content sharing), for Android

The Amazon Chime SDK for iOS is supported for applications on iOS 10 and above.

The Amazon Chime SDK for Android is supported for applications on Android 5.0 (API Level 21) and above.

Yes. You must have an AWS account to create meeting sessions that will be used by your application to connect audio, video, and screen sharing.

Yes. The Amazon Chime SDKs are available in the GitHub repositories linked below. See the README for each repository for information about building and running the included demo application and additional code examples.

https://github.com/aws/amazon-chime-sdk-js
Amazon Chime SDK for iOS https://github.com/aws/amazon-chime-sdk-ios
Amazon Chime SDK for Android https://github.com/aws/amazon-chime-sdk-android
Amazon Chime SDK for Windows https://github.com/aws/amazon-chime-sdk-cpp
Amazon Chime SDK for JavaScript https://github.com/aws/amazon-chime-sdk-js
Amazon Chime SDK for iOS https://github.com/aws/amazon-chime-sdk-ios
Amazon Chime SDK for Android https://github.com/aws/amazon-chime-sdk-android
Amazon Chime SDK for Windows  https://github.com/aws/amazon-chime-sdk-cpp

The Amazon Chime SDK client library for JavaScript can be used in web-based platforms including web browsers, mobile web applications, and desktop application frameworks such as Electron.

The Amazon Chime SDK client library for iOS provides Swift APIs and can be used from Swift or Objective-C applications for iOS.

The Amazon Chime SDK client library for Android provides Kotlin APIs and can be used from Kotlin or Java applications for Android.

The Amazon Chime SDK client library for Windows provides C++ APIs and can be used in Windows applications.

WebRTC Media

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Available Regions section in the Amazon Chime SDK Developer Guide.
The Amazon Chime SDK WebRTC media API endpoints are hosted in the US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon), Europe (Frankfurt) and Asia Pacific (Singapore) AWS Regions. These API endpoints allow you to create WebRTC sessions in other AWS regions. For more information, refer to the Available Regions section in the Amazon Chime SDK Developer Guide.

Available Regions section in the Amazon Chime SDK Developer Guide.
Yes. The Amazon Chime SDK WebRTC media API endpoints and media regions are available in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.  For more information, refer to the Available Regions section in the Amazon Chime SDK Developer Guide.

The Amazon Chime SDK allows you to create WebRTC media sessions which can host up to 250 attendees with 48kHz stereo audio, webcam video, and two shared content streams. Each client application can independently select and display up to 25 webcam video streams.

Each AWS account is allowed up to 250 simultaneous WebRTC media sessions. This can be adjusted by submitting a request through the AWS Console – Service Quotas.

The Amazon Chime SDK for JavaScript supports mono and stereo audio at the highest sample rate supported by the device and browser, up to a maximum of 48kHz. Audio is encoded with bitrates up to 128kbps stereo / 64kbps mono using the Opus codec. The Amazon Chime SDKs for iOS and Android support mono audio up to 48kHz, with bitrates up to 64kbps using the Opus codec.

The Amazon Chime SDK allows you to create standard and high definition WebRTC media sessions. A standard session supports video up to 720p resolution and while a high definition session supports video up to 1080p resolution.

The Amazon Chime SDK for JavaScript supports video at 30 frames per second without simulcast and 15 frames per second with simulcast. The Amazon Chime SDK for iOS and Android support video at 15 frames per second, however the actual framerate and resolution is automatically managed by the Amazon Chime SDK.

When active, video simulcast sends each video stream in two different resolutions and bitrates. Clients which are bandwidth constrained automatically subscribe to the lower bitrate stream. Video encoding and decoding uses hardware acceleration where available to improve performance.

The Amazon Chime SDK for JavaScript supports standard (1280x720) and high definition (1920x1080) video resolutions at 30 frames per second without simulcast, and 15 frames per second with simulcast. 

The Amazon Chime SDK supports pre-recorded content video up to 1080p in a standard session and up to 4K in a high definition session, at 30 frames per second, and stereo audio up to 48kHz at 128kbps (64kbps mono). Screen capture for content sharing is at the resolution of the screen or window being captured, and up to 30 frames per second, but may be limited by the capabilities of the device and browser.

The media capture pipeline with the Amazon Chime SDK provides the ability to capture a single stream of the active speaker video along with the combined meeting audio. Alternatively, you can configure APIs to capture individual video tile streams, with a separate combined meeting audio or stream, or capture only the combined meeting audio with no video. You can also use SourceConfiguration to select specific attendee video streams to capture, and do not need to capture all individual video streams.

Available Regions section in the Amazon Chime SDK Developer Guide.
For current media capture pipeline API endpoints please refer to the Available Regions section in the Amazon Chime SDK Developer Guide.

Languages with streaming support from Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Transcribe Medical."> Amazon Chime SDK live transcription works with any of the languages with streaming support  from Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Transcribe Medical .

StartMeetingTranscription API:

Live transcription provides access to the following Amazon Transcribe features with in the StartMeetingTranscription API:

Choosing transcription options in the Amazon Chime SDK Developer Guide. To check which AWS regions Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Transcribe Medical are available in, refer to the AWS Regional Services table.

Yes. When initiating live transcription, you choose the AWS region of Amazon Transcribe or Amazon Transcribe Medical. Alternatively, you can have Amazon Chime SDK select the region for you. For more information on selecting the region for live transcription refer to Choosing transcription options in the Amazon Chime SDK Developer Guide. To check which AWS regions Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Transcribe Medical are available in, refer to the AWS Regional Services table .

WebRTC Media Billing & Pricing

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You are charged for each minute that each attendee is joined to your WebRTC media session from a client using Amazon Chime SDK, with audio, video, or content share. When you create a high definition session, you must specify the maximum number of attendees that can join the session. Session capacity is charged based on the maximum number of attendees and billed for the duration of the session. If you replicate media to additional WebRTC media sessions, you are also changed per replication. 

Amazon Chime SDK pricing. For more information, refer to the Amazon Chime SDK pricing.

Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Transcribe Medical costs apply. "> Live transcription uses one stream to Amazon Transcribe for the duration of the transcription. Standard Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Transcribe Medical costs apply. 

Call Analytics

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Speaker search is designed to use a short sample of speech from a call to find close matches in a database of previously enrolled talkers. Speaker search is intended to address a number of analytics use cases such as (1) labeling transcripts and recordings with the names of the likely talkers (2) real-time speaker labeling on trading turrets or in multi-party meetings; (3) expediting customer lookup on calls. Speaker search is not designed to be used for authentication or identity verification use cases such as verifying the identity of a speaker with extremely high accuracy (> 99%) - for example, for verifying high-value banking transactions.

The voice tone analysis capability is intended to help with use cases such as predicting customer sentiment towards products, services and experiences, and estimating aggregated measures of customer satisfaction.

Please see the service terms related to the Amazon Chime SDK speaker search feature.

Speaker search and voice tone analysis use machine learning models that generate predictions based on statistical models. The outputs generated by these features are probabilistic in nature and should be evaluated for accuracy as appropriate for your use case.

Amazon Chime SDK call analytics stores an enrollment audio sample and a voice embedding for each enrolled talker. Enrollment audio is stored encrypted using the customer KMS key (Customer Managed Key), and the corresponding voice embedding is stored encrypted using an AWS managed key.

Amazon Chime SDK call analytics provides you with APIs to delete an end user’s associated voice embedding, as documented in the API reference guide and the Amazon Chime SDK administration guide .

PSTN Audio

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To connect attendees to a meeting session using a telephone, you can make calls from your meeting application to over 100 countries. Please see our pricing page for the most up to date list of countries.

Please see our pricing page for the list of countries where Amazon Chime SDK PSTN Audio is currently available.

Yes. You can port most DID/DDI and toll-free numbers to the service for those countries where Amazon Chime SDK PSTN Audio is available.

Yes, you can configure a Voice Connector to your on-premises voice infrastructure that supports the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). You can choose to route calls to and from the Voice Connector using the CallAndBridge action in the PSTN audio application you build. For example, to route incoming calls from the PSTN to your Voice Connector, specify the Voice Connector or Voice Connector Group ARN in the CallAndBridge action that you return in your AWS Lambda function. To route incoming calls from your Voice Connector, first provision a SIP rule in the Amazon Chime SDK console to invoke your PSTN audio Lambda function. Next, specify an E.164 phone number, Voice Connector/Voice Connector Group ARN in the CallAndBridge action that your return. The call will route to the PSTN if you specify a E.164 phone number. If you specify a Voice Connector/Voice Connector Group ARN, the call will route to a Voice Connector.

The Call&Bridge action connects a PSTN audio call to an external call center or a PBX. If your target telephony environment supports SIP, you can provision a Voice Connector and build a SIP trunk between your call center, PBX, SBC and Amazon Chime SDK; then you can specify your Voice Connector and the SIP extension as a CallAndBridge target. Alternatively, you can specify a E.164 phone number as a bridged end-point; in this case, the call will be connected over PSTN. In case of SIP bridging, you also can pass the attached data in the SIP header.

With call recording, you have a choice to record the entire call or only specific parts of the call, or not to record anything at all. Depending on your use case, you can choose to record inbound and/or outbound audio tracks of one or several call parties, commonly referred to as “call legs”. You can also start, stop, pause, and resume the recording of each call leg at the specified times during the call.

You can start and, subsequently, stop call recording at any point in time during the call; upon hanging up, the recording is stopped automatically. Please note that for each call leg you can start and stop the recording only once within the duration of the call. If you need to interrupt the recording of a call leg for some period of time and then continue the recording again, you must use pause and resume actions. The PauseCallRecording action pauses recording of a call leg. Pausing does not stop the call recording process or change the length of the call; instead, a brief tone is played when the pause is started and silence is recorded for the duration of the pause. You can pause and resume the recording multiple times for the duration of the same call leg.

Each time you pause call recording, a brief tone is played when the pause is started and silence is recorded for the duration of the pause.

The calls are recorded in the open WAV format. If you choose to record both incoming and outgoing tracks of a call leg, it will result in a stereo recording; if you record only the incoming or the outgoing track then you will get a mono recording.

You will have one WAV file per recorded call leg. Here are a few examples. (a) For an IVR call, where there is only one leg to record, you will get 1 media recording WAV file. (b) For a contact center call with one agent-to-agent transfer with agent call leg recording, there will be two agent-side call legs and you will get 2 media recording WAV files. (c) For a contact center call with only the caller’s leg recorded you will get 1 media recording file regardless of the number of transfers on the call center side.

The call recording destination is recorded in the CDR (Call Detail Record). For all recording files written to your Amazon S3 bucket, the file name and the S3 object metadata will contain identifiers such as call id and transaction id, which you can use to identify the recordings for further processing.

VoiceFocus action, you can turn the noise reduction on and off for each individual call participant (per call leg). For example, you can allow call participants to turn the noise reduction on and off for themselves by using touch-tone commands, just like “mute/unmute” operation.
With the PSTN audio application’s VoiceFocus action , you can turn the noise reduction on and off for each individual call participant (per call leg ). For example, you can allow call participants to turn the noise reduction on and off for themselves by using touch-tone commands, just like “mute/unmute” operation.

Yes. The SIP Media Application resource supports user defined tagging. See the Administration Guide for details.

PSTN Audio Billing & Pricing

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When you use the PSTN audio feature, you will be billed for the following (as applicable):

  • pricing page for the most up to date rates.
    Incoming or outgoing PSTN calling usage – Please see our pricing page for the most up to date rates.
  • Amazon Chime SDK pricing) if you connect to an Amazon Chime SDK meeting session. Amazon Chime SDK usage (see Amazon Chime SDK pricing ) if you connect to an Amazon Chime SDK meeting session.
  • pricing page for the most up to date rates. Monthly phone number rental – Please see our pricing page for the most up to date rates.


If the incoming our outgoing calling leg is an Amazon Chime Voice Connector SIP trunk, you will not be charged usage for that call leg.

You are billed by the minute for the time that call recording is enabled on a particular call leg, regardless of whether you pause recording. If you choose to transcribe your recordings using Amazon Transcribe, standard Amazon Transcribe pricing applies.

Yes. Pricing is the same across both regions, however taxes vary by AWS region for US customers. Please see our pricing page for the most up to date information.

Amazon Chime SDK pricing). You only pay the PSTN Audio Application usage fee (plus the cost to connect to the Amazon Chime SDK meeting) of $0.002/minute, AWS Lambda invocation fees, and monthly phone number fees. There is no Amazon Chime Voice Connector per minute fee for these types of calls (see Amazon Chime SDK pricing ).

SIP Trunking

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Amazon Chime Voice Connector delivers a pay-as-you-go SIP trunking service that enables companies to make and/or receive secure and inexpensive phone calls with their phone systems. Amazon Chime Voice Connector provides a low-cost alternative to service provider SIP trunks or Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) Primary Rate Interfaces (PRIs). Customers have the option to enable inbound calling, outbound calling, or both. Amazon Chime Voice Connector leverages the AWS network to deliver a highly available calling experience across multiple AWS Regions. The service supports United States phone numbers (including toll free) with low-cost calling to over 100 countries. Customers pay a monthly charge for phone numbers and by the minute for calls. There are no upfront fees, no concurrent call path charges, no commitments, and no contracts required. Amazon Chime Voice Connector uses your company’s internet connection or Amazon Direct Connect without requiring dedicated fixed-bandwidth data circuits.

Amazon Chime Voice Connector documentation for more information."> First, your administrator creates a new Amazon Chime Voice Connector in the Calling tab of the Amazon Chime Console. Then in the Amazon Chime Voice Connector’s details view they configure the termination and origination SIP parameters. Your administrator can also create an Amazon Chime Voice Connector Group to support routing and fail-over across AWS regions. For inbound calling you can purchase new Direct-inward-dial (DID/DDI) telephone numbers or port numbers from an existing carrier. Phone numbers are provisioned in the Phone Number Management tab of the Amazon Chime Console. Visit our Amazon Chime Voice Connector documentation for more information.

No. Amazon Chime Voice Connector does not require you to use the Amazon Chime Basic or Pro service.

No. You have the flexibility to choose which features meet your business needs. You can choose from either inbound calling only, outbound only, or both. You need to purchase phone numbers to receive calls from Amazon Chime Voice Connector to your phone system.

With Amazon Chime Voice Connector, you can shift from managing multiple telco providers in a complex and manual fashion to managing a global calling network from one cloud-based control center. A telecom administrator uses the AWS Management Console to create the Amazon Chime Voice Connector and your organization can begin sending and/or receiving voice calls in minutes. The service can scale to handle your busiest traffic spikes, even when unanticipated. You no longer have to purchase bursting capacity or over-provision concurrent call paths.

pricing page for the most up to date list of countries. You can make calls from your phone system to over 100 countries using Amazon Chime Voice Connector. Please see our pricing page for the most up to date list of countries.

For incoming calls to your phone systems, we currently support United States (US) phone numbers. We will support additional countries in the future.

Yes. You can port most DID/DDI and toll-free numbers to Amazon Chime Voice Connector. Please contact your Chime Sales or Support person for more information.

Yes. Amazon Chime Voice Connector supports US toll free numbers.

Yes. Administrators can choose to store their Call Detail Records in a Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket for call and usage analysis. You can also import the records from S3 into Telecom Expense Management solutions or use services such as Amazon Athena to run queries for further analysis.

Before you can receive CDRs you must first set up an S3 bucket. Once configured you can retrieve your CDRs through your configured S3 bucket. Learn more about how to configure your S3 bucket and enabling your Call Detail Records here .

Yes. However, please remember to always consult with your compliance or legal resource to understand any applicable laws or regulations in your state or country, including those regarding the recording of telephone calls and other electronic communications.

Yes. You can use Amazon Chime Voice Connector to stream SIP-based Media Recording (SIPREC) audio to Amazon Kinesis Video Streams without sending the calls to Amazon Chime Voice Connector for SIP trunking.

here."> Streaming SIPREC audio requires a SIPREC-compatible device such as an IP Private Branch Exchange (PBX), Session Border Controller (SBC), or other voice infrastructure that can send signaling and media to AWS public IP addresses. Configure your infrastructure to send SIPREC audio to the Outbound host name of your Amazon Chime Voice Connector. Learn more about using the Amazon Chime Voice Connector SIPREC streaming feature here .

here."> Yes. You can use Amazon Chime Voice Connector for toll and toll-free dial-in to audio conferences, video conferences, and collaboration sessions in applications that you build with the Amazon Chime SDK. Learn more about using Amazon Chime Voice Connector with the Amazon Chime SDK here .

Yes. You can use CloudWatch’s familiar operational health dashboards for voice calling that includes call completion rates and voice quality metrics. This enables you to quickly pinpoint problems with your PBX, your session border controller (SBC), your AWS Direct Connect link, the AWS network, or the PSTN. Learn more about using CloudWatch for a unified operational health view of Amazon Chime Voice Connector calls here .

Yes. Amazon Chime Voice Connector delivers customers a fault tolerant and highly available SIP trunking service using three availability zones (AZs) in the US-East (N. Virginia) region and 3 AZs in the US-West (Oregon) region. There is no charge for grouping Amazon Chime Voice Connectors across two regions, charges incur for the actual call minutes in each region. Learn more about how to configure Amazon Chime Voice Connector Groups across multiple regions here .

AWS Service Terms for more information. You can also purchase emergency services separately from a third-party provider. Amazon Chime Voice Connector supports calling emergency services in the United States only; please see the AWS Service Terms for more information. You can also purchase emergency services separately from a third-party provider.

Country requirements for phone numbers. For incoming calls to your SIP media application, we currently support purchasing and/or see porting of phone numbers in Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States of America. For country-specific requirements for ordering and porting phone numbers, see Country requirements for phone numbers .

Yes. The Amazon Chime SDK Voice Connector resource supports user defined tagging. See the Administration Guide for detail.

SIP Trunking Billing & Pricing

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Per-minute rates to make calls to 100 countries and receive calls in the United States are published on our pricing page .

Chime Voice Connectors in the US-East (N. Virginia) and US-West (Oregon) regions?
Yes. Pricing is the same across both regions, however taxes vary by AWS region for US customers. Please see our pricing page for the most up to date information.

No. There are no upfront fees, commitments, or contracts. Amazon Chime Voice Connector is pay-as-you-go for calling minutes with a monthly charge for phone numbers. Additional pay-per-use charges apply for optional services such as audio capture to Kinesis Video Streams. Please see our pricing page for the most up to date information.

Yes. Charges incur for phone numbers or DID/DDI from the time you order them until the time you delete them from an account.

S3 usage charges apply when using S3 for storing Amazon Chime Voice Connector Call Detail Records. Yes. S3 usage charges apply when using S3 for storing Amazon Chime Voice Connector Call Detail Records.

Yes. There is a separate pay-by-the-minute charge when using Amazon Chime Voice Connector to stream SIP trunking calls or SIPREC audio to Amazon Kinesis Video Streams. This is in addition to Kinesis usage fees. Please see our pricing page for the most up to date information.

Messaging

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The Amazon Chime SDK uses React UI components to accelerate the development of your user experience.

The Amazon Chime SDK messaging API endpoints and storage are hosted in the United States (Northern Virginia) region and Europe (Frankfurt) region.

We have limits in place for new customers as shown in our quotas page . If you need these limits increased, please submit a support ticket.

Messaging Billing & Pricing

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Messaging is pay-per-use with rates for sending messages, message delivery, and message storage, allowing you to scale as needed. More details are available on our pricing page .

The volume of storage billed in a month is based on the average storage used throughout the month. We measure your storage usage in "TimedStorage-ByteHrs," which are added up at the end of the month to generate your monthly charges. Storage size is measured based on the number of objects stored. Each standard channel message is counted as 4KB. Each control message is 30 bytes. All other objects, including channels, AppInstances, channel memberships, user bans, and read timestamps, are 1KB each.