whatsapp announced one of the biggest changes to its mobile and desktop app. Popular messaging client The limit of video call participants has been increased for those who use the Windows and Mac client. Starting today, you can make video calls with up to 32 people with improved audio quality.
The company announced in a blog post that it has increased the limit on desktop apps. Until a few days ago, WhatsApp for Windows only offered support for 16 users, while the macOS client only allowed 8. The good news is that the client has caught up and will offer video calls 32 participants the same number of people as in the mobile application.
The update comes with some settings that improve performance video call on computer screen. The first is the leading speaker, who highlights the speaker with a frame and puts her at the beginning of the queue of participants. This change is minor and is intended to prevent people from having to search for a presenter based on slides.
Another important change comes with the screen sharing feature. If you are making a video call to watch a video or movie with your partner, you can show the screen and sound at the same time. WhatsApp has made some improvements to the client to provide the best audio quality when screen sharing so that details are not lost.
WhatsApp also improves the sound quality during voice calls.
In line with this, the company has introduced the MLow codec into voice calls on mobile devices. This technology guarantees better noise and echo cancellation, so you don’t have to move if you’re in a noisy environment.
According to Meta, new MLow (Meta Low Bitrate) codec provides quality twice that of Opus at a speed of 6 kbit/s. This means users will hear clearer voice calls even if they don’t have a stable internet connection. Mehta noted that this was the main motivation for developing the new audio codec.
“We have noticed that a significant proportion of calls have poor network connections for all or part of the call,” the company said. “As network quality deteriorates, we must reduce the codec’s operating bitrate to avoid network congestion and maintain audio flow. Making a video call despite poor network quality leaves little room for audio and further reduces the audio bitrate.”
The WhatsApp update will not only improve the quality of video calls and voice calls on poor connections. Meta said that main beneficiaries MLow codec will be entry-level devicessince it requires less computational complexity.
Video calls to 32 people are now available on WhatsApp for Windows and macOS, as well as for mobile app users.
Source: Hiper Textual
I’m Ben Stock, a highly experienced and passionate journalist with a career in the news industry spanning more than 10 years. I specialize in writing content for websites, including researching and interviewing sources to produce engaging articles. My current role is as an author at Gadget Onus, where I mainly cover the mobile section.
