Agora Releases Flutter SDK 4.0.1

June 8, 2021 By Tadas Petra In Developer

Flutter 2 brought lots of changes for the Flutter framework, and Agora is now updated to support all those changes. With the new agora_rtc_engine 4.0.1, we get some great features. Here are a few of the highlights.

Null Safety

The complete package is updated to support sound null safety. Use the new package in your nullsafe applications, and never worry about a null exception again.

Extension Library

In order to reduce the app size, some of the features are offered as extension libraries. If you don’t need specific features, you can remove the corresponding extension library and recompile the project to have a smaller app size.

Virtual Metronome

Teachers have been asking for a virtual metronome, and Agora now offers this through the Flutter SDK. There are three methods:

startRhythmPlayer starts the virtual metronome.
stopRhythmPlayer disables the virtual metronome.
configRhythmPlayer reconfigures the virtual metronome after it is enabled.

Control Playback Progress for audio effect files

You can control and access the playback progress of your Audio Effect Files using three new methods: setEffectPosition, getEffectDuration, and getEffectCurrentPosition. There is also a new parameter startPos in playEffect that sets the playback position when the file starts.

Improvements with Video Encoding

Using the DegradationPreference, you can now set how your audio will handle situations where there is limited bandwidth. You have three main options:

Reduce the quality before reducing the frame rate
Reduce the frame rate before reducing the quality
Balanced

Which one of these you should use will depend on the situation. For example, using the balanced approach would make the most sense for a one-to-one call since both quality and frame rate are important in this situation.

These are just some of the updates that are in the agora_rtc_enginge 4.0.1 release. Make sure to check out the full release notes for all the updates Flutter Release Notes.

You can find the full package details at pub.dev.