US technology company JackTrip Labs has announced a new video integration feature for its Virtual Studio real-time music collaboration platform.

The platform, which already boasts a roster of leading performers including Eric Whitacre, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, and Earth, Wind & Fire keyboardist Larry Dunn, allows musicians to play together remotely through high-speed, low-latency cloud computing technology, creating the illusion of being in the same room.

JackTrip's new video feature aims to make remote rehearsals more immersive by adding a new dimension to Virtual Studio sessions. 'A lot of people use video collaboration tools in parallel with running JackTrip, and having to go between two different tools is never a great experience,' says JackTrip's co-founder and CEO Mike Dickey. 'What we came up with is something that’s not only great from an integrated experience perspective, but also better, lower latency video than what you get with other tools.'

The low latency video feature is now a standard feature in all JackTrip Virtual Studios. The company's team has applied developments in remote audio infrastructure to seamlessly integrate video, offering artists a more multisensory experience as they sync up.

'We already had that groundbreaking, latency-free audio, and now we also have it with video that is faster than we’re accustomed to. It feels far more authentic,' says JackTrip COO and co-founder Russ Gavin. 'It felt like it was one step closer to being in the same room than anything I’ve experienced to date. To me, that’s just spectacular.'

JackTrip Labs was initially developed from a collaboration between Stanford University and Silicon Valley and has since been further enhanced by the JackTrip Labs development team. The JackTrip Virtual Studio allows up to 500 musicians to play simultaneously and links musicians at high speeds, making it possible for users who are up to 400 miles apart to connect 'at the speed of light'.