Many of the basic concepts of video coding such as transform-coding (transcoding), motion estimation and compensation were developed in the 1970s and 1980s. MPEG-1, the base coding standard was developed and implemented industry-wide in the early 1990s. Today, compression and decompression mechanisms are the drivers behind the delivery of all VOD services. YouTube, Netflix, CBSi All Access, the STARZ app, and even the new Disney+ app are just a few of hundreds (if not thousands) of services that rely heavily on compression technology. 
In 2013 our founders, Stefan Lederer (CEO), Christopher Müller (CTO), and Christian Timmerer (CIO) co-created the MPEG-DASH video standard to improve the quality and speed of video content distribution as the focus of their Ph.D. research. As a result of this concentrated effort to improve industry standards based on their respective expertise, traction, and success, they founded Bitmovin and continued on their path to improve video efficiency by building new and improved infrastructure products. 
Our drive to provide an excellent encoding service yielded multiple benefits, from faster overall encoding speeds at higher qualities (measured across bitrate variations) to feature additions like machine learning-based object detection in collaboration with Azure or support for Dolby Vision HDR. 

Encoding Excellence in Action

Bitmovin continues in its journey towards encoding excellence and 2019 was the year to showcase our accomplishments in a campaign. Throughout the encoding excellence campaign, we displayed a wide variety of intertwined content pieces, including blogs, E-Books, webinars, speaking slots at industry conventions, and even appearing on a podcast or two; all centered around three value drivers for our customers – Quality of Experience (QoE), Operational Optimization, and Speed to market. 
One of Bitmovin’s drivers towards encoding excellence is the inherent need and the expectation of our customers to optimize for perceptual quality. Bitmovers are comprised of very talented engineers, solutions experts, salespeople, and marketers – as such, we rarely settle for anything less than “high quality”. Our goal, however, was to not just say things are excellent as a marketing ploy, but rather prove it objectively with tools that developers can test on their own. 

While each step in the campaign can function independently, our campaign took on the Why, How, What approach with our content production and distribution. 

Why?

We first defined “Why Quality Matters” [blog] to video content distributors as they are investing large sums of money on their premium content. Today’s consumers expecting an immersive experience and we looked at the responsibilities given to video encoding to achieve it.    

How?

Then we explained “how?” how to measure quality with an introductory blog about the types of Quality Metrics available on the market; followed closely by an in-depth webinar about how to use video quality metrics (featuring Streaming Media and SSIMWAVE). Summarized with how to test (and potentially “break”) the validity of said objective metrics during a keynote at Demuxed 2019. 

What?

This all culminated with an objectively measured assessment of our own per-title encoding technologies (as compared to our competitors) by industry expert Jan Ozer. Of course, our preference is our own product, but as planned, we set up a system that enables you, the developer to objectively determine what encoding excellence means for VOD, OTT, and streaming services.
The next driver of our efforts is to provide flexible configuration options to achieve the optimal balance between cost, quality, and performance. We started with a foundational overview on  What is encoding and adaptive bitrate? This quick refresher was followed by a beginner crash course for video app development. Enabling premium content for paid subscribers in increasing in quantity and complexity and with this course we wan to guide video development professionals to success. 

The future of Encoding

More advanced encoding optimizations are powered by client-side analytics. Technical and business decisions can easily be made to optimize quality and reduce costs when this data is presented in a meaningful, action-oriented way. This is why we encouraged our readers to further examine their metrics and analytics using our very own Bitrate Heatmap tool to optimize for quality and delivery based on bandwidth in a very visually appealing style (see below).

Who is on the journey with us

Quality is no longer a luxury, but rather a necessity. With content-spend at record highs and the explosion of streaming services available to consumers, perceptual quality expectations must be met, and it starts with encoding.
The head of the largest mass media group in Latin America’s online video platform had the following to say regarding Bitmovin and encoding excellence: “Globo is known to set quality standards. We want our viewers to experience our great content in stunning video quality. Our 4K workflows have been relying on hardware encoders, but we wanted to test the power of the cloud and conducted a thorough vendor evaluation based on video quality. Bitmovin’s encoding quality and speed convinced us across the board. And, since using Bitmovin’s cloud encoding service, we are spending a fraction of the cost by bringing our capital cost down without spending more on operational cost.”
Bitmovin has been recognized for its encoding excellence by customers and industry organizations alike. Publications like Streaming Media’s 2019 Europe Readers’ Choice Awards recognized Bitmovin as the best Online Video Platform and best Cloud Encoding Solution for the 3rd consecutive year in a row. 

We look forward to the future of video as we continue along our journey to Encoding Excellence and we can’t wait for the interactions and learnings that come from our partners, customers, and own team!

The post Our Journey Towards Encoding Excellence – 2019 in Review appeared first on Bitmovin.

ENCODING

Dolby Vision

Dolby Vision is quickly becoming the de facto HDR standard for 4K TVs. Streaming services have been at the forefront of Dolby Vision 4K content. 
We’ve updated our Bitmovin encoder to support Dolby Vision HDR to deliver cutting-edge pictures for an astounding visual experience featuring a depth of color that’s been unknown to consumer-grade devices. 

GCE Connect

Bitmovin customers can now run encodings using their own Google Compute Engine (GCE) account. Running our encoding product in your preferred environment can help you to control costs. 

SPEKE

Content piracy is a growing ROI problem for content owners and distributors across the globe. Bitmovin encoding is supporting the Secure Packager and Encoder Key Exchange (SPEKE) which defines the standard for communication between encryptors and digital rights management (DRM) platforms. SPEKE simplifies content encryption by replacing hundreds of combinations of proprietary API integrations between multi-DRM vendor key servers and encryptors with a single open, standards-based API.
Get here to all API reference endpoints
These are just the top three features, you can see all of our encoding release notes here.

PLAYER

Low Latency

We support Low Latency mode for Live content through chunked CMAF DASH streams. This enables our customers to reduce latency down to 3-5 seconds glass-to-glass latency and configure low latency settings for select Live events as needed. 

Offline Playback for Mobile SDK

Do you want to build a Netflix-like experience easily and quickly? We provide APIs and sample apps to help developers to do so. And we support offline content management for both non-DRM and DRM-based content. 
iOS Samples
Android Samples

Device Coverage

To further strengthen our comprehensive coverage of devices and platforms we added support for Samsung Tizen 2016 SmartTVs at the beginning of the year. 

Bitmovin Ads Module

Lots of upgrades were made to the Bitmovin Ad Module such as: 

• Support for adaptive streaming (HLS/DASH) ads to provide a great user experience also during ad breaks.
• Reduced time to transition from an ad back to the main content which tremendously increases the quality of experience for users, and thus reduces drop-offs.

Also, we integrated Yospace, a new Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) partner across all of our player SDKs to provide a seamless ad serving experience for customers that prefer an HLS only workflow. 
To see all player features that launched in 2019, click here.

ANALYTICS

Advertising Analytics

In time for NAB 2019, we released ad analytics. Here are just the top insights the ads dashboards can give you: 

1. Get detailed performance insights. They are intended for ad-ops, support groups or business stakeholders
2. Track monetization by looking at ad fill rates, business KPIs, skips, and aborts
3. Reach the right audience by optimizing your ad strategy with data-driven decisions

3rd party dashboard integrations (Grafana, Google Data Studio, Tableau)

Bitmovin Analytics lets you control and present your video data exactly the way you need it. 
A script for a developer-specific workflow using a custom visualization engine or a data integration with a data store and query platform such as Google Data Studio, Grafana or Tableau makes it possible.

Industry Insights

If you need to benchmark your business processes and performance, look no further. Our analytics product now features ‘Industry Insights’ for selected metrics, showing the median data point for that metric across the entire Bitmovin Analytics customer base.

Plus, we made a small but efficient change in the analytics dashboard. Breakdowns are now on the left-hand side next to the tables. This was a highly requested feature that improves usability.  

Dashboard/Usability

Support integration

To always serve you, our customer, better, we overhauled our support process and integrated product-specific templates that make the submission and resolution of issues faster and easier. Of course, we hope you won’t encounter any issues, but in the instance that you do, click “Contact Support” in the left-hand nav. 

Encoding UI (VoD + live)

We’ve added a fully configurable Encoding UI to our dashboard. Use your own assets and storage to get going right away, or use available test assets for VOD or Live Encoding streams. 

Sub-Organizations

Ever wanted to set-up a separate production or development environment? Now you can go to the left-hand navigation in the main dashboard and click on Organization Settings. You can create up to ten sub-organizations all billed to the same (root-) organization. This way you can limit and control access to members of your organization for better service and administration control.

As we wrap up 2019, we want to wish everyone a Happy New Year. We are excited to continue building more features and functionalities that help you, our customers, reach new heights. If there is anything you need from us, don’t hesitate to reach out to our product team – product-feedback@bitmovin.com.

The post Bitmovin’s Favorite Product Releases of 2019 – Encoding, Player, Analytics and More appeared first on Bitmovin.

We want to enable you to build out the best possible video stacks by using custom media supply chains. Consequently, we want to provide you with the best services in the market. Our latest integration is a collaboration of Vidispine’s API 5.0 and our very own video encoder. In addition to our high-quality and efficient encoder, you also have access to a huge variety of video tech solutions. This will help you increase the speed-to-market, even for difficult multi-cloud workflows. With Bitmovin in Vidinet, you can encode in a matter of minutes, not hours.
This is a cross-post from our partner Vidispine – you can find the original post here

Working with Vidinet’s API, your organization will have the proper capacity to focus on the development of your app, instead of the complex build that is VOD or OTT delivery. Vidinet is one of our partners for cloud-based media services and the API is a fully managed media asset management and supply chain platform. 
Here you can build scalable and cost-effective media solutions and it allows companies to quick-start a fully managed Vidispine API to use as a backbone for their video management. Through Vidinet, you can boost your Vidispine API with highly scalable media services and quickly add new functionality to a new or existing solution.
Now you can access Bitmovin’s innovative and high-speed video encoder as a service in Vidinet. The integration between Vidispine API and Bitmovin is already in place, which means that you can spin it up and start using it right away!

Fastest encoder

The Bitmovin Video Encoder is the fastest on the market today. The chunk-based cloud encoding method enables content to be delivered at up to 100x real-time, in the best possible quality due to their per-title encoding.
Bitmovin enables you to deliver outstanding quality video to your viewers by optimizing video quality at the lowest bitrates, on the widest range of devices in the market. Achieve significant bandwidth savings and quality improvements with their encoding technology in Vidinet. Bitmovin’s encoder supports the latest codecs, including, AV1, VP9, H.264, HEVC, VVC, MKV, WebM, MPEG-DASH and HLS.

Further learning

Learn how to create a Vidispine API instance in Vidinet in this guide, or read more on how to use the Bitmovin API in the API Documentation. Follow our blogs & social media pages to stay up-to-date with the latest news in Video Technology. Looking to learn more about video compression? Join our completely free Developer Network!
Check out these other great reads:

• Digital Rights Management (DRM) – Everything you need to know (Blog)
• What Is Per-Title Encoding? (Blog)
• Ultimate Guide to Container Formats (E-Book)

The post New Dynamic Partnership: Vidispine API and Bitmovin’s Encoder Integration appeared first on Bitmovin.