Bitmovin Video Encoding is now available in AWS Marketplace!

Brandon Zupancic — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 12:25:25 +0000

Leading-edge Innovation over the cloud

Live and on-demand streaming video have become ubiquitous for every use case ranging from Over-the-Top (OTT) video services such as Apple TV+ and HBO Max to eLearning platforms, religious services, music and sporting events, social media, and even internal corporate communications. With their video libraries growing exponentially and most video workflows increasingly adopting cloud-based systems, many search for an easy-to-use, off-the-shelf video encoding solution that they can purchase and deploy in minutes but have trouble finding one. This is where the AWS Marketplace comes in.

Frictionless procurement of video encoding software

To help open Bitmovin’s solutions to a broader audience, we have made Bitmovin Video Encoding available in AWS Marketplace! We chose to list Bitmovin’s Video Encoding in AWS Marketplace because it gives customers using AWS Marketplace to piece together their workflow a frictionless, self-service procurement option with the added benefit of being billed directly through their AWS account.

Bitmovin’s Video Encoding is a fully-managed Software as a Service (SaaS). Powered by massively distributed processing and content-aware encoding, it allows you to deliver stunning viewing experiences at the highest possible visual quality and the lowest bitrates. Unlike other encoding products, Bitmovin Video Encoding supports file-based transcoding, live encoding, and packaging in a single, easy-to-use product.

With support for industry-standard encryption from more than 15 Digital Rights Management (DRM) vendors, studio-grade forensic watermarking, and video resolutions of up to 8K Ultra-High Definition (UHD), you can cost-effectively and securely deliver video to viewers on any device anywhere in the world.

Deliver the highest quality, binge-worthy viewing experiences at a lower cost

Bitmovin’s Video Encoding supports over 50 audio and video codecs and file formats to ingest video from nearly any source. Multi-codec outputs, including H.264, HEVC, AV1, VP9, and others, mean that your audience can watch your content on mobile devices, smart TVs, streaming video player devices, set-top-boxes, web browsers, and game consoles using the most-efficient video codecs for each device type.

Our content-aware transcoding capabilities, both per-title and per-scene, let you further optimize your Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) ladder to reduce your Content Delivery Network (CDN) cost significantly. It even supports Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, allowing you to captivate your audience with an immersive sound experience. Similarly, support for High Dynamic Range (HDR), including Dolby Vision, Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG), and HDR10, as well as the ability to convert Dolby Vision inputs to HLG and HDR10, let you deliver visually spectacular video to any HDR-capable viewing device. You can even up-convert Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) video to HDR to rejuvenate your existing content library.

Stream video for any use case

Bitmovin’s Video Encoding is well suited for any industry that streams video over the internet, such as organizations within Media & Entertainment, Broadcast, Publishing, eLearning, Sports and Events, esports, social media, and even Telcos. Additionally, large customers with AWS Enterprise Discount Program (EDP) agreements benefit from purchasing SaaS products through AWS Marketplace because those purchases apply to their EDP commitment.

Check it out!

See how Bitmovin’s Video Encoding, available in AWS Marketplace, can help you quickly and easily harness the power of video streaming for your use case!

The post Bitmovin Video Encoding is now available in AWS Marketplace! appeared first on Bitmovin.

Apple HTTP Live Streaming

Christopher Mueller — Thu, 02 Jul 2015 11:23:23 +0000

Apple HTTP Live Streaming (Apple HLS) is a widely used adaptive HTTP streaming protocol available as IETF Internet Draft. It is mainly targeted towards mobile devices based on iOS such as iPhone, iPad or AppleTV, as well as at OS X desktop computers. Apple’s Internet browser Safari also accepts HLS streams as the source of the HTML5 tag, unfortunately this only works on Apple systems as well. The lack of broad native platform support is one of the main disadvantages of Apple HLS nowadays, but there are many companies working hard on implementing clients as well as integrating HLS into other platforms and streaming servers. In contrast to the other (MPEG-DASH , Smooth Streaming), Apple HLS was especially designed for mobile environments and can request several segments together to make effective use of the Internet connection. This means that it could request more than one media segment by one HTTP 1.1 GET request, which is comparable to the pipelining feature of HTTP 1.1 and therefore eliminates unnecessary RTTs of several segment requests. These features definitely lead to a more efficient use of the connection.

Apple HLS File Formats

Apple HTTP Live Streaming (Apple HLS) uses M3U8 playlists as a manifest file for their content files, which is an extension of the M3U format used for MP3 playlists. HLS is the only system that uses MPEG-2 Transport Stream (MP2TS) which adds a significant overhead in relation to the audio/video data, instead of MP4 or another ISO Base Media File Format based container. MPEG-2 TS consists of packets with 188 bytes in size, where each packet has headers with a varying size of 4 to 12 bytes. Therefore, the overhead caused by these headers increases proportionally with the segment size, which means that relative overhead does not tend to zero with increasing bitrates. Moreover, each MPEG-2 TS stream consists of several other data beside audio and video, such as Program Association Tables that introduce additional overhead. Additionally, audio and video streams are encapsulated in Packetized Elementary Streams (PES) which introduces an extra overhead per audio sample or video frame.

Manifest – M3U8

Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) uses an M3U8 playlist as its manifest, which is a little bit different to the other approaches, e.g., MPEG-DASH or Microsoft Smooth Streaming that use an XML based manifest. VOD content with one quality can be described through the basic playlist feature, which means that the individual segments URLs are available in the main M3U8. If you want to offer multiple qualities as intended with adaptive multimedia streaming, you will have to use the variant playlist. Typically, a variant of a stream is the quality of the stream in a specific bitrate and/or resolution. Variant playlists are structured in the following in that there is one root M3U8 that references other M3U8s that describe the individual variants (qualities). The root M3U8 will then contain several EXT-X-STREAM-INF tags that indicate that the following URL is referencing another M3U8 playlist. Additionally, the EXT-X-STREAM-INF tag could contain several attributes such as bandwidth, codec, etc. Advertisements are supported in HLS through the EXT-X-DISCONTINUITY tag. This tag indicates a discontinuity in the media stream between the actual media segment and the one that follows. Furthermore, a basic encryption method is also available that allows AES-128 encryption of the media segments. The key server can be signaled in the M3U8 with the EXT-X-KEY tag and the URI attribute.

Generate your own Apple HTTP Live Streaming (Apple HLS) Content

The get started link below offers you a free trial with Bitmovin. With our Cloud Encoding Service and HTML5 Adaptive Streaming Player, you can get up and running with your first Apple HLS in a matter of minutes. Try it now!
Further Readings:

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