IBC 2018 Stand 14.G09

Meet Bitmovin video experts in Amsterdam during the IBC Conference and Expo on September 14-18. Stop by our booth to see the latest video streaming tech coming from Bitmovin!

• Per-Title Encoding – Boost video streaming quality while reducing bandwidth! Per-Title Encoding is a powerful encoding optimization that can double the perceived quality of any codec, while reducing required storage by over 30%.
• Native Player SDKs – Build and manage multi-platform video-enabled apps with Bitmovin Native Player SDKs. All the flexibility to deliver a compelling end-user experience across web, iOS & Android platforms with the simplicity of our unified UI, API and config!
• Containerized Video Encoding – Deploy Bitmovin massively distributed video encoding anywhere! Based on Kubernetes, you can run our encoding software on any public cloud (like AWS, GCE, and others), private cloud, in a datacenter, as well as a hybrid stack.
• AV1 End-to-End Workflow – Building on Bitmovin success of delivering the first-ever AV1 live stream in broadcast quality and the first-ever browser playback in Firefox, the team will showcase our production ready solution optimized over the reference software to delivering highest quality VoD and Live AV1 playback in Chrome and Firefox.

Arrange a meeting with Bitmovin video experts to have a conversation about improving your online video infrastructure!

Bitmovin & Partner Demos

Bitmovin Events & Parties

Friday, Sep 14

Bitmovin IBC Opening Party

@ The Roast Room (RAI), 17-22h

RSVP!

Saturday, Sep 15

Bitmovin-Irdeto Happy Hour

@ Bitmovin Booth 14.G09, 17h-18h

Sunday, Sep 16

Per-Title Developer Happy Hour

@ Bitmovin Booth 14.G09, 17h-18h

DASH Industry Forum IBC 2018 Networking Reception and Party

@Heineken Experience, 18:30– 19:30

Monday, Sep 17

Friends of AV1 Happy Hour

@ Bitmovin Booth 14.G09 17h-18h

The post IBC 2018: Per-Title Encoding, Native SDKs, AV1 and Kubernetes appeared first on Bitmovin.

The full impact of the NAB Show 2018 is still settling in around Bitmovin’s global offices – record number of Bitmovers and meetings, bigger booth and more and bigger parties. But the real stars were the technologies revolutionizing video delivery on the internet.

This year Bitmovin launched so many exciting innovations that it’s hard to fit them all into one post. From products making an impact today, such as Per-Title Encoding, recently adopted by iflix streaming service to deliver HD content over low-bandwidth mobile networks, to groundbreaking technologies, like A.I. Encoding and AV1, the royalty-free codec from the Alliance for Open Media set to deliver 30-40% bandwidth reduction over HEVC & VP9.
AV1 enjoyed an incredible reception at NAB! Bolstered by content providers and browser vendors like Google, Facebook, Firefox & Microsoft among others who praised the new codec for its significant performance gains and transparent, royalty-free licensing terms. In fact, Facebook video just announced trial support for AV1 following their recent benchmarking tests. It’s easy to see why this technology is rattling some in the industry and we will dedicate the first installment of our NAB recap to all things AV1 at NAB.

Leading up to the launch

Last year, Bitmovin received Streaming Media’s Best of NAB Award for world’s first AV1 livestream (almost a year before the codec was formally launched). This year we had so much more to celebrate. At last year’s IBC our team showed the same live stream with more than 80% reduction in CPU usage. In November, we partnered with Mozilla to bring AV1 playback to Firefox, as the first browser to play AV1 DASH/HLS streams.

AV1 @ NAB 2018

With the public release of the AOMedia Video Codec 1.0 (AV1) specification just weeks before the show, NAB was abuzz with excitement. Many in the industry met the news optimistically, even as they were trying to make sense of what it all means for the future of media delivery. Bitmovin execs and engineers participated in a number of events with leaders of Strategy and Engineering teams at Facebook, Google, Harmonic, Intel and Microsoft examining the future of internet video and the impact of the AV1 codec.

Bitmovin Codec Engineer Christian Feldmann presenting end-to-end AV1 workflow at NAB
These panels, organized by AOMedia, BEITC (Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference) and the Streaming Summit at NAB, presented the first opportunity for the wider industry to learn about the impact of the AV1 – from the on-demand video, sports, and live events to real-time communications. Panelists discussed the uniqueness of AV1 in creating a royalty-free standard addressing real bottlenecks for unleashing the highest-quality video for the entire ecosystem.

Gabe Frost (Microsoft), Matt Frost (Google), Zach Hamm (Intel), Stefan Lederer (Bitmovin), Mark Watson (Netflix) on a panel of AOMedia member representatives examining the future of internet video and the impact of the AV1

Mozilla-Bitmovin AV1 Popup

On Tuesday, our booth was even busier than usual as codec engineers from Mozilla and Bitmovin gave AV1 demonstrations and answered questions from the discerning audiences. Check out the AV1 demo video presented by Bitmovin Solutions Architect Paul MacDougall.

Nathan Egge (Mozilla), Brian Weeks (Bitmovin) and Christian Feldman (Bitmovin) showing AV1 demos during the Bitmovin-Mozilla AV1 Popup

AV1 Happy Hour

On Monday night, members of the Alliance for Open Media came together as streaming industry peers, leaders and trailblazers to celebrate the future of royalty-free video on the internet. President of the Alliance Gabe Frost delivered the opening address to roaring crowds, Bitmovin’s CEO Stefan Lederer presented a vision of the future enabled by open video on the Internet, and David Bryant, a Fellow at Mozilla, spoke about video as part of the organization’s mission of building the Internet as a global public resource open and accessible to all.

Party-goers enjoyed passed hors-d’ouevres and an #open bar, while contributing their work towards building the world’s first royalty-free AV1 LegoⓇ model.
Stay tuned for the next installment of our NAB recap!

If you’d like to learn more about AV1, we’ve put together some resources below.

• Introduction to AV1: Webinar recorded with Bitmovin and Mozilla codec engineers.
• AV1 Performance Evaluation: Scientific evaluation puts AV1 to the test against industry standard codecs
• Demo AV1 with Firefox: Watch content encoded in AV1 by Bitmovin and played back in Firefox Nightly.

The post NAB 2018 Recap: Royal Reception for AV1 Royalty-Free Codec appeared first on Bitmovin.

• First pass: a rapid high-level analysis, using machine learning to identify appropriate encoding settings as well as pre/post processing steps for each part of a video. The AI is trained using library content and will continue to learn over time.
• Second pass: a more detailed analysis of each part, fine tuning encoding parameters to ensure the best visual quality. Each section is analysed in parallel, cutting the overall time needed.
• Third pass: applies the analysis, using an optimized bitrate throughout the whole file, ensuring improved quality and streaming at optimal bandwidth efficiency.

Bitmovin has been a first mover in almost every significant development in online video, from building and deploying the world’s first commercial adaptive streaming (MPEG-DASH/HLS) HTML5 Player, to being the first to achieve 100x real-time encoding speeds in the cloud. All Bitmovin’s solutions are designed to be highly scalable, portable across any hardware and deliver the highest quality in the industry.
Bitmovin customers include fuboTV, New York Times, Periscope, RTL, Sling TV and  Bouygues Telecom; collectively delivering several billion videos to consumers every day.
 
Content you might be also interested in:

• What is Per-Title Encoding: Download the Whitepaper
• Per-Title Encoding Webinar

The post Bitmovin Launches AI-Enabled Encoding – First Pass, Second Pass, Third Pass Encoding appeared first on Bitmovin.

In a recent webinar, Bitmovin Product Manager Daniel Hölbling-Inzko spoke with our Developer Experience Manager Kieran Farr about using Per-Title Encoding optimization to achieve 200% better video quality while reducing delivery costs.

Publishers and platforms with diverse content libraries have a big challenge – how to encode all this content to optimize for quality without increasing delivery and storage costs. In this webinar, Daniel Hölbling-Inzko talks about three common methods of solving this challenge and why per-title encoding could be a really good solution. Daniel then describes how per-title encoding works, looks at the real-world examples and takes live questions from the listeners.
When we consider different types of content, we can generally separate it into high and low complexity. Large degree of motion, lights, large gatherings, panning cameras, fireworks and other busy scenes make for high complexity content. Compare these to cartoons, talking news heads or romantic sunsets where very little changes, at least visually, from frame to frame, make for low complexity content. This helps us understand that there’s a large diversity within content libraries and since every piece of content is different it begs the question — why would we be using the same bitrate ladder for every video we encode, if those videos are so different? That is what brings us to the idea of flexible encoding ladders and per-title encoding.
Watch the full webinar to learn how adding per-title optimization to your encoding ensures you always create the ultimate profile for every title, encoding in a quality users can actually enjoy, but not more!

The post Webinar Recap: Per-Title Encoding Netflix-Style Optimization for Quality and CDN Costs appeared first on Bitmovin.

We asked 380 video developers worldwide about the video technologies they use in their daily work, what they plan to use in the next 12 months, and what problems they experience the most. It’s interesting what we’ve learned!

First and foremost, we’d like to thank everyone for making the 2017 Video Developer Survey possible! Without the great support and participation of the video developer community, we would not be able to create this report and share the insights into what developers around the globe do with video.
We started the Video Developer Survey with the goal to help us, as well as people in the industry, get an overview of the status of video codecs, formats, platforms, and other video technologies developers use in their daily work. This confirmed some assumptions, e.g. that HLS is the most popular streaming format – 78% use it to stream, as you can see in the following diagram. The survey also revealed interesting surprises – about the platforms served, the regional differences in popularity of different OTT devices, as well as the most persistent problems faced by video developers today.
With 380 survey submissions from over 50 countries, this report aims to give an overview of the status of video technology in 2017, as well as a vision into what will be important to video developers in the next 12 months. 75% of survey responders are developers or technical decision makers, 23% are in business roles, and 2% – in research. About equal number of responders work with Live and VOD content. Over a third each come from North America and EMEA regions. 12% of responders are from the APAC and another 5% from the LATAM region.
So, what did we find out?

• Apple HLS is the dominant format in video streaming in 2017, but the format people are looking to in the next 12 months is MPEG-DASH.
• HEVC is the video codec most people are planning to use in the next 12 months, but VP9 and AV1 are also growing in popularity.
• Software encoders are the most popular encoders, used either on-premise or in the cloud.
• Cloud encoding is 45% more popular in North America than in Europe.
• More than a third monetize their online video with subscription models.
• Encryption or DRM protection is used by 45% of responders.
• 50% of the developers with ad requirements are using a Server-Side Ad Insertion solution.
• HTML5 is now by far the dominant platform for video playback.
• OTT devices like Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV have significant regional differences in adoption.

Streaming Formats Currently Used by Survey Participants

Video codecs planned for the next 12 months

We hope this report provides useful information about what your peers are working on.

New Version Available: 

• Download the Video Developer Report 2018
• Download the Video Developer Report 2019

If you like building awesome things, come join us at bitmovin.com/jobs.

The post 2017 Video Developer Report – Most Used Video Technologies appeared first on Bitmovin.

Tile-Based Streaming is set to play a major role in delivering VR and 360 video to mainstream audiences by reducing bandwidth requirements, reducing costs and vastly increasing accessibility.

Bitmovin engineers and co-founders Mario Graf (@grafmar_io), Christian Timmerer (@timse7), and Christopher Mueller (@chris_bitmovin) have been awarded the Excellence in DASH Award at ACM Multimedia Systems 2017 in Taipei, Taiwan.

The Bitmovin team receives the third place award for their paper “Towards Bandwidth Efficient Adaptive Streaming of Omnidirectional Video over HTTP: Design, Implementation, and Evaluation” [PDF], [Session Slides]. In this paper, the researchers analyze adaptive bitrate streaming of VR and 360-degree video over HTTP and describe the use of tiles, as specified within modern video codecs, such HEVC/H.265 and VP9, to recognize bitrate savings of 40-65%.
These findings establish a baseline for advanced streaming techniques of immersive video, such as VR and 360-degree video, including real-life applications and the outline of the research roadmap. Bitmovin is committed to shaping the future of online video and building streaming solutions for commercial applications that enhance end-user experience and reduce friction for video developers. You can learn more about Bitmovin end-to-end support for immersive video in this tutorial – VR & 360° Video and Adaptive Bitrate Streaming.  

The award is established by the DASH Industry Forum. The DASH-IF “creates interoperability guidelines on the usage of the MPEG-DASH streaming standard, promotes and catalyze the adoption of MPEG-DASH and help transition it from a specification into a real business. It consists of the major streaming and media companies, such as Microsoft, Netflix, Google, Ericsson, Samsung and Adobe.” Bitmovin was among the first to deploy DASH in accordance with the DASH-IF open standard guidelines. We are an active member of the DASH-IF and actively contribute research and testing data to the DASH community.

What and Why is Tile Based Streaming?

The nature of 360 video creates much larger files sizes simply due to the extra pixels required for a spherical image. But many of these pixels delivered in the video stream are outside of the viewport and are never seen. This causes unnecessarily high bandwidth requirements and CDN costs.
Tile based streaming is a revolutionary technique that solves this problem by breaking a 360° video into “tiles”, and streams the highest quality only to visible sections of the video. At the same time it uses lower quality (smaller) files for unseen tiles.

This technique will be among the next major innovations in the area of 360 & VR video, and will offer huge cost savings and quality improvements, and Bitmovin is leading the way towards making this technology available for commercial applications.
To see tile-based streaming in action, request a demo with our video solutions experts.

The post Bitmovin Receives Excellence in DASH Award for Tile-Based Streaming of VR and 360° Video appeared first on Bitmovin.

(The good part starts at #t=11m55s)

In addition to our cutting edge work in video compression, we also showcased our video solutions with real world use cases.
Our CEO, Stefan Lederer, led a NextGen TV session on delivering Immersive Media Streaming with High Quality of Experience – taking a deep dive into the end-to-end cloud-enabled workflows for VR & 360-degree video.

Our CRO, Sean Longworth, gave a fascinating presentation on a seemingly mundane subject of video encoding. The audiences tuned in to learn how cloud and on-premise video encoding will need to adapt in the era of increasing file sizes and high-compression codecs.

We also demoed our managed on-premise encoding solution with the team at Scality, illustrating how the Scality S3 Server enables enterprise customers to leverage the security of a virtual private cloud without compromising on features or performance of Bitmovin Cloud Encoding.

Later in the week, Stefan participated on a panel of industry experts to debate one of the more sensitive subjects in cloud workflows – CAPEX vs. OPEX of cloud-based services. With the technology proof points in place, TV and Content Providers consider the costs of making the switch to the cloud.

This year’s show was a ton of work for our entire team. From boots on the ground in Vegas (my FitBit counted triple the steps on the setup and takedown days), to our amazing team that stayed back to support us from the trenches, and everyone who worked tirelessly to create this amazing experience!
After working hard all day, we also had fun after hours. Not taking any chances scoring party invitations from the cool kids, we got together with the like-minded geeks at Mux, Peer5 and Unified Streaming to host our very own happy hour at the classy AquaKnox at the Venetian. We also gave out party invitations to the DASH-IF Networking event, joining media innovators devoted to the transformative technologies of MPEG-DASH for an evening of networking at The Bank Nightclub at the Bellagio. We hope you were there, advancing the cause of open standards in adaptive streaming!
 

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