The Bitmovin Streams Plugin allows WordPress users to quickly install adaptive video content into their WordPress website with all of the features of our Streams solution

Embedding and streaming video over WordPress has just gotten easier! We’re excited to announce our  dedicated WordPress plugin for our Bitmovin Streams solution. This allows companies looking to launch their video platform or currently have video on their WordPress-built sites can streamline their video workflow and get streaming immediately.

What benefits come with using Streams?

Along with the latest WordPress plugin, the Bitmovin Streams solution provides additional benefits across the entire streaming workflow. It gives teams access to one simple end-to-end solution that includes all our industry-leading streaming services, making it easy for you to get going fast. With Streams, you’ll be able to:

• Ensure your content streams in the highest quality possible and is adaptive to your viewer’s internet. We automatically analyze your content, transcode it in the best possible quality, and provide multiple resolution options. This way, your users can view your content based on their internet connection and don’t have to wait for a better connection for the video to load.
• Customize and style the Bitmovin Player to your brand, giving users a consistent and quality experience when watching content on your platform. This helps keep people on your platform without external links to service providers such as YouTube.
• View real-time Analytics. Our Streams insights feature provides you with in-depth, real-time analytics data about your user’s behavior, the quality of the stream, and much more. Learn how many have watched your video, the drop-off rate, the average viewing time, and the location where viewers are watching from. 
• Enable content protection and monetization through pre-integrated workflow features. Once more users view your content, monetization, and content security become key. We are currently implementing ad support so you can monetize your content and protect it with DRM.

Streams WordPress plugin is focused on enabling new and existing platforms to get to market fast with their easy-to-use Dashboard UI and API’s to host, encode, embed and stream video content easily

How it works

We’ve made implementing Streams simple to empower anyone of any background to upload a video file or connect their live input, host, embed, and stream to audiences worldwide in the highest quality.

To get started, you’re going to need the following:

• A WordPress account and webpage
• A Bitmovin account (check out our 30-day free trial, which after the trial can be set to pay-as-you-go and includes free Player and Analytics impressions and VOD and Live Encoding minutes)

After you’ve got that done, you can add Bitmovin’s Streams solution to your WordPress website quickly by following these steps:

• First, go to your WordPress backend’s Plugin section and click Add New.

• Next, search for Bitmovin Streams, where you can apply it from the WordPress marketplace.

• After downloading, click Activate on the downloaded plugin.

• Then you’ll need to add your Streams API key, which you can find by logging into the Bitmovin dashboard and going to account settings.
  • Copy the API key, paste it into the Bitmovin Streams plugin, and save the changes.

• Create a new page on your WordPress backend and select the Bitmovin plugin when opening the editing options.

• Upload your content by dragging or uploading the file directly into the upload section and the video will be automatically loaded and start being prepared for usage

• After the file has finished preparation, it will show on your page, and you can save or publish your changes and enjoy the result!

You will see the video available in the video player, and it will be available in every rendition set once the file has completed encoding. After you’ve embedded your content and made it available for your audience, return to the Bitmovin Dashboard to view your stream analytics. You can find more details in our documentation and a frequently asked questions section that may help you answer any questions about Streams.

Accessing Bitmovin’s video streaming solutions

Signing up for a Bitmovin account is completely free and enrolls you in our 30-day trial. You’ll have access to our industry-leading products, including Streams, enabling you to test and utilize our solutions without any upfront cost. After the 30-day trial, you can transition to our pay-as-you-go (PAYG) plans, which are month-to-month and solely based on usage, giving you access to over 10,000 free player impressions and 2,000 free encoding minutes monthly. 

Check our latest WordPress plugin out today and get streaming!

The post How to Launch and Stream Video on WordPress Easily appeared first on Bitmovin.

Simplifying video streaming for an easier workflow experience

We built Bitmovin’s Streams solution to make streaming simple for everyone, regardless of their level of video development or streaming knowledge. Driven by seeing how complex live and on-demand video workflows can be, we’ve taken the best parts of our industry-leading standalone solutions for Live and Video Encoding, Player, and Analytics and combined them to make Streams. This enables you to get to market faster and stream in the highest quality to your users globally while gathering important and actionable audience data to ensure the best viewing experience.

Which industries and workflows is Bitmovin’s Streams perfect for?

Streams truly fits into every use case, as its core focus is to cut down the process to get streaming as easily as possible. Facilitating both video on demand (VOD) and live workflows, as mentioned above, Streams can be used within every industry, such as:

• ELearning
• ECommerce
• Esports
• Online fitness and health
• OTT
• Publishing (news, etc.)
• Live events (sports, conferences, etc.)
• Religion and faith
• + more

Diagram of the Bitmovin Streams workflow

VOD workflows

For VOD workflows, Streams enables you to directly upload and host content on the Bitmovin dashboard, where it is then automatically encoded and has an embed code associated with it to be applied where you wish to stream from. This empowers any team to offer their viewers access to their entire video library, as you now have the tools to make content available easily. Additionally, when content is run through the Bitmovin Encoder, meaning it is being prepared in multiple formats to make viewing on different devices and platforms possible, we utilize our Per-Title Encoding capabilities. This allows you to upload video with no need to set any parameters, as our best-of-breed VOD Encoder identifies and applies all of the benefits to your content automatically, saving you on cloud storage and CDN delivery costs and making video content available in the highest quality while cutting the bitrate needed to stream it. Apart from saving money with our Per-Title algorithm, you can also monetize your content through client-side ads that can be set up on the Bitmovin dashboard.

Live workflows

Specifically for live streaming workflows, you have the ability to use any live production software (OBS, vMIX, etc) or hardware (Videon, Haivision, etc.) on your end to connect your live stream to us. All you have to do is start up your live production tools, create a live stream on the Bitmovin Dashboard and apply the RTMP link and stream key to your system of choice. From then on, all you need to do is take the player embed code from the Bitmovin dashboard and apply it to your platform to make the stream available for your viewers on every device in HLS and DASH. Another benefit for live streaming scenarios, development teams can now save precious time by being able to connect and stream quickly with the same Streams setup that they used for a prior event, meaning they don’t have to change the stream ID or stream key when they need to stream additional events that are not concurrent.

Personalize the Bitmovin Player to your brand

As mentioned above, the Streams solution gives you complete access to the Bitmovin Player and enables you to customize it in multiple ways, providing your users with a unique branded experience. Add your brand logo (watermark) in the styling and stream settings bar to automatically integrate it into the player interface, giving additional exposure and brand visibility to visitors watching your live and on-demand video. Adding unique thumbnails and preview graphics to your content is another option to make the player feel more like your own and give viewers an understanding of what the video is about. To further ensure that the player’s visual identity is consistent with your brand, you can apply unique CSS styles to its features, including controllers, progress bars, buttons, and overlays, as you can see in the image below. Additionally, Streams will be adding more features to the Player functionality to give you more control over the individual player controls, auto start, and other features.

Player customization features with Streams

Monetize your content with ads

One of the latest features released was the ability to monetize content with client-side ad support. Ads have become a major part of how platforms are able to make money while streaming, especially ones with advertising video-on-demand (AVOD) focused business models. Client-side advertising can be easily configured within Bitmovin’s Streams for live and on-demand video and does not require advanced technical knowledge. Seamlessly set up your ads by selecting the ad format:

•  VAST
• VMAP 
• VPAID

Then select the time interval when the ad should play:

• Pre-roll
• Mid-roll
• Post-roll

Finally, insert your ad tag URL and save the configuration. This 3 step process enables you to set up as many ads as you’d like to have in your content and is handled automatically by Bitmovin Streams, guaranteeing a smooth viewing experience for users and maximizing revenue.

Monitoring Viewer Sessions with Real-time Analytics

Streams also provides robust real-time Analytics, allowing you to gather in-depth, actionable data on every play. You and your development team can capture important metrics and events happening throughout each viewer session, such as play attempts, unique users, concurrent users, plays per country, plays per device, and much more. Through additional data points, you can gain vital insights into their quality of experience (QoE) when streaming content by viewing information around seek events, time of video start, length of video, bitrate, buffering, and more. All of this information helps give you and your team the complete picture, providing valuable insights into how viewers are interacting with the content and helping you identify areas for improvement and optimization.

Helping you to get up and running regardless of your level of experience

Are you concerned with how much video-specific developer knowledge may be needed? As in the previous image, the three steps and low code needs keep it simple and let you get going with our streamlined process that provides the best experience out of the box without you having to be an expert.

Wrapping up

Want to know more about Streams? Check out Streams on our website and in our Developer Community post, and if you have specific questions regarding Streams capabilities or limitations, check out our growing FAQ!

If you want to simplify your existing streaming workflow or launch your video streaming platform, sign up for a free trial to start testing Bitmovin’s Streams today.

The post Introducing Bitmovin’s Streams appeared first on Bitmovin.