That changed when Apple launched the Apple Vision Pro, announcing that unlike Meta Quest and other headsets, their new device would take advantage of MV-HEVC for immersive video experiences. In this blog post, we’ll explore what MV-HEVC is, its potential for enhancing streaming experiences and how to get started. 

What is MV-HEVC?

MV-HEVC stands for Multiview High Efficiency Video Coding, an extension of HEVC that was added to the second edition of the standard in 2014. It’s designed to support the efficient encoding of multiview video content captured from multiple viewpoints, often to create stereoscopic (3D) effects or spatial video experiences for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). 

Doubling the encoding and bandwidth requirements for multiple viewpoints could potentially create buffering and playback issues, but MV-HEVC enables the efficient compression and storage of stereoscopic content, reducing the bandwidth required for streaming or the file size needed for storage without compromising the video’s quality.

In short, MV-HEVC allows the encoding of multiple views of the same scene in a way that preserves video quality while keeping the bitrates manageable. This makes it a good fit for 3D, AR and VR applications that require a lot of real-time data processing. 

How MV-HEVC works

Before getting into how MV-HEVC works, let’s take a quick step back to the basics of video encoding. Temporal compression is a technique for reducing file size that is common to all major video codecs. Unless there is a scene change, individual frames of video are usually not that different from one frame to the next. Temporal compression exploits that fact and reuses data where it can, saving some bits from being encoded and shrinking the file size. 

This is done by encoding different types of frames that require less data to reconstruct for playback. I-frames are fully encoded frames that serve as anchor points, while P-frames (Predictive frames) can reuse data from frames that came before them. B-frames (Bi-direcional predictive frames) can reuse data from frames both before and after them. If you’re interested in learning more about some of the fundamentals of video encoding, check out this guide. 

I touched on all of that because a key benefit of MV-HEVC is that it is also able to take advantage of the commonalities across multiple camera angles or views. In the cases of immersive and 3D videos that are created with different views for the right and left eye, the similar viewpoints usually mean there’s a lot of potential for compression, creating smaller, more manageable files for streaming and storage.

Applications of MV-HEVC

Stereoscopic Video (3D Video)

MV-HEVC is particularly useful in the realm of 3D video or stereoscopic content, where two slightly different views (one for each eye) create the stereoscopic effect. By encoding both the left eye and right eye views efficiently in a single stream, MV-HEVC reduces the file size and bitrate compared to other methods. This is crucial for streaming applications like 3D movies or immersive VR experiences where quality and efficiency are key. Other codecs can be used for 3D stereoscopic video as we cover in this blog, but MV-HEVC is more efficient. 

Spatial Video

Another application of MV-HEVC is in spatial video, which is typically used for virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) content. The Apple Vision Pro is built around the idea of capturing and presenting spatial video, allowing users to immerse themselves in a three-dimensional representation of a scene, combining video and depth information. MV-HEVC support is essential for these types of experiences, reducing massive bitrates of the raw files into something manageable for streaming and real-time immersive experiences. 

Multiview Video

MV-HEVC is also important for multiview video, where multiple views of the same scene are captured from different angles. This could be used in sports broadcasts, where different camera angles are encoded into a single video stream, or for applications that allow users to choose their viewing angle interactively. Depending on your exact use case, this may require multiple decoders or extra processing power that might not be available on all platforms. 

Dolby Vision with MV-HEVC

MV-HEVC is now also compatible with Dolby Vision, a popular High Dynamic Range (HDR) video format that helps ensure content looks as realistic and as true to the creator’s vision as possible. Most of the top-tier premium streaming content these days is being made available in Dolby Vision format, so it makes sense that companies investing in MV-HEVC production pipelines would want to take advantage of Dolby Vision. Dolby Vision Profile 20 extends the potential quality enhancements of Dolby Vision to MV-HEVC and immersive content. 

Apple Vision Pro and beyond

The Apple Vision Pro is pushing the boundaries of immersive media and while they didn’t create the VR headset segment, Apple definitely put their stamp on it. There are several examples over the years of Apple’s influence on the media technology industry, from their decision to not support Flash video to their decision to (finally) support AV1. 

It seems only likely there will be a halo effect for MV-HEVC around the Vision Pro. One early example is the Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive camera. I expect in 2025 we’ll see more companies venturing into MV-HEVC support from capture to post-production to distribution. 

MV-HEVC video tools

Direct recording with Apple Vision Pro and iPhone

You can record spatial video using MV-HEVC directly on the Apple Vision Pro, iPhone 15 Pro and all iPhone 16 models. The distance between the 2 camera lenses on the Vision Pro seems to provide better results with more depth compared to spatial videos captured on iPhone.

Apple AVFoundation support

Apple also added support to their AVFoundation APIs for converting side-by-side 3D videos into MV-HEVC and spatial videos. You can find more information in their developer documentation here.

Bitmovin VOD encoding beta

Bitmovin’s VOD Encoding now supports MV-HEVC as part of a private beta. If you’re interested in adding MV-HEVC to your transcoding workflows, we’d love to discuss the details with you. You can reply in the Bitmovin Community, comment on this post or get in touch with your Bitmovin contact for more info. 

Conclusion

Thanks in large part to Apple, MV-HEVC is poised to become a key technology in the future of immersive and multiview content. Its ability to efficiently encode multiple views of the same scene, reduce the data required, and maintain high video quality makes it an essential tool for everything from stereoscopic 3D movies to virtual reality experiences on devices like the Apple Vision Pro.

On their other platforms, Apple seems to have signalled a shift toward using the AV1 codec, but AV1 does not currently have multiview support. It will be interesting to see how that situation evolves both within Apple’s products and the wider video ecosystem. While the only certainty is that things will change, unless Apple abandons the Vision Pro, MV-HEVC is likely to be part of the picture for the foreseeable future.

The post Multiview HEVC (MV-HEVC): Powering spatial video experiences and more appeared first on Bitmovin.

Bitmovin’s VOD Encoder is known for its quality, speed, and cloud-native ability to scale quickly and resiliently. Advanced features like split-and-stitch encoding with Smart Chunking,  Per-Title and 3-Pass encoding set it apart from other encoders on the market, in terms of both visual quality and bitrate efficiency. For our customers, it means lower costs for storing and delivering video, along with a better experience for their viewers. 

In this post, we’ll explain how Bitmovin’s 3-Pass encoding works and show the benefits of using 3-Pass encoding with Bitmovin. 

How does 3-Pass encoding work?

As you might have guessed, with 3-Pass encoding the analysis and encoding optimization happen in 3 phases. After our split-and-stitch algorithm (now with Smart Chunking) divides the source file into separate chunks for parallel processing, the following steps are taken:

1. Analysis

The first step is to run a constant rate factor (CRF) encoding pass that varies the bitrate as needed to maintain constant quality. Using a carefully chosen quality target value based on the source file, we are able to capture valuable data about the motion, complexity and scene changes in the content that we can use in the next steps.

2. Encoding 

The information gathered from the CRF pass is scaled so that the overall average bitrate of the output file will respect the target bitrate set by the user. Using new target information, the chunks are encoded. 

3. Optimization

Using data from the previous passes, the encoder now re-allocates bits from less complex segments to more complex ones, wherever possible. This ensures there is no degradation during complex, high-motion scenes and helps clean up any lower quality frames. In the process of redistributing bits, any drastic jumps in bitrate between adjacent chunks are smoothed to avoid causing player buffer issues. 

What are the benefits of Bitmovin’s 3-Pass encoding?

Now that you know how it works, let’s talk about how using 3-Pass encoding benefits your customers, your operations and your bottom line.

Better visual quality

Because of its multi-stage process, 3-Pass encoding makes sure your viewers are getting the best possible quality on the first try. No need for time consuming experimentation and analysis to find the ideal encoding settings. Your content looks the best it can at any bandwidth.

Bitrate and cost control

Other approaches to improving encoding quality usually involve increasing bitrate, which in turn, increases the eventual storage and delivery costs. 3-Pass encoding makes sure the bits are used exactly and only where they are needed, giving the ideal balance of quality and efficiency for lower costs and less buffering.

Scalability and speed 

When using traditional encoding approaches, multi-pass encoding can take a long time for a single file, not to mention large batches of files. With Bitmovin’s 3-Pass, neither is an issue as our split-and-stitch process and cloud-native scalability keep turnaround times to a minimum, even for long form content and unpredictable spikes in demand. 

Quality comparisons

In the graph below, the same file was encoded using 2-Pass and 3-Pass encoding and the VMAF score was measured and plotted for every frame (the vertical axis represents how many frames received that VMAF score). With 3-Pass, represented in blue, you can see that the overall average VMAF score improved a bit compared to 2-pass, shown by the red dots on the lower plots. But there’s another more important and impressive difference between the 2, which is the reduction of lower quality frames that would be noticeable by viewers. The quality of the worst frame was improved by ~20 points and the amount of frames scoring below 80 was cut in half.

You can also see where the 2-pass rendition had several frames scoring in the upper 90s, meaning bits were being allocated to those frames that weren’t detectably improving quality for viewers. 3-pass encoding was able to intelligently redistribute those “extra” bits to frames where they could make a noticeable difference.

3-pass works especially well for content with a mix of different complexity and motion, letting you use lower bitrates to produce equivalent quality compared to other methods. This means your streams are less susceptible to buffering and look better for viewers with limited bandwidth, not to mention the cost savings on storage and CDN that can really add up.

What is the difference between 3-Pass and Per-Title encoding?

If you’re familiar with Bitmovin, you may also know about our Per-Title encoding. You might be wondering, “Isn’t Per-Title also about creating the ideal encoding settings for each video?” If you were, great question!

Per-Title encoding analyzes the source file settings and complexity and determines the ideal adaptive bitrate ladder for that piece of content. The Per-Title algorithm feeds the encoder with the resolution and bitrate pairs that will provide the best quality of experience across the entire range of devices and bandwidth. 

3-Pass is about getting the absolute best quality encoding for a given bitrate and resolution pair. So Per-Title determines the ideal target bitrates and 3-Pass makes sure they look as good as possible. For adaptive bitrate streaming, we highly recommend using 3-Pass and Per-Title together for the best results. 

The graph below is an extreme example, but for this video from a Bitmovin customer, using 3-pass with Per-Title meant encoding an ABR ladder with 4K video at 2 Mbps and lower, compared to their incumbent ABR ladder that was targeting 15 Mbps for 4K content which was mostly wasted for this particular video.

Try 3-Pass encoding for free

3-Pass and Per-Title encoding are both available to use, for free, with a Bitmovin trial. If you’re obsessed with quality, but are spending too much time and effort finding the best encoding settings, you really need to sign up today and see the results for yourself. 

The post 3-Pass encoding enhances video quality, making every bit count appeared first on Bitmovin.

Driving Success Through Partnership: The Core of Bitmovin Innovators Network

Our “Better Together” approach is rooted in a simple yet powerful idea: collaboration drives innovation. At NAB 2024, this shone through in the way our partner network delivered solutions that not only met but exceeded the needs of our customers. Together, we are tackling key challenges—reducing streaming costs, generating new revenue streams, retaining and growing subscribers.

As we gear up for IBC 2024, these themes remain at the forefront of our collective efforts. Our partners are prepared to showcase how they are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in streaming, ensuring that our customers can deliver exceptional experiences while optimizing their operations.

The Power of Partnership at IBC 2024

Joint Customer Success Stories: A Testament to Collaboration

At IBC 2024, we will highlight the tangible outcomes of our partnerships, showcasing how “Better Together” translates into real-world successes of solving customer challenges. On Thursday, September 12 from 3:30-6:00 PM, we are once again hosting our exclusive Bitmovin Innovators Network Partner Executive Networking Event. We have an exciting lineup of customer success stories planned for this year’s event, including Alpha Networks presenting a “better together” customer success story featuring Ligue Nationale de Volley, Insys Video Technologies highlighting their “better together” success with ORF, and a “Voice of the Customer” session lead by BBC. We will wrap up the afternoon with the inaugural Bitmovin Social Hero Awards, followed by the executive happy hour.

On the Bitmovin Stand: Discovering the Future of Media Search

At IBC 2024, the Bitmovin stand (5.H48) will be a hub of innovation, featuring a dedicated demo station from our partner, Nomad Media. Nomad will be unveiling their new advanced Generative AI search capability that enables business users to find and discover their media that otherwise could never have been found – with the ability to identify locations, people, activities and more. Visit Nomad’s demo station to see this innovative solution in action and learn how it can transform your media workflows.

“Better Together” Solutions on the IBC Floor

The IBC floor will be buzzing with activity as our partners present a range of “Better Together” solutions designed to address some of the most pressing challenges in the streaming industry. Here is a preview of what you can expect:

Accedo, in partnership with Humans Not Robots, is co-leading the ECOFLOW project under the IBC Accelerator Program to measure and reduce the environmental impact of streaming. The initiative, featuring Bitmovin Player’s ECO Mode, collaborates with industry leaders – including BBC, ITV, Bitmovin, RTL Nederland, Quanteec, Cognizant, the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), Fraunhofer Fokus, Greening of Streaming, DIMPACT, and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) – to assess energy consumption across the streaming supply chain, starting with CDNs, encoding, and end-user devices.

Join the presentation with Accedo & ITV on Friday at 11:15 in the Accelerator Zone, and meet with our Product Managers for Playback, James Varndell on Friday 10:30-12:00, and Jacob Arends on Sunday 3:30-5:00, for in-depth discussions.

2Coders [5.H96] will be showcasing Velvet, an SDK-based front-end app, integrating Bitmovin Player and Bitmovin Analytics for optimized, multi-device streaming, delivering high-quality content with cost efficiency and fast time to market.

At Elicium Meeting Room [13.D301], learn about Akamai Connected Cloud, a massively distributed edge computing cloud platform and how Bitmovin Live and VOD Encoding SaaS on Akamai Connected Cloud helps Media & Entertainment customers reduce streaming expense by up to 90% by reducing compute and data transfer costs.

Alpha Networks [1.A59] will showcase a joint solution for live streaming that optimizes costs without compromising video quality, featuring Alpha Networks’ PaaS and SaaS products, Gecko and Bee, and modular video software Tucano, integrated with Bitmovin Live Encoding on Akamai Connected Cloud.

Visit the Amazon Web Services (AWS) stand [5.C90] to learn about Bitmovin’s SaaS products running on the AWS cloud, including Bitmovin Live Encoding, Bitmovin VOD Encoding, and Bitmovin Analytics. Customers can learn how Bitmovin integrates with AWS services, like AWS Elemental MediaPackage, AWS Elemental MediaTailor, Amazon CloudFront, and others, as well as integrations with partner SaaS products, including anti-piracy solutions, content and asset management systems, ad monetization platforms, data visualization products, and more – to solve for every live and on-demand use case. Bitmovin Live Encoding, Bitmovin VOD Encoding, and Bitmovin Analytics are available in the AWS Marketplace.

At Broadpeak’s stand [1.F83], learn about transitioning to an ad-supported HVOD (Hybrid VOD) model and enhance your monetization strategy with mid-roll ad management via Broadpeak.io Ad Proxy, premium UX, integrating Bitmovin VOD Encoder with clean transitions for mid-roll ad break, and revenue protection with anti-ad-skipping through Bitmovin Player and Broadpeak Smartlib SDK integration.

Edgio [5.A68] will demonstrate their Smartplay technology, a component of Edgio’s Uplynk Streaming Media Platform, which integrates seamlessly into Bitmovin VOD Encoding SaaS workflows generating new revenue through personalized sessions.

EZDRM [5.A50] is showcasing a cost-effective live video streaming solution where content captured by a Videon Edgecaster appliance is routed to Bitmovin Live Encoder, converted to DASH and secured by EZDRM DRAMaaS in an Akamai Connected Cloud instance.

Learn how PallyCon’s [5.G56] DRM License Cipher and Key Rotation prevent software-level vulnerabilities, like DRM license hijacking. Seamlessly integrated with Bitmovin Player, it ensures robust content protection and secure streaming experiences for global audiences.

MainStreaming [5.H30] will demonstrate its new implementation of Common Media Client Data (CMCD), working with Bitmovin Player, that provides advanced Stream Delivery Routing Decisioning to further enhance Playback Quality of Experience (QoE) and help streamers retain and grow subscribers.

MediaKind [1.D71] demonstrates how to stream flawless video and build iconic sports apps with Bitmovin Player and Bitmovin Analytics as part of an end-to-end solution for D2C streaming and monetization.

NAGRAVISION [1.C81] will showcase its streaming security and consumer engagement solutions including OpenTV Video Platform, integrated with Bitmovin Player for secure, high-quality streaming across multiple devices, ensuring seamless delivery and protection of premium content.

Synamedia [1.B33] is partnering with Bitmovin to showcase several cutting-edge solutions. At the Innovation pod, you will see how content steering, integrated with Bitmovin’s Playback capabilities, works seamlessly with Synamedia’s CDN solutions to optimize content delivery. At the Ad Insertion and Monetization pod, Bitmovin and Synamedia team up for ad insertion with precise HLS interstitials, driving more effective monetization strategies. Finally, at the D2C Streaming pod, you can discover how Bitmovin Player ensures low latency streaming, delivering an unmatched viewer experience for Synamedia’s D2C solutions for sports.

Hosted at the EZDRM stand [5.A50], Videon is demonstrating a live end-to-end secured stream, encrypted from the video source with a Docker container running on the Videon LiveEdge® platform, sent to the Bitmovin Live Encoder running on Akamai Connected Cloud, and distributed over the Akamai Content Delivery Network (CDN), then played back on Bitmovin Player in a cost-effective and scalable fashion.

Discover how Yospace’s [5.C77] dynamic ad insertion solution recently delivered four billion one-to-one addressable ads during Paris 2024. Yospace, with Bitmovin Live Encoding, delivers maximum ad revenues for media owners at scale for the streaming age.

Zixi [5.A85] is showing how customers use the native integration of Zixi with Bitmovin Live Encoding for secure, reliable, and cost-effective ultra-low latency live IP video streaming of sports, news, and events.

Engage, Connect, and Celebrate: Social Activities at IBC

IBC isn’t just about showcasing technology; it’s also about connecting with peers and partners in the industry. We are excited to invite you to a range of social activities designed to foster collaboration and innovation.

Lunch and Learn, Hosted by Akamai: On Saturday, 14 September, from 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM in room G109 at the RAI, Akamai is hosting a lunch and learn session “How distributed cloud is driving innovation in digital media.” Bitmovin’s EVP of Product, Reinhard Grandl, and other industry leaders will be discussing Akamai’s vision for media and share real-world customer success stories. Please register in advance to attend this event.

Bitmovin and Akamai IBC Reception: We at Bitmovin are proud to be partnering with Akamai for their exclusive reception on Saturday, 14 September, from 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM at The Beach at Strandzuid. This invite-only event offers a chance to connect with industry peers, discuss the latest innovations, and enjoy a relaxed evening in a vibrant setting. To secure your invite, please speak to your Bitmovin representative.

Bitmovin & Nomad Media Happy Hour: Nomad Media and Bitmovin are co-hosting a networking reception and happy hour on Friday, 13 September, from 5:00 – 6:00 PM at the Bitmovin Stand, 5.H48. This happy hour is the perfect chance to unwind and connect with fellow attendees. Visit Nomad or Bitmovin for an exclusive invite!

Breakfast with Synamedia: Synamedia and Bitmovin co-host a breakfast with coffee and pastries at the Synamedia Stand, 1.B33, at 10:00 AM. We invite you to meet our teams for casual conversations about the latest industry trends.

Irdeto Happy Hour: On Sunday, 15 September, from 4:00 – 7:00 PM, join us at the Irdeto Stand, 1.D51, for a joint happy hour. It is a great way to wrap up the weekend, reflect on the insights gained at IBC, and win some awesome giveaways.

MainStreaming & Bitmovin Presentation and Happy Hour: Join MainStreaming and Bitmovin for a presentation followed by Happy Hour at MainStreaming’s booth [5.H30] on Saturday, 14 September, from 4:30 – 6:00 PM. Discover how MainStreaming’s CMCD+ and Bitmovin Player improve performance, enhance QoS, and maximize ROI. Hear from Sergio Carulli, CPO at MainStreaming, and Reinhard Grandl, Executive VP of Product at Bitmovin.

We can’t wait to see you in Amsterdam and continue building on our joint success stories!

The post “Better Together” at IBC 2024: Elevating Streaming Experiences with Bitmovin Innovators Network appeared first on Bitmovin.

In today’s digital age, live video streaming has become an essential medium for communication, entertainment, and information dissemination. Whether it’s broadcasting live sports, conducting virtual conferences, or streaming a gaming session, the demand for seamless, high-quality live video has never been higher. However, ensuring a smooth streaming experience is no small feat. This is where the importance of observability comes into play. In this blog post, we’ll talk in more detail about two key pillars of system observability, monitoring and alerts; and we’ll also introduce our newest feature the Live Heartbeat.

Why Monitoring is Crucial

Monitoring in live video streaming involves continuously checking various parameters to ensure that everything is functioning correctly. This can include checking the video quality, stream latency, buffer health, and server performance. Effective monitoring can help in identifying issues before they impact the viewer’s experience.

1. Ensuring error-free delivery: Whatever the screen size, device, or location today viewers expect to view video and hear audio in the highest quality possible. Monitoring helps in maintaining the video quality by detecting issues such as bitrate fluctuations, frame drops, and resolution problems. By keeping an eye on these metrics, streamers can take corrective actions to ensure a consistently high-quality viewing experience.
2. Staying “On Air”: Whether this is a Live event or a Live linear 24/7 service, maintaining the output to ensure the content is available and the audience experience is uninterrupted has been a vital part of video delivery since the very beginning. Broadcasters would go to great lengths to ensure their systems had resilience in place, with backup systems and disaster recovery processes in place to maintain business continuity. All of those backup systems are only effective if monitoring is in place, to ensure that any issues with the current delivery path are identified with corrective action able to be taken automatically or via a human operator as soon as possible.
3. Buffer management: Buffering is one of the most common issues in live streaming. Effective monitoring can help in managing buffer health, ensuring that the stream is pre-loaded sufficiently to avoid interruptions. By tracking buffer levels, streamers can adjust the streaming settings or improve the content delivery network (CDN) performance.
4. Technical service performance: The technical performance of any streaming service is critical for delivering live video. Typically a live signal is processed by a host of interconnected products, forming the service. Monitoring each component to ensure proper behaviour within a business tolerance for error, is crucial to be able to effectively carry out root cause analysis and hold suppliers to account with data if they breach their SLAs. Selecting the correct quality and measurement tools for each component is vital. 

The Role of Alerts

While monitoring is essential, it’s impractical for human operators to watch these metrics 24/7. For large service providers monitoring 100s or 1000s of linear channels, monitoring is often restricted to one or two sections of a delivery chain displayed on large video walls or multiviewers, and sometimes only displayed in exception. Even when a single event is being monitored there can be so many components to monitor, relying on an “eyes on glass” approach might not be practical. 

This is where automated alerts come in. Alerts are notifications triggered by specific events or thresholds, enabling rapid response to potential issues.

1. Proactive issue resolution: Alerts enable proactive issue resolution by notifying operators of potential problems before they escalate. For example, if the stream bitrate drops below a certain threshold, an alert can notify the technical team to investigate and fix the issue before it affects the viewers.
2. Minimising downtime: Automated alerts can significantly reduce downtime by ensuring that issues are addressed promptly. For instance, if a product or entire service goes down or experiences high load, alerts can notify the support team to take immediate action, ensuring minimal disruption to the live stream, and reducing the meantime to repair.
3. Improving viewer experience: By addressing issues quickly through alerts, streamers can maintain a high-quality viewing experience. This leads to higher viewer satisfaction and engagement, which is crucial for retaining an audience and building a loyal following.
4. Resource optimization: Alerts can also help in optimising resources by providing insights into usage patterns and potential bottlenecks. For example, if alerts indicate that a particular server is consistently under high load, it may be time to scale up the infrastructure or redistribute the load more efficiently.

The Live Heartbeat

Over the past few months, the engineering team at Bitmovin has been looking at how to improve the observability our Live Encoder product offers, by improving our alert notifications. We wanted to make key improvements to our platform.

1. Frequency: Often customers need to be aware of issues in a service as soon as they arrive, and typically issues will arrive during a change in state. For Live Encoding, this can happen at packet level on the input, and this would affect the segments written in the output. By offering lower intervals between alerts, we aim to allow customers to get updates at the frequency at which segments are written. 
2. Scalability: As our customer base increases in both size and account usage, the number of concurrent live encodings reporting alerts and notifications also increases. Because we offer a SaaS platform, where the infrastructure and platform is managed by Bitmovin we initially aggregated our alerts as well. For some alerts, this will still remain true, but for the Live Heartbeat, it will come directly from the Live Encoder improving the confidence users can have in the service, and removing any bottlenecks for scaling. 
3. Reliability: As mentioned earlier, it only takes one false positive to undermine the trust in any mission-critical system and for alerts that are particularly true. By making the Live Encoder responsible for the Live Heartbeat, it becomes the single source of truth for the health of the product and the section of the live transmission path that Bitmovin provides. 
4. Flexibility: There are a raft of data points we can report on in a notification from the Live Encoder, and making sure the payload structure is flexible and easy to add to is also essential. If a customer needs to know something about a function the software is performing and we can report it, adding it to the payload should be swift. 

This is an example payload of the first version of the Live Heartbeat, reporting the status of input video and audio streams.

Who should operate the observability?

By now, hopefully, the benefits of a good observability system in place are clear. Monitoring component health, response times, and error rates can help in maintaining optimal system performance. There is a monetary benefit as well of course, by identifying and addressing system issues promptly, companies can prevent potential downtime and ensure uninterrupted streaming. 

Just before looking at how to implement, it’s also important to ask – who will this observability system be for? Typically in Broadcast stations producing a few core services, the multiple products responsible for maintaining the station output would be monitored by a Master Control Room (MCR) or Transmission control room (TX), they would be supported by a dedicated team of engineers. Service providers or Telcos might have an enormous number of services to monitor, and only be responsible for a certain section of the transmission path, such a large organisation already will have a dedicated team of staff monitoring multiple services in large Network Operation Centers (NOC). These large rooms resemble air traffic control centres, with video walls surrounding the staff, showing feeds at different points in their signal paths, along with diagnostic information.

Some companies staff these control rooms themselves, and simply need the tools in place to perform the job and other companies might be looking for someone to provide this for them. Sometimes they assume that Bitmovin provides this, but we’re a product company not a managed service provider. We do have some partners that offer this however and are always willing to introduce customers to those partners. 

Implementing Effective Monitoring and Alerts

When implementing monitoring and alerts solutions, it’s sometimes useful to start on paper and if you have users gather their requirements and define their user stories. In most cases if something should be monitored and trigger an alert, a solution can be engineered to do this. Consider which links in the chain are critical and can offer tools to aid fault finding, and by alerting give an early warning to aid preventative maintenance. 

Once you have an idea about what needs to be monitored you can consider more of the details such as:

1. Define key metrics: Identify and define key metrics that are critical for your streaming service. This can include video quality indicators, audio quality indicators, metadata integrity, latency, and server performance metrics.
2. Set thresholds: Establish appropriate thresholds for these metrics. Thresholds should be set in a way that they trigger alerts for potential issues without causing unnecessary alarms for minor fluctuations. Typically every company will have a level of fault tolerance it is willing to accept, and the lower the tolerance the higher the cost to achieve that Service Level Agreement (SLA).
3. Use the right tools: Utilise reliable monitoring and alerting tools that can integrate with your streaming infrastructure. There are various tools available that offer real-time monitoring, analytics, and alerting capabilities tailored for live video streaming.
4. Regularly review and adjust: Regularly review the performance data and adjust thresholds and monitoring strategies as needed. Continuous improvement is key to maintaining an effective monitoring and alert system.

Example Use Cases for Monitoring and Alerts

To better understand the significance of monitoring and alerts in live video streaming, let’s explore some example use cases:

1. Live sports broadcasting:

• Scenario: During a live sports event, maintaining high availability and error-free delivery is crucial for an engaging viewer experience.
• Monitoring: Continuously track the health of main and backup transmission paths, typically demarcation points from key equipment suppliers that are the responsibility of the team monitoring the equipment. Often an “off-air” confidence monitor, showing what the “viewer at home” is seeing. 
• Alerts: Set up alerts for core supplier demarcation points, increased error rates, or system downgrades to immediately address any issues. Measure system enhancements such as graphics systems separately so they can be bypassed if required.

2. Virtual conferences and webinars:

• Scenario: Hosting a virtual conference with multiple speakers and interactive sessions requires smooth transitions and minimal disruptions.
• Monitoring: Typically far fewer equipment suppliers and components will be involved, so aggregation can be leveraged to streamline the number of monitoring points. Monitor stream health, website load, and participant connectivity.
• Alerts: Trigger alerts for server overloads, participant dropouts, or stream interruptions to quickly deploy backup resources or troubleshoot connectivity problems.

3. Gaming streams:

• Scenario: Streaming a live gaming session where real-time interaction with viewers is key to maintaining engagement.
• Monitoring: Keep an eye on frame rates, latency, and viewer engagement metrics. Larger events have also become similar to live sporting events, and will have similar requirements to those listed above. 
• Alerts: Set alerts for frame rate drops, increased latency, or significant drops in viewer engagement, allowing for immediate corrective actions.

4. News broadcasting:

• Scenario: Broadcasting live news where timeliness and reliability are critical.
• Monitoring: Continuously track the health of main and backup transmission paths, typically demarcation points from key equipment suppliers that are the responsibility of the team monitoring the equipment. Often an “off-air” confidence monitor, showing what the “viewer at home” is seeing. Check latency and your rivals – if you’re not first you’re last. 
• Alerts: Generate alters similar to live sports events, with additional attention paid to the multiple platforms being delivered to and confidence monitors, typically news needs to be on as many screens as possible.

5. 24/7 Live Linear Channels

• Scenario: Broadcasting 24/7 linear channel services that are always serving content to users. 
• Monitoring: Multiple outputs from key infrastructure components in the chain, typically demarcation points from key equipment suppliers that are the responsibility of the team monitoring the equipment. Often an “off-air” confidence monitor, showing what the “viewer at home” is seeing. 
• Alerts: Set up alerts for core supplier demarcation points, increased error rates, or system downgrades to immediately address any issues. Every service should have the main (most popular/most viewed) off-air platform monitored for each service. If there is an issue there, you’ll want to be able to resolve and direct engineering support teams as efficiently as possible.

Recommended Monitoring and Alerting Tools

At an extremely simplified and high level, here are some of the demarcation points in a signal chain and segments of similar equipment in a transmission path. For each category we provide a list of products that can be used to implement a robust monitoring and alerting workflow for live video streaming, they are by no means exhaustive or an endorsement of any particular solution:

A. Aggregated Mass Notification Systems
These solutions would typically be used as endpoints for pub/sub or push notifications from multiple systems, aggregating alerts from multiple manufacturers to display the health of a single service, or providing a holistic view of a technology platform. Here we have split the tools into two categories, Data and Media, because you would want to aggregate alarms and health monitoring into a single interface, and separately you would also want to see and hear media into a single large display. 

Data

1. New Relic
   • Features: Offers real-time performance monitoring, error tracking, and alerting for server and application performance.
   • Use Case: Ideal for monitoring server load, response times, and application health during live streaming.
2. Datadog
   • Features: Provides end-to-end monitoring with detailed analytics, real-time alerts, and integrations with various streaming platforms.
   • Use Case: Suitable for comprehensive monitoring of video quality, latency, and server performance.
3. DataMiner by Skyline Communications
   • Features: Offers end-to-end monitoring, fault management, and performance analytics specifically designed for media and broadcasting industries.
   • Use Case: Best for comprehensive monitoring of entire broadcast chains, optimising resource management, and ensuring high-quality content delivery.
4. Prometheus and Grafana
   • Features: Prometheus offers powerful time-series monitoring, and Grafana provides flexible and interactive visualisations.
   • Use Case: Effective for creating customised dashboards to monitor various metrics such as server performance, video bitrate, and latency.
5. Databricks
   • Features: Offers a data aggregation platform to collect metrics from multiple data sources, across a software stack. Uses AI models to provide insights and elevated reporting. 
   • Use Case: Offering a great overview of entire plant operations, supporting troubleshooting by technical teams, observability for operations and data insights in terms of performance for executive stakeholders. 
6. Nagios
   • Features: An open-source platform that can be used to build live dashboards monitoring systems with multiple components taking alerts via API calls, SNMP or pub/sub webhooks. Also has a great log collector function for root cause analysis. 
   • Use Case: For anyone looking to invest significant time to build a comprehensive solution, this is a great tool that can be customised and useful for operations and engineering teams. 

Media

7. Grass Valley
   • Features: Grass Valley Kaleido Multiviewers are configurable multi input software that comes available with a range of input interfaces and models. They can display multiple video, audio and data sources in a single video wall and issue alerts. 
   • Use Case: Suitable for a modular based approach, where future scalability is key. Could monitor signals in each step of the chain.  
8. Imagine Communications
   • Features: Selenio and Platinum products are ideal for production environments where high bitrate video input sources need to be monitored.  
   • Use Case: Live production studios and control rooms, or playout centres distribution content up to Transmission. 
9. TAG Video
   • Features: TAG Video is dedicated to building monitoring solutions for multiviewers, monitoring and data analysis products. The platform supports a wide range of input interfaces and models. They can display multiple video, audio and data sources in a single video wall and issue alerts. 
   • Use Case: Suitable for monitoring a holistic overview of each step of the chain.  

B. Acquisition
Products and components at this part of the chain are responsible for capturing the video, audio and data sources. Monitoring tools here for a production workflow would normally be test and measurement devices to ensure the equipment is properly calibrated and that the output from the devices meets certain specifications. Typically this is the most critical part of the chain, where it’s much harder to have back-up devices ready to take over.

1. Leader
   • Features: Waveform monitors and rasterizers display a range of scopes for measuring uncompressed video signals over SDI or IP. A great range of products from high to mid-end. 
   • Use Case: Measuring signal health, and error rates and also line-up ensuring correct calibration.
2. Telestream
   • Features: The company’s waveform monitors and rasterizers display a range of scopes for measuring uncompressed video signals over SDI or IP. 
   • Use Case: Measuring signal health, and error rates and also line-up ensuring correct calibration. Useful in the camera control rooms, post production facilities and Quality Control. 
3. TSL Systems
   • Features: Provides audio metering products to measure level, loudness, signal presence and phasing. 
   • Use Case: Audio monitoring for signal levels and integrity in any customer acquisition environment. 
4. Leader/PHABRIX
   • Features: Also from Leader, but the popular portable handheld devices are well known as a standalone brand to any engineer working with baseband video. The devices can generate signals and analyse them using a multitude of scopes, in robust cases with a long battery life and high quality screen and simple controls. 
   • Use Case: An essential tool for analysing a host of different components in a chain during installation, routine maintenance or during fault finding. 

C. Processing & Routing

1. Bridge Technologies
   • Features: Specialists in monitoring probes of signals at different stages of the production train, able to measure uncompressed signals, compressed contribution (Transmission), compressed domain (Distribution) and off-air platforms. 
   • Use Case: Provides signal quality and health in a holistic manner, measuring the muxed video, audio and data streams in a consolidated signal. 
2. Interra Systems
   • Features: Provide quality control software for measuring the signal quality, in terms of artefacts and content quality (perceptual visual and audio quality). 
   • Use Case: Can be used to measure content according to a set of business rules and allow teams to manage bulk content and alert operators on request. 

D. Transmission

1. Bridge Technologies
   • Features: Specialists in monitoring probes of signals at different stages of the production train, able to measure uncompressed signals, compressed contribution (Transmission), compressed domain (Distribution) and off-air platforms. 
   • Use Case: Provides signal quality and health in a holistic manner, measuring the muxed video, audio and data streams in a consolidated signal. 
2. IMAX
   • Features: Using StreamSmart and StreamAware, deploy monitoring solutions such as quality probing software measuring quality from multiple points along a transmission path using SSIM quality metrics. 
   • Use Case: To ensure that a benchmark of audio and video quality is met and maintained throughout the transmission path. 
3. Interra Systems
   • Features: Provide quality control software for measuring the signal quality, in terms of artefacts and content quality (perceptual visual and audio quality). 
   • Use Case: Can be used to measure content according to a set of business rules and allow teams to manage bulk content and alert operators on request. 

E. Distribution

1. Hydrolix
   • Features: Offering a data lake platform that can capture vast quantities of logging information across a distribution platform and make that queryable via an indexed search. 
   • Use Case: A perfect tool for teams responsible for monitoring multiple content delivery networks and security platforms.  
2. PROMAX ELECTRONICS
   • Features: A range of tooling for monitoring MPEG encoders and POPs for distribution of content over DTTV, Satellite and Cable Optical Delivery Networks. 
   • Use Case: Companies managing multiple distribution traditional broadcast network. 
3. Touchstream
   • Features: Observability tools for monitoring media distribution over CDNs, monitoring performance and health of network distribution. Additionally providing a virtual NOC for monitoring the health of key components in the OTT transmission path from Encoder to OTT devices. 
   • Use Case: Tools are crafted for teams looking for greater observability over OTT distribution paths. 

F. Off-Air Platforms

1. Bridge Technologies
   • Features: Specialists in monitoring probes of signals at different stages of the production train, able to measure uncompressed signals, compressed contribution (Transmission), compressed domain (Distribution) and off-air platforms. 
   • Use Case: Provides signal quality and health in a holistic manner, measuring the muxed video, audio and data streams in a consolidated signal. 
2. IMAX
   • Features: Using StreamSmart and StreamAware, deploy monitoring solutions such as quality probing software measuring quality from multiple points along a transmission path using SSIM quality metrics. 
   • Use Case: To ensure that a benchmark of audio and video quality is met and maintained throughout the transmission path. 
3. Interra Systems
   • Features: Provide quality control software for measuring the signal quality, in terms of artefacts and content quality (perceptual visual and audio quality). 
   • Use Case: Can be used to measure content according to a set of business rules and allow teams to manage bulk content and alert operators on request. 
4. Bitmovin Analytics
   • Features: Focuses specifically on video streaming with detailed insights into video performance, viewer engagement, and quality of experience.
   • Use Case: Excellent for monitoring video quality metrics, buffer health, and viewer engagement in real time.

G. Managed Service Providers

1. Stream AMG
   • Features: Leading sports OTT platform provider that allows clubs, leagues, rights holders and more to build online video services to monetize their content.
   • Use Case: Integrate with their “Headless OTT” or use their full end-to-end solution for live video delivery, monetization, engagement, analytics and content protection.
2. M2A Media
   • Features: Automation and orchestration of AWS Media Services for premier live events. 
   • Use Case: Operations teams can use M2A interfaces to build, monitor and capture live streaming video content running on AWS, without any cloud or dev skills necessary. 
3. LTN Global
   • Features: High-quality video transport and distribution services. Ultra-low latency video delivery, cloud-based media workflows, live productions tools and comprehensive monitoring. 
   • Use Case: Real-time news coverage and remote guest contributions. Live sports events and cloud-based, remote media production. 
4. Telstra Broadcast Services
   • Features: Comprehensive media and broadcast solutions provider with global low-latency media network. Specialists in live events and media workflow solutions.
   • Use Case: Live sports broadcasting and remote production; Festival, concert and event streaming. 
5. Irdeto
   • Features: Managed broadcast and online content distribution infrastructure; Design, build and optimise new video platforms. 
   • Use Case: Video compression and delivery network management, high-profile event management.

Conclusion

In the dynamic world of live video streaming, maintaining a seamless and high-quality viewer experience is paramount. Monitoring and alerts play a crucial role in achieving this by ensuring that potential issues are identified and addressed promptly. By implementing robust monitoring and alerting systems, streamers can enhance their service reliability, optimise resources, and ultimately deliver an outstanding experience to their audience.

The post The Importance of Observability in Live Video Streaming appeared first on Bitmovin.

Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference is an annual event used to showcase new software and technologies in the Apple ecosystem. It was created with developers in mind, but sometimes new hardware and devices are announced and its keynote presentations have become must-see events for a much wider audience. There is also usually news about changes and additions to the HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) spec and associated video playback APIs. These HLS updates are often necessary to support new features and capabilities of the announced OS and hardware updates. This post will expand on Apple’s “What’s new in HTTP Live Streaming” document, with additional context for the latest developments that content creators, developers, and streaming services should be aware of.

The lastest HLS updates for 2024

The first draft of the HLS spec (draft-pantos-http-live-streaming) was posted in 2009, then superseded by RFC 8216 in 2017. There are usually draft updates published once or twice per year with significant updates and enhancements. A draft proposal was shared on June 7, that details proposed changes to the spec to be added later this year. Let’s look at some of the highlights below. 

Updated Interstitial attributes

In May 2021, Apple introduced HLS Interstitials to make it easier to create and deliver interstitial content like branding bumpers and mid-roll ads. Now, new attributes have been introduced for Interstitial EXT-X-DATERANGE tags, aimed at enhancing viewer experience and operational flexibility. 

1. X-CONTENT-MAY-VARY: This attribute provides a hint regarding coordinated playback across multiple players. It can be set to “YES” or “NO”, indicating whether all players receive the same interstitial content or not. If X-CONTENT-MAY-VARY is missing, it will be considered to have a value of “YES”.

2. X-TIMELINE-OCCUPIES: Determines if the interstitial should appear as a single point “POINT” or a range “RANGE” on the playback timeline. If X-TIMELINE-OCCUPIES is missing, it will be considered to have a value of “POINT”. “RANGE” is expected to be used for ads in live content.

3. X-TIMELINE-STYLE: Specifies the presentation style of the interstitial—either as a “HIGHLIGHT” separate from the content or as “PRIMARY”, integrated with the main media. If X-TIMELINE-STYLE is missing, it is considered to have a value of “HIGHLIGHT”. The “PRIMARY” value is expected to be used for content like ratings bumpers and post-roll dub cards. 

More detail is available in the WWDC Session “Enhance ad experiences with HLS interstitials“.

Signal enhancements for High Dynamic Range (HDR) and timed metadata

HDR10+

Previously, the specification had not defined how to signal HDR10+ content in a multi-variant HLS playlist. Now you can use the SUPPLEMENTAL-CODECS attribute with the appropriate format, followed by a slash and then the brand (‘cdm4’ for HDR10+). The example Apple provided shows the expected syntax: SUPPLEMENTAL-CODECS=”hvc1.2.20000000.L123.B0/cdm4″. For a long time, HDR10+ was only supported on Samsung and some Panasonic TVs, but in recent years it has been added by other TV brands and dedicated streaming devices like Apple TV 4K and a few Roku models.

Dolby Vision with AV1

Dolby Vision has been the more popular and widespread dynamic HDR format (compared to HDR10+) and now with Apple adding AV1 decoders in their latest generation of processors, they’ve defined how to signal that content within HLS playlists. They are using Dolby Vision Profile 10, which is Dolby’s 10-bit AV1 aware profile. HLS will now support 3 different Dolby Vision profiles: 10, 10.1 and 10.4. Profile 10 is “true” Dolby Vision, 10.1 is their backward compatible version of HDR10 and 10.4 their backward compatible version of Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG). For profiles 10.1 and 10.4, you need to use a SUPPLEMENTAL-CODECS brand attribute and the correct VIDEO-RANGE. For these, 10.1 should use ‘db1p’ and PQ, and 10.4 should use ‘db4h’ and HLG. The full example codec string they provided is: CODECS=”av01.0.13M.10.0.112″,SUPPLEMENTAL-CODECS=”dav1.10.09/db4h”,VIDEO-RANGE=HLG.

If you’re interested in Apple’s overall AV1 Support, you can find more details in this blog post.

Enhanced timed metadata support

HLS now supports multiple concurrent metadata tracks within Fragmented MP4 files, enabling richer media experiences with timed metadata (‘mebx’) tracks. This will enable new opportunities for integrating interactive elements and dynamic content within HLS streams. .

Metrics and logging advancements

The introduction of the AVMetrics API to AVFoundation will allow developers to monitor performance and playback events. This opt-in interface lets you select which subsets of events to monitor and provides detailed insights into media playback, allowing you to optimize streaming experiences further.

More details are available in the AVFoundation documentation and the WWDC 2024 session “Discover media performance metrics in AVFoundation”.

Common Media Client Data (CMCD) standard integration

HLS now supports the CMCD standard, enhancing Quality of Service (QoS) monitoring and delivery optimization through player and CDN interactions. AVPlayer only implemented the preferred mode of transmitting data via HTTP request headers. They have not included support for all of the defined keys and for now is only supported in iOS and tvOS v18 and above. There was no mention of support in Safari. 

Bitmovin and Akamai debuted our joint CMCD solution at NAB 2023. You can learn more in our blog post or check out our demo.

FairPlay content decryption key management

As part of ongoing improvements, HLS is deprecating AVAssetResourceLoader for key loading in favor of AVContentKeySession. AVContentKeySession was first introduced at WWDC 2018 and until now, Apple had been supporting both methods of key loading for content protection in parallel. Using AVContentKeySession promises more flexibility and reliability in content key management, aligning with evolving security and operational requirements. This move means any existing use of AVAssetResourceLoader must be transitioned to AVContentKeySession. 

Conclusion

The recent HLS updates show Apple’s commitment to enhancing media streaming capabilities across diverse platforms and scenarios. For developers and content providers, staying updated with these advancements not only ensures compliance with the latest standards but also unlocks new opportunities to deliver compelling streaming experiences to audiences worldwide. 

If you’re interested in being notified about all of the latest HLS updates or you want to request features or provide feedback, you can subscribe to the IETF hls-interest group.

The post WWDC 2024 HLS Updates for Video Developers appeared first on Bitmovin.

Apple made waves across the video encoding and streaming communities when they announced the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max would have a dedicated AV1 hardware decoder, making them the first Apple devices with official AV1 codec support. We’ve compiled all the details from their announcement, the HLS interest group, and product release notes to bring you everything you need to know about Apple AV1 codec support. If you’re looking for more information about AV1 playback on Android, Smart TVs and set-top boxes, you can find more information at https://bitmovin.com/av1-playback-support/. Otherwise, keep reading to learn more!

• Hints that Apple AV1 support was coming
• iPhone 15 Pro announcement
• More details about HDR, DRM, HLS and Safari support for AV1
• Apple M3 processor announcement
• Apple M4 processor iPad announcement
• AV1 Software Decoding Support?
• Ready to take advantage of AV1 Encoding?
• Related links

Hints that Apple AV1 support was coming

Prior to the iPhone 15 announcement in September 2023, there were several indications that Apple would eventually support AV1. Back in 2018, Apple joined the Alliance for Open Media, the organization responsible for creating and promoting AV1 encoding and many took it as a sign that Apple would eventually support AV1. More recently, updates to Apple’s AVFoundation core media framework showed the addition of a new global variable “kCMVideoCodecType_AV1“, and earlier in 2023, the Safari 16.4 Beta release notes actually showed AV1 support was coming, but it was removed without comment shortly after and never added to Safari 16. AV1 WebCodecs support did eventually become available as an experimental  option in the Safari Technology Preview, but enabling it didn’t seem to have any effect.

Still with all of these hints being dropped, the announcements of Apple’s M series of processors and the most recent update to the HLS draft specification in May 2023 all came and went with no mention of AV1. Everyone who was paying close attention and anticipating Apple AV1 support was left disappointed, especially knowing how much weight their decision carried for the rest of the streaming ecosystem. Overall AV1 adoption has been slower than many had hoped and expected, and Apple’s lack of support was often cited as a reason to wait and avoid updating video encoding stacks. 

iPhone 15 Pro announcement

This all changed on September 12, 2023, when Apple announced their new A17 Pro mobile processor would include support for AV1 hardware decoding. You can watch the full replay here, with the section about the 15 Pro’s new processor beginning at 1:01:20. VP of the Apple Silicon Engineering Group, Sribalan Santhanam presented the new A-series processor and shared details about the industry’s first 3 nm chip, including a 6-core CPU and a new Pro-class, 6-core GPU. It also has a 16-core neural engine that can process up to 35 trillion operations per second and run machine learning models on the device, without sending personal data to the cloud. It also includes a dedicated engine for Apple’s own ProRes codec in addition to the big one for video streaming services, the AV1 hardware decoder. 

“We also included a dedicated AV1 decoder, enabling more efficient and high-quality video experiences for streaming services.”

Sribalan Santhanam – VP, Apple Silicon Engineering Group

More details about HDR, DRM, HLS and Safari support for AV1

After the presentation, co-author of the HLS specification Roger Pantos shared more details via the hls-interest mailing list. He confirmed that indeed, that both the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max would be the first Apple devices with hardware decoding support for AV1 video content. The dedicated hardware meant that in addition to Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) content, it would also support High Dynamic Range (HDR10) as well as content that was protected by FairPlay Streaming DRM, things that software decoders typically cannot handle well or securely. Playback would be supported in Apple’s native AVPlayer or AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer, including using Media Source Extensions (MSE), or Managed Media Source (MMS) as Apple calls their new version, under an experimental setting on iOS Safari.

HLS playback of AV1 will work without any new signaling requirements, just the regular CODEC and VIDEO-RANGE attributes. The SCORE attribute can also be used to force the playback client to prefer AV1 over other encodings, but renditions encoded with AVC and/or HEVC should still be included for older devices and AirPlay support. The WebKit blog provided more information about Safari 17.0, confirming support for the AV1 video codec was added on devices with hardware decoding support. They also shared this html code snippet for presenting single-file progressive video that has been encoded with AV1, HEVC and VP9, which allows the browser to choose the best option for playback. It should be noted that outside of very short clips, adaptive streaming with HLS is preferred over progressive streaming in order to provide the best quality of experience and bandwidth efficiency.

The ‘type’ attribute signals the type of container being used and ‘codecs’ parameter string lets the browser know which codec was used and other characteristics like profile, level, color space, bit depth and dynamic range. This informs the browser and lets it decide whether it supports those attributes or needs to fall back on an older codec. It’s also possible to use a simpler codecs=”av01”, but it’s best to provide as much detail as possible if you can. More information on the AV1 codecs parameter string from the Alliance for Open Media can be found here, and details about codec and profile parameters are available in this IETF doc. 

While not directly related to the Apple AV1 news, Safari 17.0 also added a new media player stats overlay similar to YouTube’s “stats for nerds”. This is a nice addition for video developers doing any troubleshooting and will be very helpful as people begin experimenting with adding AV1 encoding. It’s available to anyone who checks the “Show features for web developers” box in the advanced settings of Safari.  

Apple M3 processor announcement

In late October 2023, Apple announced their newest generation of desktop processors would include AV1 hardware decoders. This includes the M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, meaning all new models of Macbooks, iMacs and desktop computers with an M3 processor will support AV1 video playback. Some were disappointed that the M3 did not also include support for AV1 encoding, but for video playback, the decoding is all that really matters, so this will be another nice wave of new devices that streaming services can target with AV1 encoded video. 

Apple M4 processor iPad announcement

Announced in May 2024, the new iPad Pro is powered by Apple’s latest system on a chip, the M4. The media engine of the M4 supports multiple codecs, including H.264, HEVC, ProRes and now AV1, making it the most advanced media processor ever in an iPad. With this, Apple continues their march toward full AV1 support. Will the Vision Pro 2 be next?

Apple AV1 Dolby Vision Support

Usually around the time of Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference there are some new updates or features around HLS and AVPlayer. During WWDC24, Apple shared a “What’s new in HTTP Live Streaming 2024” doc with several interesting new additions. For AV1 specifically, they called out support for using Dolby Vision Profile 10, which is Dolby’s 10-bit AV1 aware profile. Apple now supports 3 different Dolby Vision profiles: 10, 10.1 and 10.4. Profile 10 is “true” Dolby Vision, 10.1 is their backward compatible version of HDR10 and 10.4 their backward compatible version of Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG). For profiles 10.1 and 10.4, you need to use a SUPPLEMENTAL-CODECS attribute and the correct VIDEO-RANGE. For these, 10.1 should use ‘db1p’ and PQ, and 10.4 should use ‘db4h’ and HLG. The full example codec string they provided is: CODECS=”av01.0.13M.10.0.112″,SUPPLEMENTAL-CODECS=”dav1.10.09/db4h”,VIDEO-RANGE=HLG.

AV1 Software Decoding Support?

When Apple released the iPhone 6s with the A9 chip, it became the first iOS device to support HEVC(H.265) hardware decoding, which included support for FairPlay Streaming with HEVC. When this happened, they also included an HEVC software decoder as part of the next iOS and macOS updates for older devices without hardware support. While the software decoding didn’t support FairPlay Streaming, it was still a big boost for HEVC support and was one of the first things we wondered about after seeing the AV1 decoder announcement.

Unfortunately when asked, Roger Pantos shared that Apple would not be shipping an AV1 video software decoder at this time. He did confirm that iOS 17 does include some AV1 codec support, but only for still images using the Alliance for Open Media’s AVIF format. For now, we can only hope that AV1 video software decoding (like Meta is already using in their iOS apps) will be coming soon.

Ready to take advantage of AV1 Encoding?

Bitmovin has been ready for AV1 adoption to spread for some time now, dating back to 2017 when we partnered with Mozilla to enable AV1 playback in the Firefox browser using the Bitmovin Player. We’ve added AV1 codec support to our Per-Title and 3-pass encoding optimizations and just recently made AV1 encoding available in our dashboard UI, so now you can perform your first AV1 encode without any code, API calls, or configuration necessary! Bitmovin’s AV1 encoding has supported DASH streaming together with Widevine content protection for a long time, but we’ve now also added support for fMP4 in HLS playlists together with FairPlay content protection to take advantage of Apple AV1 support for premium content. It’s also available in our free trial, so there’s never been a better time to check it out and begin taking advantage of the bandwidth savings and quality improvements that AV1 can provide. 

Click here to start your free trial today!

Related links

• Read the latest info about our AV1 playback support and device testing here.
• Learn how using Bitmovin’s Per-Title Encoding together with AV1 can let you stream 4K video at bitrates that had been limited to Standard Definition with older codecs. 
• Check out our AV1 hub and download our datasheet to learn all about the codec’s development, performance and how it can lower your CDN costs.

The post Everything you need to know about Apple AV1 Support appeared first on Bitmovin.

Table of Contents

This post covers some recent updates, focusing on the new Firefox AV1 support in Encrypted Media Extensions. Bitmovin has been supporting and advocating for use of the AV1 codec for several years, even though there have been gaps in playback support preventing adoption for some workflows. Slowly but surely, those gaps are being filled and the reasons not to use AV1 are going away. Keep reading to learn more.

Firefox 125 adds support for encrypted AV1

A couple of years ago, Bitmovin began testing several different combinations of AV1 encoding, muxing and DRM support across browsers and playback devices. We were somewhat surprised to learn that even though Firefox was the first major browser to support AV1 playback, they had not implemented support for encrypted AV1 as they had for other codecs. We found there was actually an open bug/request filed 5 years ago. 

Shortly after we began watching closely, there was an update…

Ouch. Once the ticket got reassigned, Bitmovin got involved and gave our feedback that for premium/studio content, this support would be needed soon. We also provided a Widevine-protected sample for them to use in testing. Fast-forward to this spring, we saw some action on the ticket and support for AV1 with Encrypted Media Extensions was officially added to Firefox 125!

This means premium content workflows can now use AV1 on all of the major desktop browsers. Apple added support to Safari last fall, including with FairPlay Streaming, but for now it’s limited to devices with AV1 hardware decoders (iPhone 15 Pro, iPad Pro, new Macs with M3 processors).

Previous Bitmovin and Firefox AV1 collaboration

Way back in 2017, before the AV1 spec was finalized, Bitmovin and Firefox collaborated on the first HTML5 AV1 playback. Because the bitstream was still under development and subject to change, Bitmovin and Mozilla agreed on a common codec string to ensure compatibility between the version in the Bitmovin encoder and the decoder in Mozilla Firefox. It was made available in Mozilla’s experimental development version, Firefox Nightly, for users to manually enable. 

Even earlier in 2017, Bitmovin demonstrated the first broadcast quality AV1 live stream at NAB, winning a Best of Show award from Streaming Media Magazine. 

Other recent AV1 playback updates

Android adds dav1d decoder

In March 2024, VideoLAN’s “dav1d” became available to all Android devices running Android 12 or higher. Apps need to opt-in to using AV1 for now, but according to Google, most devices can at least keep up with software decoding of 720p 30fps video. YouTube initially opted to begin using dav1d on devices without a hardware decoder, but may have reverted that decision, likely due to battery concerns on phones. For plug-in Android devices, dav1d is still a great option and a welcome addition to the ecosystem.

iPad Pro gets AV1 playback support with M4 processor

In early May 2024, Apple continued their march toward full AV1 support with the announcement of their new M4 chip, which will power the new iPad Pro. The Media Engine of M4 is the most advanced to come to iPad, supporting several popular video codecs, like H.264, HEVC, and ProRes, in addition to AV1.

Ready to get started with AV1?

Bitmovin has added AV1 codec support to our Per-Title and 3-pass encoding optimizations and made AV1 encoding available in our dashboard UI, so now you can perform your first AV1 encode without any code, API calls, or configuration necessary! Bitmovin’s AV1 encoding has supported DASH streaming together with Widevine content protection for a long time, but we’ve now also added support for fMP4 in HLS playlists together with FairPlay content protection to take advantage of Apple AV1 support for premium content. It’s also available in our free trial, so there’s never been a better time to check it out and begin taking advantage of the bandwidth savings and quality improvements that AV1 can provide.

Related Links

Website: Bitmovin’s AV1 hub   

Blog: State of AV1 Playback Support

Blog: Everything you need to know about Apple’s AV1 Support

Blog: 4K video at SD bitrates with AV1

The post New Firefox AV1 support for Encrypted Media Extensions appeared first on Bitmovin.

In this post, I’ll be taking a look at the current state of AV1 playback support, covering which browsers, mobile devices, smart TVs, consoles and streaming sticks are compatible with the AV1 codec right now.  I’ll also touch on some of the incredible bandwidth savings companies like Netflix are seeing with AV1 and detail the latest announcements, rumors and speculation around future AV1 playback support.

AV1: The Story So Far (2017-2023)

Back in 2017, Bitmovin debuted the world’s first AV1 live encoding at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, earning a Best of NAB award. While it was an exciting proof of concept at the time, AV1 playback support was extremely limited and large-scale production usage wouldn’t come until years later. In 2020, YouTube and Netflix began delivering AV1 to the first compatible Android devices, and last year Netflix shared details about their expanded use of AV1 for 4K streams.

Netflix also published a report that showed over the course of one month in early 2022, 21% of their streamed content benefited from the most recent improvements in codec efficiency, like Per-Title optimized AV1 and HEVC. They estimated that without those improvements, total Netflix traffic globally would have been around 24% higher, proving that you can see massive bandwidth and overall cost savings by encoding just a portion of your most popular content with AV1.

Apple adds AV1 hardware decoding support to iPhone 15 Pro and new Macbooks

Many of us who have been tracking the adoption and progress of AV1 were disappointed when the announcements for Apple’s M-series processors over the past couple years did not include AV1 hardware decoding support. But on September 12, 2023, the big moment we’ve been waiting for finally arrived when Apple announced that the A17 Pro chip in their new iPhone 15 Pro would include a dedicated AV1 decoder. This is a big line in the sand for Apple and for the wider industry and will hopefully prove to be the day that revitalized interest and momentum for AV1 adoption across the industry.

“We also included a dedicated AV1 decoder, enabling more efficient and high-quality video experiences for streaming services.”

Sribalan Santhanam – VP, Apple Silicon Engineering Group

After the presentation, co-author of the HLS spec Roger Pantos shared more details via the hls-interest mailing list: 

The iPhone 15 Pro (both screen sizes) will be the first Apple product to support hardware decode of AV1 content. This includes SDR, HDR10, and content protected by FairPlay Streaming, played back through either AVPlayer or AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer (including MSE on Safari).

There is no new signaling necessary for HLS, just the regular content-specific values for the CODECS and VIDEO-RANGE attributes in the MVP. If you wish, you can use the SCORE attribute to make the client prefer AV1 over other encodings (but please continue to provide renditions encoded with AVC and/or HEVC for compatibility with earlier devices and AirPlay).

A month later in October 2023, Apple announced their newest generation of desktop processors would include AV1 hardware decoders. This includes the M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, meaning all new models of Macbooks, iMacs and desktop computers with an M3 processor will also support AV1 video playback.

Earlier in 2023, while everyone was waiting for Apple to officially support AV1, Meta took matters into their own hands, sharing how they brought AV1 to their Reels videos for Facebook and Instagram, including on iOS devices. This became possible through ongoing open source software decoding efficiency improvements, in particular with the dav1d decoder, developed by VideoLAN. Meta also said they believe for their video products, AV1 is the most viable codec for the coming years. The image below shows how they significantly improved visual quality with AV1 over VP9 and H.264, while keeping the bitrate constant.

At Bitmovin we also believe in the potential of AV1 and have explored the possibilities of software decoding on mobile devices. At a recent internal hackathon, one of our senior software engineers, Roland Kákonyi, built a custom iOS player using the dav1d decoder that was able to decode and smoothly play 1080p AV1 content. We’ll continue exploring this further as a way to fill gaps in playback coverage for devices lacking hardware support.

AV1 Playback Support News in 2024

Following 2023’s big announcements from Apple, 2024 got off to a strong start with Android, Firefox and (again) Apple adding new AV1 playback support. The barriers and arguments against adopting AV1 continue falling, slowly, but surely.

Android adds dav1d decoder

In March 2024, VideoLAN’s “dav1d” became available to all Android devices running Android 12 or higher. Apps need to opt-in to using AV1 for now, but according to Google, most devices can at least keep up with software decoding of 720p 30fps video. YouTube initially opted to begin using dav1d on devices without a hardware decoder, but may have reverted that decision, likely due to battery concerns on phones. For plug-in Android devices, dav1d is still a great option and a welcome addition to the ecosystem.

Firefox adds AV1 support in Encrypted Media Extensions

While Firefox was the first major browser to support AV1 playback, a long-standing bug (or lack of implementation) prevented DRM-protected AV1 from playing. When Apple added support to Safari for HLS + FairPlay streaming, it meant Firefox was the only major browser that still did not support premium, secure content. That changed in April 2024, when Firefox 125 added AV1 support in encrypted media extensions, meaning Widewine-protected AV1 is now supported.

iPad Pro gets AV1 playback support with M4 processor

In early May 2024, Apple continued their march toward full AV1 support with the announcement of their new M4 chip, which will power the new iPad Pro. The Media Engine of M4 is the most advanced to come to iPad, supporting several popular video codecs, like H.264, HEVC, and ProRes, in addition to AV1.

Current State of AV1 Playback support

To answer the question of current playback support as thoroughly as possible, we created several sample streams with different combinations of containers, muxings and DRM. While there will be some exceptions and omissions, especially when you go back to the 2021 and 2020 models, I’ll use the emojis below to show the general level of support you can expect from these platforms and brands right now and give the full results of our direct testing in the table at the end. 

• Fully Supported – Successful AV1 playback with all test streams, including DRM

• Partial or Documented Support – Successfully played at least one, but not all of our test streams OR the product documentation claims AV1 playback support, but has not yet been verified by Bitmovin

• Not Supported – AV1 playback not supported here currently

Browsers and Operating Systems

*Safari 17 or later, when a hardware decoder is present

**AV1 is also supported in Chrome and Firefox on macOS

Generally speaking, the Chrome browser and Android ecosystem handle AV1 well across phones, tablets, smart TVs and set-top boxes/streaming sticks. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Safari and iOS where support had been lacking until the iPhone 15 Pro announcement.

Firefox was the first major browser to support AV1, and recently Firefox 125 added support for AV1 in Encrypted Media Extensions, meaning Widevine-protected content is now playable.

The Edge browser on Windows 10 and later supports AV1, but you may need to install the free AV1 Video Extension from the Microsoft Store. 

For more details about the specific versions and less common browsers that support AV1, check out the table from CanIUse.com here. 

Smart TVs

As mentioned, Android handles AV1 quite nicely, which also applies to the Smart TVs running Android TV and Google TV operating systems. These include Sony Google TV models from 2021 on and many Amazon Fire TV models as far back as 2020. (FireOS is based on Android)

Samsung TVs (and phones) from late 2020 onward have AV1 hardware decoders and were mentioned by Netflix as some of the first outlets for their 4K AV1 content. 

LG has developer documentation stating AV1 is supported for their UHD TVs and projectors running WebOS 5.0 and above, although our testing on some 2020 models was unsuccessful.

Consoles and Streaming Sticks

Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max

Playstation 4 Pro

Xbox One

Roku Streaming Stick 4K

Playstation 4 Pro was also called out by Netflix as one of the targets for their 4K AV1 streams and it takes advantage of GPU-accelerated decoding. Netflix didn’t publicly mention delivering AV1 to Xbox One, but the same decode libraries that the PS4 Pro uses were first made available for Xbox One, so it should be possible.

The Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max has AV1 + DRM support, making it one of the cheapest and best options for giving older 4K TVs an AV1 upgrade. 

Roku is a little bit of a gray area at the moment. Officially, they still do not support AV1 as an adaptive streaming video codec, but newer models like the Roku Ultra that have a USB port do support AV1 playback via USB media. There does appear to be some level of support for AV1 adaptive streaming, as the YouTube “stats for nerds” overlay reveals a combination of AV1 video and opus audio playing on many of the popular recommended videos. Hopefully wider support is coming, but in the meantime, did confirm successful playback of our single file “progressive” AV1 MP4 files on the Streaming Stick 4K.

Looking Ahead: Future AV1 Playback Support

Even with gaps in support on some platforms, there is plenty of opportunity to see tangible bandwidth savings and quality improvements from AV1 right now and thankfully, the future looks even brighter. Intel, AMD, Samsung and Qualcomm have all announced additional AV1 support coming at the chip level.

Will Apple add AV1 software decoding support for older devices? 

There have been several indications that Apple would eventually support AV1. Apple joined the Alliance for Open Media, the organization responsible for creating and promoting AV1 encoding, back in 2018, which many took as a sign that Apple would eventually support it. We’re hopeful that with the addition of AV1 hardware decoding support to the iPhone Pro 15, iPad Pro and Macbooks, Apple will also add official HLS support and fallback software decoding for older devices that are capable.

Conclusion

While AV1 support and adoption has been on the rise and we’ve seen some encouraging announcements, universal support like we have with H.264 is just not there yet. That means AV1 will need to be part of a multi-codec approach for the foreseeable future, but that’s ok! Not that long ago, it took millions of views to offset the higher encoding costs of AV1, but with recent improvements, we’ve seen the break-even point drop to as low as 4,000 views! So for a whole lot of content, encoding with AV1 can already save you money right now and those savings will only increase as more supporting devices become available. 

Ready to get started with AV1 encoding? You can try it for free with a Bitmovin Trial, sign up here!

Video Codec	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Safari	Android Native	Android Web	iOS	Fire TV Max	Fire TV Max Web (Silk Browser)	Roku Streaming Stick 4K	Samsung Tizen (2020-2021)
fMP4 (DASH)
fMP4 with Widevine and Playready (DASH)
Single file “progressive” MP4 (.mp4)
Single file “progressive” MP4 + Widevine (DASH)
WebM (DASH)
WebM + Widevine (DASH)
Single file “progressive” WebM (DASH)
Single file “progressive” WebM + Widevine (DASH)
fMP4 (HLS)					–	–		–	–	–	–
fMP4 + Fairplay (HLS)					–	–		–	–	–	–

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We concluded the event with our first annual Bitmovin Innovators Network partner awards to recognize and celebrate the amazing work of our partners who embrace the fact that the industry is “Better Together”, by creating solutions with partners that are designed to simplify customers’ video workload needs and advance the viewing experience for audiences.

I am incredibly proud to share the winners of the Bitmovin Innovators Network partner awards below, and the contributions they’ve made: 

Accenture – Global Systems Integrator of the Year:

Accenture and Bitmovin exemplify the “better together” approach through their close strategic partnership, including an ongoing collaboration with the world’s largest motorsports content owners that led to joint engagements with several of the largest sports and media brands in the world.

Broadpeak – Global ISV Partner of the Year:

Broadpeak embodies the “Better Together” spirit through its unwavering strategic collaboration with Bitmovin. This powerful partnership has yielded several key benefits. Together, they have developed solutions that integrated with Bitmovin’s encoder, player, and analytics, resulting in improved workflows for customers; created a consistent two-way communication between sales teams which has resulted in successful deals with European media brands, and joint marketing and PR initiatives at local events to strengthen their joint brand presence.

MediaKind –  Global Service Provider Partner of the Year:

MediaKind and Bitmovin have developed and maintained a robust strategic partnership that has launched sports applications for world-renowned sports leagues. These applications, including launching an app with a sports league on Apple Vision Pro that garnered rave reviews at the Apple launch event, have significantly boosted market visibility for both brands.

Microsoft Azure Marketplace – Cloud Marketplace of the Year:

Bitmovin has had unprecedented success with the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, including more than 200 new customer wins since June 2023. Azure Marketplace has quickly become Bitmovin’s largest and most successful sales channel.

Nomad Media – Americas Regional Channel Partner of the Year:

Nomad Media has deployed over 30 customers on the Bitmovin Play platform in 2023 alone as part of its Nomad Media platform. Nomad Media has also innovated on the player capabilities with dynamic multi-view capabilities. These advancements were showcased to major US clients, propelling both companies forward. This collaboration not only built a strong pipeline but also significantly boosted brand recognition in the US market.

G&L Geißendörfer & Leschinsky – EMEA Regional Channel Partner of the Year:

G&L is a proactive and committed industry partner, who has worked with Bitmovin on both successful sales and marketing initiatives. The collaboration between the two companies resulted in joint revenue, a new logo, and G&L also exhibited on the Bitmovin stand at IBC 2023 where it highlighted how the two companies’ solutions work together. Bitmovin and G&L also hosted a joint CMCD webinar together, which attracted attendees from key German broadcasters and various telecoms and content providers, and it recently published an e-commerce case study with Home Shopping Europe.

Viet Communications – APAC Regional Channel Partner of the Year

Vietcoms was the first licensee for the Bitmovin Player in the Asia Pacific region. Vietcoms was selected for its hard work and efforts in securing our impressive player business in Vietnam and developing agile operational models to meet the specific customer and TelCo business needs and technical requirements.

Once again, I’d like to give huge congratulations to all the winners. A huge thank you to everyone who attended the Bitmovin Innovators Network Partner Executive Networking Event, and to every single one of our partners who continue to embrace the spirit of “Better Together.” IBC is just around the corner, and we will have some exciting initiatives and announcements coming soon to share with you ahead of the show.

The post The Bitmovin Innovators Network “Better Together” Award Winners! appeared first on Bitmovin.

What is RDK?

RDK stands for Reference Design Kit. It’s an open source software bundle for video, broadband and IoT devices. It’s commonly used in consumer devices which include video streaming apps, for example, set top boxes and is a popular development platform for service providers in the cable, satellite and OTT industries.

What is the RDK Tech Summit?

The RDK Tech Summit is a live gathering for RDK members worldwide to discuss technical advancements, new releases and innovations. It consists of presentation sessions grouped into themes, with regular networking breaks for discussions. This year’s summit was in Amsterdam, hosted by Liberty Global and Infosys.

Highlights from RDK Tech Summit 2024

Sessions were themed on the topics of:

• Connectivity: Next-Gen Networking
• Entertainment: Cloud Strategies and Firebolt
• Device Operations: Operational Monitoring & Test Automation
• Sustainability

Highlights included:

• The keynotes focused on collaboration, finding common challenges and working to solve them together. Liberty Global gave insight into how they build for, and support, a vast range of devices, across many years of manufacture. They highlighted the need for collaboration where there’s commonality and thinking about what’s common compared to differentiating your service.
• There was a deep dive on Automatics which is a test automation platform for RDK. This can handle the automation of running tests across many different test cases. During networking discussions, this was a hot topic and we learnt that Automatics is in use by a major telco.
• The Lightning team highlighted Lightning 3.0 with enhancements focused on performance, quality and a better developer experience. They also noted that Lightning was designed for lower power devices from the beginning, so it can achieve better performance than other recently popular development frameworks.
• Comcast introduced a layered build system for RDK, allowing component layers to be built independently, including application, middleware and vendor layers. This can speed up development & build times compared to a single monolithic build.
• Details about Firebolt 2.0 were shared together with Firebolt certifications and Firebolt Connect which is an automated test harness for apps running on RDK. 

Separately in the demonstration area Irdeto were showing their App Watch solution running on RDK. This aggregates apps and provides app launching functionality on RDK. 

Bitmovin’s RDK support

Bitmovin’s Playback supports the widest range of devices on the market today. This includes set top boxes. Bitmovin provides a common Player SDK which can be used across these platforms, enabling adaptive bitrate playback. 

A key challenge highlighted by many presenters & attendees was supporting the wide range of devices which consumers use today, some of which date back 5-7 years or more. It’s also not economically viable to scale engineering teams linearly with the growing number of devices that streaming services need to support. Leveraging a common video player across each device can increase the number of platforms which engineering teams can support, allowing them to focus on differentiating features ahead of common, core functionality. A vision which Bitmovin supports among the RDK community.

The data from Bitmovin’s annual Video Developer Report also illustrates the challenge of supporting multiple generations and a constant stream of new playback devices. When asked about the challenges video developers are facing, “Playback on all devices” is a mainstay near the top of the list, coming in at #3 in our most recent survey. 17% of respondents said they are currently supporting playback on RDK-powered set top boxes and another 9% said they planned to begin supporting them in the coming year. 

Bitmovin are a member of the RDK Open-Source Community and regularly attend RDK events including Tech Summits & Global Summits.

If you’d like to learn more about RDK and how Bitmovin can help, you can let us know in the comments, ask questions in the Bitmovin Community or contact us here. 

Related Links

RDK website

RDK Tech Summit 2024 website

Bitmovin Player SDK – RDK support

Bitmovin Player SDK – set top box support

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