Launching & managing a streaming service in today’s market can be a bit overwhelming, but it’s not for the reasons around the workflow that you’d normally think about. It’s actually about the number of devices you and your team have the capability of supporting. Audience reach is essential for any business and one major piece that is often overlooked is the difficulty around testing, supporting, and maintaining those devices to guarantee that you’re delivering the highest quality of experience with a Player on all of your supported platforms. This is an all too common occurrence in the industry and one we’ll address in this blog by going into: 

• The current state of streaming device fragmentation
• The two stream testing methods that are available for companies
• What Bitmovin is doing to make developers’ lives easier
• How you and your team can support more devices with less effort

Addressing Streaming Device Fragmentation

How many devices do I need to support for my streams?

The devices on the market that audiences are using to stream content are growing rapidly, especially when you account for older models and new ones arriving on the market. Streaming Device makers don’t show any signs of slowing down and are continuously upgrading or introducing new products for users to take advantage of, which can affect the streaming services trying to engage viewer segments. Here is a quick snapshot of just the major devices and platforms viewers stream from:

The current Landscape of Streaming Device Fragmentation

From phones, browsers, and TV suppliers to cars, USB devices, and game consoles, the ever-expanding device growth seems to have no end, and it’s becoming the norm.

Showing the strain it is taking on the streaming industry, another great example of streaming device fragmentation is how leading services support over 25 devices across 12 different platforms, which corresponds with what we’ve seen in the responses from our annual Video Developer Report and can be viewed in the graph below.

If streaming device fragmentation wasn’t concerning, viewer expectations for a better quality of experience across devices continue to rise, and from a study done by Parks Associates, the average household uses more than four different devices at any given moment. A bad viewing experience on any one of these platforms can risk poor press, negative app reviews, and even churn to other streaming services. 

Viewer Expectations of Available Streaming Devices

Soon enough, it will be unmanageable and difficult for any streaming service to support and create a good user experience across all devices, as they would have to physically own them to test the streaming experience.

What are the current ways to support more streaming devices?

There are two ways in which streaming services can guarantee user viewing experiences; manual testing & automated testing of their player on each device.

Standard Stream Testing Processes for devices

Both come at a high cost in terms of time and salaries, especially manual testing, as it requires your in-house or external agency team to build out a testing regimen that they must physically do and observe on a regular basis. Automated testing also comes at a high expense, as you would build it from scratch in-house or acquire a barebones solution. In the long term, this option tends to become more cost-effective & stable as you don’t constantly have your team dedicated to doing just that and let the automation do its thing. The major problem, however, is that you & your team must build out these testing parameters for each and every use case and device type that you intend to support, as both options for an automated testing solution don’t come preset with anything and require Q&A expertise and detailed knowledge of streaming video technology.

What is Stream Lab and how does it simplify my stream testing workflow

Now that we’ve gotten through the nitty-gritty of streaming device fragmentation, user demand, and current testing approaches, let’s get to the good news – there is light at the end of the tunnel. Testing has never been harder and more complex with all the issues identified. We saw and heard the need, rolled up our sleeves, and developed Stream Lab, which has been live for about 2 years now with over 2000 stream tests done weekly on actual devices. Check out our feature one sheet and also a quick video walkthrough of Stream Lab on the Bitmovin Dashboard below.

James Varndell, Director of Product Management – Playback, providing a walkthrough of Stream Lab

How we do it

Through partnerships with device makers, we were already testing our Player on physical devices in real streaming environments to guarantee the quality & functionality we were able to deliver to our clients. We also built out the use cases, as we’ve worked on many different workflows and were able to populate the needs across each device that our Player supports easily. Transitioning this and making it accessible on the Bitmovin Dashboard to our clients is where the major work came in, and since its launch, we have made !

Stream testing process for devices with Bitmovin Stream lab

Stream Lab was created to simplify your workflow and life as it makes testing, supporting, and managing playback on more devices easier. You and your team have full control over the testing scenarios, it comes pre-populated with use cases, doesn’t require you to have a large team and there is no need for extensive video knowledge. The best part of all is that it’s 100% automated and enables you to test with our industry-leading player that helps guarantee your audience has the best streaming experience on the platforms you want to test. All it takes is to follow the setup guidelines and submit your stream for the device you want to test on, and it will automatically set your stream for testing immediately and keep testing the stream on the device every two weeks.

Testing DRM-protected streams that are geo-fenced with VPN

DRM-protected content can now be tested across the devices available within Bitmovin’s Stream Lab, even if the content is limited in location, as it now supports the use of VPNs. This update enables broadcasters and streaming services to test and ensure smooth playback of geo-fenced content from anywhere in the world. This new feature ensures compliance with regional licensing laws and shows how DRM-protected streams function during Playback, providing a reliable and efficient means for testing devices without supporting them officially to guarantee both security and quality of service.

You can check out how to set it up in our developer docs on adding a new stream and also learn more about testing with specific DRM configurations and geo-fenced content.

Adding Quality of Experience metrics to testing functionality

Along with Bitmovin’s Stream Lab stream testing on actual devices, you can now visualize the Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics with our latest update. This innovative feature allows streaming platforms to delve into detailed analyses of their streams, examining pivotal aspects such as startup time, bitrate, buffering, error incidents, and more on the actual device. By integrating these metrics, Stream Lab offers an unparalleled ability for development teams to better understand their content’s performance across various conditions and devices. This granular insight allows platforms to support devices more easily and understand how their viewers experience their content, enabling them to enhance playback support where necessary.

Benefits of Stream Lab

Streaming services that use Stream Lab stand to see many benefits, but if we had to pick a favorite is that it essentially ensures quality of experience. Through the testing, you can ensure a greater viewer experience for your audience on the devices you test, which will ultimately help avoid churn. As it saves your team time and resources developing the use cases, they are able to prioritize other tasks that could be essential to your offering. It will also help your team and company save on budget, as you will be able to support more devices without needing more overhead. 

If you would like to try Stream Lab, sign up for a 30-day free trial today.

The post Bitmovin’s Stream Lab – The Latest Approach to Stream Testing, Support and Playback appeared first on Bitmovin.

This post was originally published in Nov. 2023. It was updated on Feb 19, 2024, with information about current applications that are available on the Apple Vision Pro.

Apple has always been great at creating hype around its new devices or features and getting millions of people to talk about and use them. This was especially true in September at this past IBC, when many conversations we had at our booth and on other stands included mention of Apple’s big announcement on supporting AV1 for the next version of their iOS devices. With their latest push into the AR/VR space, it’s no different. In early 2024, Apple is expected to release the Apple Vision Pro, which is set to be the next big device streaming services are getting ready to support. However, what does it look like to stream video on these devices, and how will it ensure a high-quality experience for viewers? 

In this blog, we will look at what Apple Vision Pro and visionOS are bringing to the table, the features and industries that can take advantage of it, and how Bitmovin’s Player is focused on supporting the new device.

What is Apple Vision Pro and visionOS?

Apple Vision Pro is an augmented reality (AR) headset announced in June 2023. It features a new three-dimensional interface that users can control with their eyes, hands, and voice. The headset is also powered by their latest operating system, visionOS, explicitly designed for spatial computing. Creating applications for visionOS is pretty straightforward, as Apple has streamlined the development process for all Apple platforms through Xcode. 

Xcode is Apple’s integrated developer environment application for those unfamiliar, enabling you to develop, test, and distribute apps for all Apple platforms. Because of this, our iOS Player team found it to be a very straightforward process to add the new platform to existing projects already deployed on iOS and tvOS. 

Does Apple Vision Pro and visionOS support video streaming?

The short answer is yes. The Apple Vision Pro was made with video as the focus and outputs superior picture and sound quality from its 23 million pixel resolution and dual-driver audio pods that enable an immersive experience for users. It supports up to 4K video, allowing streaming platforms to engage viewers with the highest quality live and on-demand content across browsers and dedicated applications.

Are there active applications streaming on Apple Vision Pro?

As the Apple Vision Pro just launched in the US (scheduled for Europe and other areas later in the year), there is currently a growing number of apps that are available or working to go live on the device. With its immersive augmented reality, every platform streaming video has the ability to provide its users with a way to “step into the screen” for a truly unique viewing experience. Some of the active applications that are offering a great viewer experience on the Apple Vision Pro are:

• NBA (check out a video of their app) and MLB and other sports leagues and broadcasters are bringing viewers onto the field with live games, replays, and stats.
• OTT platforms like Paramount+, Peacock, and others are giving their viewers a way to engage with content in any environment
• Social Media platforms like TikTok have users scrolling their feeds while using other apps at the same time

Which industries and use cases work on the Apple Vision Pro?

Depending on the industry and use case, Apple Vision Pro will be a great way for viewers to stream content. Some of these industries include: 

• Sports
  • Viewers will be able to watch their favorite sporting teams like never before with mixed reality capabilities.
    
• Entertainment and OTT platforms 
  • With 4K video and surround sound capabilities, streaming TV and movies will be a more immersive and personalized experience.

• Esports and gaming
  • Users will be able to follow the latest gaming events closer and stream their favorite gamers.

• Online events
  • With virtual conferences, concerts, and more, users will be able to engage and interact more with content they are interested in.

• Health and Fitness
  • Apple Vision Pro will be used to provide remote workouts, physical therapy, and rehabilitation sessions, making it easier for people to access care from the comfort of their own homes.

• Edtech and eLearning
  • Video learning will be more interactive and immersive, making learning and retaining information more accessible for students.

Does Bitmovin support video playback on Apple Vision Pro?

Yes, we do! As Apple Vision Pro will give users a new viewing experience, it’s vital for streaming platforms to integrate and keep a consistent video quality across all devices and browsers. With Bitmovin’s support for visionOS enabling video playback on Apple Vision Pro, integration is possible today. This makes Bitmovin’s Player the only video player on the market that officially supports visionOS, providing dev teams with a unified development experience across all Apple platforms with our iOS, tvOS, and visionOS SDK.

 Some of the features that are available with our iOS, tvOS, and visionOS SDK. See the whole feature by downloading our one sheet.

To further our development, we recently attended an Apple Vision Pro developer lab in Munich, where we got to test out the Bitmovin Player on physical Apple Vision Pro devices. It was essential to get this hands-on experience as we were able to see firsthand how our Player performed when streaming video up to 4K. Today, Playback capabilities on Vision Pro devices are similar to others in Apple’s ranges. However, Bitmovin will continue to support any additions to functionality or integrations that Apple may introduce to this new device type. You can see our latest SDK updates in our release updates.

The wrap-up

As the industry gets ready for the release of the Apple Vision Pro in 2024, it’s clear there are a lot of streaming platforms working to get to market and reach the new viewer base on the device. Ensuring playback is consistent and in the highest quality across every device will be key for streaming platforms in maintaining viewer retention and engagement. That is why Bitmovin continues to focus on supporting the broadest range of devices in the market and providing a robust integration and feature set to enable our customers to reach their viewers with the best quality of experience possible. 

If you want to know more about Bitmovin’s support for visionOS and playback on Apple Vision Pro, join the conversation in our Bitmovin Community, and if you want to test out our solution suite, sign up for our 30-day free trial.

The post Streaming Video on the Apple Vision Pro: Supporting visionOS with the Bitmovin Player appeared first on Bitmovin.

The AV1 Video Codec

First things first, what is AV1 and where does it come from? In September 2015 the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) was founded by leading companies from various industries with an association with media technology. Among them are browser vendors like Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft, hardware vendors like AMD, ARM, Intel, and NVIDIA, and content providers like Amazon and Netflix. The goal of the AOMedia is to develop an open, royalty-free, next-generation video coding format that is:

• Interoperable and open
• Optimized for the Internet
• Scalable to any modern device at any bandwidth
• Designed with a low computational footprint and optimized for hardware
• Capable of consistent, highest-quality, real-time video delivery, and
• Flexible for both commercial and non-commercial content, including user-generated content.

The new video coding format AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) is meant to replace Google’s VP9 and compete with HEVC/H265 from MPEG. The Alliance is targeting an improvement of about 50% over VP9/HEVC with only reasonable increases in encoding and playback complexity.
When comparing AV1 with HEVC, probably the biggest competitive advantage of AV1 will be that it is royalty-free, especially if we look at the still very uncertain royalty situation with HEVC. Currently, there are two patent pools with MPEG LA and MPEG Advance, plus some unknown HEVC IP owners who have not joined a pool yet. In the end, nobody will know how much you will need to pay in royalties for HEVC. This situation is obviously not satisfactory for the industry and especially, encoding, distribution, content, and hardware companies. (Download the AV1 Datasheet)

Bitmovin and AV1 Video Encoding as of 2024

We have made improvements to the core AV1 encoder in itself and have extensively benchmarked it against multiple practical use cases. The turnaround time and speed of encoding have improved by several orders of magnitude. And in regards to the quality, for the encoder version release v2.110.0, we found that AV1 can offer the same visual quality at 50% less bitrate for H.264/AVC and 30% less bitrate for H.265/HEVC respectively. That is a pretty significant gain!
In addition to the improvements to the core encoder itself, we have integrated AV1 with all the popular features that our customers have come to love. Here is a quick rundown : 

• Since encoder version 2.104.0, 3-pass encoding with AV1 is generally available. We have found that three-pass AV1 video encoding provides significantly better bitrate distribution compared to the regular 2-pass encoding.
• Since encoder version 2.109.0, Per-Title encoding with AV1 is available now. Per-Title is one of our biggest competitive advantages. We are proud to offer this also for AV1. 
• Since encoder version 2.110.0, AV1 video encoding offers three smart presets. This allows customers to choose an optimal tradeoff between the quality and speed of the AV1 encodings. 
• Since encoder version 2.187.0, AV1 video encoding can be used in HLS playlists, together with FairPlay content protection. This enables support for AV1 playback on compatible Apple devices like the iPhone 15 Pro and new laptops with Apple’s M3 processor.

Also at Bitmovin, we like to keep our promises . We promised seven years ago that we will not stop innovating around AV1 and that we will enable our customers in the best possible way with our AV1 solutions. We are excited to announce that we have kept our end of the bargain. We have developed two patent-pending technologies around AV1. We cannot delve into the details now but just to tease you out, it significantly improves the turnaround times for Per-Title and 3-pass encodings. Keep watching this space for more details about this soon!
And here is the cherry on top of all this. It’s easy to get all this awesome Per-Title ABR encoding together with the AV1 codec and DASH packaging in a SINGLE API call! Yes, it’s not a typo. We said SINGLE. Can you believe that !? What are you waiting for you? It’s easier than ever to get started with AV1. Try it and reach out to us if you have any questions! We are happy and excited to get you onboard with AV1.

How AV1 Video Encoding Development Works

The AV1 codec has its roots in the codebase of Google’s VP9/VP10 codec with an additional 77 experimental coding tools that have been added and are under consideration. Out of that 77 experimental coding tools, only 8 are currently enabled by default (adapt_scan, ref_mv, filter_7bit, reference_buffer, delte_q, tile_groups, rect_tx, cdef), but the performance of the codec is already appealing. The final goal is to get as many promising coding tools into the final version of the codec and afterward freeze the bitstream specification.
The following procedure explains the high-level process on how experiments can be added to the AV1 codec:

1. Coding tools are added as experiments into the AV1 codebase. They are controlled at build-time by flags (e.g., –enable-experimental –enable-<experiment-name>).
2. The hardware team (group of hardware members inside of AOMedia) reviews the experiments to ensure it can be implemented in hardware.
3. Each experiment needs to pass an IP review to ensure no IPs are violated.
4. Once reviews are passed the experiment can be enabled by default.

As of today, it is not sure which experiments will make it into the final codec. However, we want to highlight a few that look promising today:

Directional Deringing

It is an effective algorithm for removing ringing artifacts from a coded frame. It plugs in right at the end of the decoding process, so it is easy to integrate. Blocks are searched for an overall direction that is taken into account when applying a conditional replacement filter (CRF) to reduce the risk of blurring and only take obvious ringing patterns into account. It is currently enabled by default.

PVQ (Perceptual Vector Quantization)

This experiment was originally developed for the Daala codec and has the potential to bring a lot of gains, however, it is also quite difficult to integrate into AV1 because PVQ interacts with many other parts of a codec. Compared to the usual scalar quantization, PVQ offers a lot more flexibility to control quantization. It makes techniques like Chroma from Luma or Activity Masking easier. Activity Masking is trying to provide better resolution in low contrast areas. This can be achieved by varying the codebook which is possible with PVQ.

Chroma from Luma (CfL)

CfL is based on a rather simple idea: Take advantage of the fact that edges in the chroma plane are usually well correlated with those in the luma plane. As CfL works entirely in the frequency domain, it can be easily implemented using PVQ. Using PVQ, the chroma coefficients can be predicted from injected luma coefficients. It is a very promising tool as it is quite simple to compute and provides nice benefits with much cleaner colors.

Bitmovin AV1 VoD and Live Encoding

The Bitmovin encoding service now supports AV1 video encoding for VoD and Live. It is possible to encode AV1 with our cloud encoding service. Currently, AV1 video encoding with common encoding tools is a very time-consuming process, as can be seen in the below screenshot taken from a Lenovo T540p notebook with an i7-4800MQ, 8GB RAM running Ubuntu 14.04. It would take 8 hours and 42 minutes to encode a 1080p@24fps 40-second long sequence (Tears of Steel Teaser) with a target bitrate of 1.5Mbps.

The encoding runs with about 1.93 fpm (frames per minute) which would translate to 0.032 fps (frames per second). If you want to achieve real-time with 24 fps you would need at least 746 times the computing power on a single machine, which is not very practical in a real-world scenario. Clearly, we need another approach to encode with reasonable speeds, especially when it comes to live streaming.
Thanks to our chunk-based encoding approach that allows us to scale a single encoding among multiple instances we can encode AV1 with reasonable turnaround times and it’s also possible to use AV1 for live streams. Our chunked encoding allows us to speed up the encoding almost linearly with the number of instances that are added to the encoding cluster and this approach works with our cloud encoding the same way it works with our on-premise setups that are based on Kubernetes and Docker. Consequently, we can reach the same encoding speeds for AV1 that our customers have come to expect for H264, VP9, and HEVC encoding, which makes the codec effectively usable for media companies and content providers throughout the industry.

We also encoded the ToS teaser with our AV1 encoder in the cloud with the default configuration where we achieved 7 fps, which is about 219 times faster than what was achieved in the test with the Lenovo notebook. This is already pretty impressive however, we were not satisfied with the speed as it was still below real-time. So we tried with an enterprise set-up by just adding more instances to the encoding process. The resulting encoding speed was at 36 fps, which is about 1125 times faster than with the single Lenovo notebook.

In addition, we don’t have to compromise on quality for speed because our encoder does not need to sacrifice quality to reach a certain speed on a single instance as other encoding vendors typically do. With our approach we are not bound to the hardware restrictions of a single instance, we can add more instances to an encoding cluster to generate the quality that our customers have configured in a reasonable time or in real-time for live streams. With our chunk-based implementation of the AV1 video codec, we can encode videos with AV1 even faster than in real-time without compromising quality.

How to implement an AV1 Livestream

In most cases, to run live stream encodings you would need around 4 to 15 Mbps with traditional codecs like H264 to deliver the same quality. So AV1 could reduce your CDN and storage cost by up to 10x.
The setup of our AV1 live workflow that we will showcase consists of the following components:

• OBS RTMP mezzanine stream, 12Mbps 1080p@30fps
• Bitmovin Distributed AV1 Cloud Encoder running in Google Cloud receives an RTMP ingest and transcodes to 1.5Mbps 1080p@30fps segmented WebM. Segments will be directly transferred to a Google Cloud Storage bucket.
• The Bitmovin Distributed AV1 Cloud Encoder also generates HLS and MPEG-DASH manifests that will be transferred to the Google Cloud Storage bucket. Enabled experiments of the AV1 codec are: adapt_scan, ref_mv, filter_7bit, reference_buffer, delte_q, tile_groups, rect_tx, cdef
• Native playback on a desktop with a Bitmovin Player based on aomdec and ffplay

Our AV1 encoder generates WebM segmented output that could be used with HLS or MPEG-DASH for VoD and Live. However, as AV1 is currently not supported by any browser, we had to write our own player that is able to playback our AV1 live stream. We updated the aomdec application to be able to download and decode the AV1 chunks which can be seen in the left console window. Fortunately, decoding is not as resource intensive as the encoding, which allows you to decode the AV1 stream on normal hardware without special requirements, e.g., the same Lenovo notebook (i7-4800MQ, 8GB RAM running Ubuntu 14.04) that was not capable of encoding this video just near to realtime could easily playback AV1 in software. After the decoding step, we pipe the decoded YUV frames to ffplay to display the stream in a window as you see in the screenshot above. We plan to contribute this functionality back to aomdec after a technical cleanup of the current implementation.

A Practical Quality Comparison

Although the bitstream from AV1 is not finalized yet and much work needs to be done to further improve the quality of the codec, we wanted to get a snapshot of the current state and compare its quality with AVC/H264, HEVC/H265, and VP9. For that purpose, we made two different quality comparisons, the first one with two objective metrics, PSNR and SSIM. PSNR does not always correlate well with perceived quality but is the de-facto standard for video quality comparisons. SSIM is a perception-based quality metric that should give better results in regard to perceived quality.
For the second comparison, we chose to make a side-by-side quality comparison between AV1 and the other codecs. This quality comparison targets a practical use case where the resulting content can be used for Adaptive Bitrate Streaming (ABR). Therefore we have used a fixed Group of Pictures (GOP) size for our experiments and also used Variable Bitrate (VBR) encodings with a target bitrate. This approach is established in the industry but results can vary from scientific evaluations that purely target abstract use cases and theoretical encoder performance through the HM (HEVC reference software) and JM (AVC reference software) reference software that has no practical relevance in the industry.
Let’s first start with the objective quality comparison with PSNR. We encoded the open-source movie Sintel from the Blender Foundation with VBR to the following target bitrates: 100Kbps, 250Kbps, 500Kbps, 1Mbps, 2Mbps, 4Mbps and calculated PSNR and SSIM for the bitrate that has actually been achieved by the individual codec (typical codecs in VBR mode do not hit the target bitrate exactly).
The following encoding settings for the different codecs were used in the Bitmovin Encoding Service:

• AVC/H264:
  GOP Size: 96 frames (4 seconds), Me_range: 16, Cabac: true, B-Adapt: 2, Me: UMH, Rc-Lookahead: 50, Subme: 8, Trellis: 1, Partitions: All, BFrames: 3, ReferenceFrames: 5, Profile: High, Direct-Pred: Auto

• HEVC/H265:
  GOP Size: 96 frames (4 seconds), Sao: 1, B-Adapt: 2, CTU: 64, Profile: Main, BFrames: 4, Rc-Lookahead: 25, WeightP: 1, MeRange: 57, Ref: 4, Subme: 3, Tu-Inter-Depth: 1, Me: 3, No-WeightB: 1, Tu-Intra-Depth: 1

• VP9:
  GOP Size: 96 frames (4 seconds), Cpu-used: 1, Tile-columns: 4, Arnr-Type: Centered, Threads: 4, Arnr-maxframes: 0, Quality: Good, Frame-Parallel: 0, AQ-Mode: none, Arnr-Strength: 3, Tile-Rows: 0

• AV1:
  Build f3477635d3d44a2448b5298255ee054fa71d7ad9, Enabled experiments by default: adapt_scan, ref_mv, filter_7bit, reference_buffer, delte_q, tile_groups, rect_tx, cdef
  Passes: 1, Quality: Good, Threads: 1, Cpu-used: 1, KeyFrame-Mode: Auto, Lag-In-Frames: 25, End-Usage: VBR

The above diagram clearly shows that AV1 already outperforms all the other codecs for each bitrate setting. For bitrates from 1Mbps and higher the quality difference is already pretty big (> 0.5db which is usually clearly visible). VP9 and HEVC/H265 are very similar from a PSNR perspective, however, VP9 was the codec that overshot the target bitrate by far the most.

We also compared the four codecs with SSIM. The results can be seen in the above diagram and are quite similar to PSNR with some slight differences. AV1 is still the best performing codec over all bitrates, and AVC/H264 lags behind. However, interestingly AVC/H264 catches up with increased bitrate. An explanation for that could be that in the higher bitrates we can reach nearly the quality of the source material with all codecs, which results in only minor differences between the codecs.
Additionally, we created several side-by-side quality comparisons where we experimentally changed the target bitrate for each codec to reach an average of 500 Kbps. Below you can see the quality comparisons between the encodings comparing the quality of Bitmovin AV1 video encoding with AVC/H264, HEVC/H265, and VP9. We used the well-known Tears of Steel teaser that is 40 seconds long with a 1080p resolution for the comparison, selecting a complex scene that is hard to encode.

When comparing AV1 video encoding with AVC/H264 the quality difference is very obvious as expected. We can clearly see multiple encoding artifacts and blocking in the right part of the image that has been encoded with AVC/H264. In contrast, the left part with AV1 Video Encoding looks much cleaner without obvious encoding artifacts.

Looking at the quality difference between AV1 and VP9 it is not as obvious as with AVC/H264, but still quite visible. Especially the borders of the tiles of the sphere show encoding artifacts and the overall picture in VP9 seems to have quite some noise. We can also identify some blocking artifacts that are not visible in AV1.

HEVC/H265 visually looks a bit better than VP9, however, it still has visible encoding artifacts, especially in the lower part of the image and around the arm of the guy with the red coat. When we look closely at the arm we can see that the color is not encoded as nicely as with AV1 and shows some noise.

Conclusion

Bitmovin’s culture and vision have always been to be a technology leader and our passion for video means we consistently tackle the most complex video problems. Why? Because it’s fun and challenging and our team loves a challenge!
Besides that, there are already use cases for an AV1 video encoding where you could use it as your mezzanine format to preserve a high-quality version of your video at a low bit rate that can be used to create your adaptive bitrate renditions or other formats. Using AV1 for that use case would decrease your storage footprint and speed up transfer times inside of your data center or for upload to the cloud.
Furthermore, with the companies behind AOMedia, like AMD, ARM, Intel, NVIDIA, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, and Amazon, it should not take too long to get broad support for AV1. AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA cover the desktop market quite nicely, and ARM and Intel the mobile market. Additionally, the major browser vendors, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla will make sure that the codec finds its way into the browsers soon after the bitstream freeze. Google, Netflix, and Amazon will make sure that AV1 content will be available quickly and that will further drive adoption and hardware support.
AV1 is the next generation video codec and it’s on track to deliver a 30% improvement over VP9 & HEVC – Learn More

More AV1 Resources:

• 4K Video at SD Bitrates with AV1
• Bitmovin’s AV1 Encoding Gift Guide
• Cool New Video Tools: Five Encoding Advancements Coming in AV1

The post Bitmovin Improves Support AV1 Video Encoding for VoD appeared first on Bitmovin.

This is where real-time stream monitoring comes into play.

In this blog, I will go into what real-time stream monitoring is, why it’s important, and how Bitmovin’s Analytics empowers streaming platforms to get the complete picture of their stream’s performance.

What is real-time stream monitoring analytics and why is it important?

Real-time stream monitoring analytics refers to continuously tracking and collecting data on events triggered during playback related to the quality of experience (QoE), quality of service (QoS), and stream performance in real-time. This is crucial for dev & support teams as it enables them to understand the user’s experience when viewing their content. It involves monitoring various metrics and parameters during the stream that analyze user behavior and provide dev teams with metrics they can use to optimize content delivery, amongst other data points.

These metrics are essential for VOD and live streams but play a much more critical role in live events. This is because any disruptions, buffering, errors, or other events that may arise can have an immediate, costly, and significant impact on the viewer and their satisfaction. You and your team can proactively address issues, minimize downtime, and provide a superior streaming experience for your audience by continuously monitoring and analyzing data in real-time. This approach contributes to increased subscriber retention and positive user reviews and can significantly influence a streaming platform’s success.

Does Bitmovin’s Analytics have real-time stream monitoring?

The short answer is yes, we do! After receiving requests for the feature, we added it to our roadmap and recently released real-time stream monitoring to our Analytics solution a couple of weeks ago. Anyone can now view, test, and use it immediately on the Bitmovin dashboard. 

What are the use cases and benefits of Bitmovin’s real-time stream monitoring?

Besides our in-depth metrics pages, we’ve made the essential data points you need to track live and on-demand stream performance accessible at a glance on one page. This gives you a granular view in a 15-minute window that gives you a clear picture of how your viewer’s experience is trending and helps you proactively identify any errors they may be experiencing. Additionally, you can seamlessly click through from the real-time stream monitoring page to the specific metric you’re seeing to dig deeper into that individual data point.

Showcasing how it works and what it includes, our Director of Product Management for Playback, James Varndell, recorded an explainer that goes into the feature’s details.

Any industry can utilize this, especially when streaming live events, such as through Amazon IVS, which is directly integrated with Bitmovin’s Analytics. As you saw on the video, along with the 6 data points initially shown, you can also apply over (X) filters (more if you’re using API) that enable you to access each use case and benefit from the platform.

Main Use Cases:

• Performance Metrics
  • Focused on QOS, this monitors metrics such as rebuffering rate, playback errors, bitrates, and startup times to assess the overall performance of the video stream. 

• User Experience Metrics
  • Evaluate user-centric metrics for QoE, such as user engagement and viewer retention, to understand how viewers are experiencing the content and where you can activate them.

• Device and Platform Reach
  • Analyze data to ensure compatibility and smooth playback across different devices, operating systems, and streaming platforms. Compare performance across different device types

• Geographical Insights
  • Examine streaming performance in different regions to identify potential issues related to content delivery networks (CDNs) or regional variations in internet infrastructure. Use these insights to optimize playback settings.

Main benefits

• Customizable monitoring dashboard
  • Set up, track, view, and filter through the vital metrics of your live and on-demand video on Bitmovin’s customizable dashboard.
    
• Maintain stream uptime and stability
  • Spot issues instantly and find the root cause quickly to minimize the impact on your viewers. Understand real-time viewership and demand on your infrastructure.
    
• Monitoring dashboard for the operations room
  • Display essential data points across your command center and keep your operations team aware of your stream’s performance.

The Wrap Up

Real-time stream monitoring can be applied to any use case and industry that streams video online. It will continue to be essential for all development and support teams as it enables platforms to guarantee the playback experience for audiences. With our latest feature, streaming platforms can now keep up to date with what is happening with their streams. 

Check out our real-time stream monitoring feature for yourself by accessing your account or signing up.

The post Enhancing Video Streaming Quality with Real-Time Stream Monitoring: Bitmovin’s New Analytics Dashboard appeared first on Bitmovin.

In this blog, we will do a deep dive into Flutter, showcasing what it is, its benefits and drawbacks, its use cases, and more, along with how Bitmovin’s dedicated Player SDK for Flutter plays a significant role in making it easier to stream video in applications.

What is Flutter?

Flutter is a UI software toolkit created by Google that has gained much traction with its user-friendly functionality. It is an open-source framework made for cross-platform development, so developers can use it to build apps with a native-like experience on different devices, such as Android, iOS, and Web. You can read more about it in our other blog on the 5 Ways React Native & Flutter Can Simplify Video Streaming Workflows.

What are the benefits and drawbacks of Flutter for app development and video streaming?

Like any technology, Flutter has its pros and cons. Understanding these can help developers make informed decisions when choosing Flutter for their video streaming workflows.

Benefits

• Cross-Platform Development
  • Flutter was literally built for this purpose, allowing developers to write code once and use it across multiple platforms. This helps drive a faster time-to-market as teams can reduce development time and effort.
    
• App Performance 
  • Known to be highly performant, applications built with Flutter are compiled directly into native code, offering better performance than other hybrid solutions.
    
• Hot Reload 
  • To check out app updates in real-time, developers can utilize Flutter’s hot reload feature, which enables developers to see changes without losing the current application state. This helps speed up the development process and make it more dynamic, as modifications can be made as needed.
    
• Customizable UI
  • With many widgets and extensive UI customization options, Flutter provides developers the tools to create better, visually appealing interfaces.
    
• Strong Community Support
  • Since it has a robust and active community thanks to it being developed by Google, Flutter provides developers with access to numerous resources, libraries, tools, and the ability to ask questions directly to the community if/when needed.

Drawbacks

• Limited Libraries
  • Although Flutter’s library support is growing, it’s still not as extensive as older frameworks such as React Native. Also, depending on the solution and tool, they might not support Flutter, limiting developers and forcing them to take additional time and effort for implementation.
    
• Large File Size
  • Flutter apps tend to have a larger file size than native apps, which could affect the download and installation process, especially for users with limited device storage.
    
• Learning Curve
  • While Dart is potentially easier for developers familiar with JavaScript or Java to pick up, it’s less widely used than other programming languages, which could make the learning curve higher and the language harder to grasp.

How Flutter compares to other Frameworks

Regarding cross-platform mobile app development, React Native is another popular choice for developers that you can read more about in Bitmovin Launches Support for React Native. It, along with the native Android and iOS frameworks, have advantages and potential drawbacks.

React Native

React Native was developed by Facebook and allows developers to build mobile apps using JavaScript and React. Like Flutter, it provides features such as hot reloading and offers access to plenty of plugins created and used by its large community and third-party providers. However, compared to Flutter, React Native may fall short in performance as it uses a JavaScript bridge to communicate with native modules, which can slow down an app’s performance.

Traditional Native Framework Development

To develop apps natively on specific platforms, teams will need expertise in that specific native development language. For Android, this would mean Java or Kotlin, and for iOS, Objective-C or Swift. Native apps perform better as they are built specifically for that platform in its code, have a more natural user experience, and have access to all device features. However, the apps will only be able to be used for that platform and have no cross-platform capabilities, which can increase development time and cost. Additionally, teams must maintain both codebases, which can further strain development resources.

In comparison, Flutter offers a balanced mix of high performance, rapid development, and cost efficiency, making it a viable choice for many developers and businesses.

Which industries and use cases does Flutter fit well with?

Depending on a company’s specific needs, Flutter can be utilized across any industry, especially when it involves streaming video. These industries and use cases include:

• E-commerce 
  • Develop engaging shopping experiences showcasing products with video, customizable widgets, and animations.
    
• Social Media
  • With its cross-platform development and rich UI components, Flutter is ideal for building interactive social media apps.
    
• Education & eLearning
  • Create interactive and user-friendly eLearning apps with high-quality video, enhancing the learning experience for users.
    
• Entertainment & OTT 
  • Build out high-performance applications for video playback and a seamless user experience across devices.
    
• Health & Fitness 
  • Fitness apps can be created with a range of features such as video workouts, live sessions, health tracking, and more.
    
• Religion and House of Worship
  • Enables apps to connect congregations, facilitate donations, and offer seamless video streaming experiences across devices.
    
• News and Publishing
  • Flutter fits well with news organizations as it can facilitate real-time updates, multimedia integration, and seamless video streaming capabilities.
• Online Events
  • With user-friendly and interactive interfaces and the ability to stream high-quality video content directly to users, online event apps benefit from Flutter.
     
• Esports and Gaming
  • Flutter enables gaming communities to connect with real-time updates and seamless video streaming, enhancing the gaming experience.

Community and Support

Flutter has a growing developer community and as it’s affiliated with Google, it gets a good amount of attention. With access to plenty of tutorials, libraries, tools, and other items, development teams can leverage multiple resources as well as tap into community knowledge to overcome app and video streaming challenges. The community support, ensuring platform updates, bug fixes, and performance optimizations. Additionally, Google and others host regular events that include topics on Flutter or are focused solely on it, giving developers opportunities to learn, network, and stay up to date on the latest Flutter trends and updates.

For more on Flutter and video streaming, check out Bitmovin’s developer community, which focuses on video workflow aspects and questions on deploying Bitmovin’s solutions across devices.

Getting Started with Bitmovin’s Flutter SDK

Bitmovin’s dedicated Flutter SDK is an open-source wrapper for our native mobile SDKs, making integrating our Player into Flutter apps built for iOS and Android devices easier. We’re focused on simplifying the streaming process and making our existing developer-friendly APIs available for Flutter. The SDK offers a range of features that concentrate on streamlining deployment for developers and delivering the highest quality of experience for viewers during video playback. 

These features include live and on-demand video playback, UI customization, adaptive streaming, content protection with DRM integration, and more, reducing the time it takes to get to market and helping development teams focus on other items for their apps. You can access it all on our dedicated Flutter GitHub repository.

Conclusion

Flutter has emerged as a robust and efficient framework for building high-quality video streaming apps in the ever-evolving landscape of video streaming. Its cross-platform capabilities, performance, and customizable UI make it an ideal choice for developers. Moreover, with dedicated SDKs like Bitmovin’s Flutter SDK, developers can further optimize their video streaming workflows, deliver a superior viewing experience, and bring their apps to market faster.

Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, test out the Bitmovin Player across all the devices you want to cover, especially on Flutter, by signing up for our 30-day free trial. Trial users also get complete access to our other solutions, such as VOD and Live Encoding, Analytics, and Streams. 

The post Streamlining Video Playback: Unveiling Bitmovin’s Player SDK for Flutter appeared first on Bitmovin.

Kip Schauer, Global Head of Media & Entertainment and Gaming Partnerships, said: “Google Cloud Marketplace is the go-to destination for our customers and partners to deploy new solutions. Oursolutions on, and our private offer functionality provides greater flexibility and deal-making capabilities. It’s fantastic to see Bitmovin introducing private offers for its live and VOD encoding solutions, making its industry-leading technologies even more accessible to Google Cloud Marketplace customers.”

Let’s take a closer look at the announcement and its potential benefit. Our VOD & Live Encoding SaaS products are now available through Google Cloud Marketplace. Here’s how this can reshape your approach to streaming.

Google Cloud Marketplace and Private Offers

Google Cloud Marketplace enables the rapid deployment of fully functional software packages that operate seamlessly on Google Cloud or as a multi-tenancy running in Bitmovin’s account. The benefits of buying from Google Cloud Marketplace is that this allows you to agree terms that suit your specific need including details such payment terms and contract durations. Buying via the Google Cloud Marketplace helps to simplify and shorten the procurement process whilst reducing committed spend by purchasing from the marketplace and receiving one single bill from Google.

VOD Encoding: Elevating Content Quality

Ensuring outstanding content quality is no longer a challenge. Our Next-Generation VOD Encoder boasts features like multi-codec streaming (including AV1), Per-Title and Per-Shot optimizations, 8K, and multi-HDR support. This means your audience can enjoy an unparalleled viewing experience.

Live Encoding: Seamlessly Streaming Live Content

Building upon our renowned VOD Encoder, the Live Encoder introduces a robust live video streaming software platform. It smoothly converts inputs from RTMP, SRT, or Zixi to outputs in HLS and DASH formats, ensuring seamless delivery to digital streaming services.

Industry-Leading Technology: Enhancing Viewer Satisfaction

In a world of diverse devices, delivering a consistent viewer experience is paramount. Bitmovin’s intelligently optimized adaptive bitrate renditions (ABR) guarantee uninterrupted streaming, regardless of the device or connectivity. From low-connectivity environments to high-performance devices, we’ve got you covered.

Efficiency and Cost Savings: Simplifying Your Workflow

Bid farewell to manual configurations. Our VOD & Live SaaS Encoding do the heavy lifting for you. With a decade of expertise in the streaming industry, we automatically apply all necessary parameters and optimizations, saving you time and reducing cloud compute, storage, and CDN distribution costs. You can provide top-quality videos while efficiently managing your streaming expenses.

But that’s not all. Our journey continues as we plan to make our Player and Analytics products available through the Google Cloud Marketplace. Stay tuned for early access and a growing partnership with Google Cloud.

The future of video streaming is here, thanks to Bitmovin’s presence on Google Cloud Marketplace. Elevate your streaming approach, redefine quality, and streamline your workflow in ways you never thought possible. Discover the Bitmovin products and access the advanced Bitmovin workflows, get started on Google Cloud Marketplace today!

The post Bitmovin Live and VOD Encoding now available in Google Cloud Marketplace via Private Offer appeared first on Bitmovin.

• The benefits of supporting the PS4 far outweigh the negatives
• Bitmovin’s Player’s Web SDK V8 now enables playback on PlayStation 4 (PS4) and PlayStation 5 (PS5). 
• The main differences between PS4 and PS5 are mainly in the development environment and device capabilities. PS4 only supports PlayReady for DRM and can only play 4K content on PS4 Pro, while PS5 supports both Widevine and PlayReady for DRM and can play 4K on all devices.
• Our previous experience with PS5 integration greatly facilitated our work with the PS4, allowing a faster iteration and more efficient collaboration with Sony.
• Certain features are not supported on PS4, including client-side advertising with Google IMA, tweaking the playback rate during adaptive streaming playback, and CMAF Low Latency.
• As the PS4 is now listed in Bitmovin’s supported and compatible device matrix, we will continue to work closely with Sony to maintain stability and address any additional non-blocking issues.

Let’s get started

Over a year and a half ago, we made our first strides into looking at supporting PlayStation gaming consoles. After evaluating both PlayStation 5 (PS5) and PlayStation 4 (PS4), we prioritized PS5, pushing PS4 to the back burner with no real intention of touching it.

This decision wasn’t just because PS5 is a newer device or due to a lack of interest from our customers for playback support on the PS4. We were well aware that many people are still actively using PS4, but due to device capabilities and certain missing features, we did not find it a fit for V8 of the Bitmovin Player’s Web SDK.

However, a few months later, this changed when Sony released a few updates for the PS4, and it was in a state where we could work on it. We promptly re-evaluated the PS4, gaining a clearer understanding of how it would fit within our supported and compatible devices. Through a thorough investigation, we were able to detail the main differences and similarities between the PS5 and PS4, the known benefits and limitations of the console, and how our Player could support playback on both.

The similarities and differences when developing between the PS4 and PS5

When it comes to the development environment and the possibilities for web launchers and video players, there are some differences between the PS4 and PS5. Still, they are very similar to each other.

The PS4 and PS5 support HDR and HDCP, which are enabled by default on both consoles. The browser engine used on both platforms is WebKit. Both platforms are loaded with the API, which is used as a bridge to native application API, allowing us to get device information such as resolution, PlayStation Network, commerce, system information, etc.

They also support the same streaming protocols (MP4, HLS, DASH) and codecs (H.264 and H.265), CDN integrations, Subtitles, closed captions, and DRM to an extent.

On the PS4, the only supported DRM key system is PlayReady, and you can play 4K content only when on PS4 Pro. On the other hand, PS5 supports both Widevine and PlayReady for DRM and can play 4K on both pro and non-pro devices. PS4’s Pro version also is the only one of the two that supports the AV1 codec.

One of the most significant differences between the PS4 and PS5 is the speed and power of the latter. The PS5’s more modern hardware allows faster processing and better overall performance, resulting in a smoother and more responsive user experience.

For further insight into the differences between PS4 and PS5, their limitations, and supported features, please reach out to Sony via their Partners Portal.

An overview of the devices / device types that the Bitmovin Player enables playback on

How we got here – partnering, Stream Lab, and workarounds

Partnering

Our previous experience integrating the PS5 into our officially supported devices greatly facilitated our work with the PS4. We had a clearer idea of the device’s limitations and how to iterate faster for such a device. Having previously worked with Sony on PS5 integration, our communication was more streamlined, resulting in more efficient collaboration regarding PS4.

As with all platforms by Sony, you will need to enter into a partnership with them to start the development. Doing this will give you more insights into platform limitations and supported features.

Stream Lab

We began testing once we read through the PS4 documentation and familiarized ourselves with the development environment. After manually testing different assets to get an idea of what worked, we ran our automated testing suite.

This entailed running over 1000 system tests (with more added every deployment) covering features such as:

• Timeshifting 
• Adaptive bitrate
• Subtitles 
• DRM and more

As we have access to many older and newer device models, our automated testing cadence lets us see how specific use cases work during playback in real streaming environments, giving us a clear picture of where issues may occur.

Bitmovin has also made a portion of this automated testing publicly available, along with the ability to see how your streams playback on certain devices through one of our latest player features, Stream Lab. You can test it yourself and see how your stream URLs function on different devices today.

Issue Workarounds

We identified some issues and limitations quickly as we experienced them on the PS5, and they were also observed on the PS4, which allowed us to get a couple of easy wins and apply some of the same workarounds.

As we continued testing, we found new issues that were brought to our attention due to the work we’ve done on other devices, and were able to apply workarounds. Since the Bitmovin Player team is used to working on a wide range of supported devices, it means we’ve been able to encounter many unique platform-specific issues over the years, enabling us to know where to look and what may impact different parts of the video workflow, accelerating the testing process. This has helped us expand our workflow knowledge and empower the development teams of streaming platforms that use the Bitmovin Player to reduce their development time significantly across different devices.

We halved the number of failing tests once the first few iterations were complete.

Then we began encountering intriguing underlying video issues for which we could not find workarounds, despite substantial effort. However, with the submission of a few detailed support tickets with reproduction cases to Sony, these issues were resolved.

After the testing, we substantially improved the playback experience with the Bitmovin Player for the PlayStation 4 and have now added it to our compatible device list. We are still planning to continue iterating on the platform for the foreseeable future and enhancing its stability.

Known limitations for specific features and benefits

Limitations

Regarding the player, for the PS4, a few device limitations force us to consider certain features unsupported. Here are the most significant ones:

• Client-side advertising with Google IMA is not supported. However, the Bitmovin Advertising module can achieve the same features, which works as expected.
• Tweaking the playback rate during adaptive streaming playback via the player.setPlaybackSpeed API is disabled internally. This is because it can lead to unpredictable behavior.
• CMAF Low Latency is currently not supported

The list of major limitations that may affect playback is short. For the Bitmovin Player specifically, we can guarantee the functionality of most of our features, ensuring a unique and high-quality viewing experience for users on this device.

The Benefits

For streaming platforms, even with the known limitations, the benefits of supporting PS4 still outway the negatives, as you’ll gain access to:

• Exposure to a considerable active and large user base
• Enablement of the development of interactive features for immersive viewing experiences 
• Consistency between supporting the PS5 and PS4, making it easier on your development team
• Support and tools from either Sony or a player provider like Bitmovin that helps streamline the development process
• Monetization methods that enable platforms to earn from their content
• The PlayStation’s ecosystem, which ensures PS4 and PS5 are worth supporting since they have the most users 

How the PS4 is set for the Bitmovin Player

The PS4 is a great console to support, and for streaming platforms looking to engage viewers on it, we see it as a worthwhile expansion to reach a larger audience. It has been added to our matrix of supported devices as a compatible device, and it is included in our nightly runs to ensure close monitoring. We will continue to work closely with Sony to maintain the device’s stability and iterate on some additional non-blocking issues we discovered. 

If you want more information on setting up the Bitmovin Player on the PS4, check out our PS4 getting started guide.

Also, if you’d like to see how Bitmovin’s solution stack can benefit your streaming workflow – sign up for our 30-day free trial.

The post Streaming Video on the PlayStation 4 (PS4): Our Approach to Supporting it with the Bitmovin Player appeared first on Bitmovin.

Maintaining your video library

When it comes to maintaining video content and having it easily accessible for your team, cloud-based hosting environments are key. They provide your team with a secure environment to house your proprietary video and access the content from anywhere in the world as long as they have access to the internet. Cloud environments eliminate the need for on-premises infrastructure, reducing operation and maintenance costs and increasing scalability as your content library grows. Additionally, depending on your hosting and content management platform, it can be directly integrated with an encoding solution that makes your content quickly available in multiple qualities for streaming over the internet.

The Bitmovin Streams solution enables health and fitness platforms to easily upload and host their health and wellness video content. That content is then encoded to Per-Title presets or customized video qualities and made available to embed directly on your website or application. The entire process is manageable through the UI dashboard and API, making it easy to use.

The Bitmovin Streams Workflow

Per-title Video Encoding

As I mentioned before, encoding video content is necessary for streaming over the internet. It prepares the video in the set codec (H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP9, and AV1) and quality (SD, HD, 4K, and 8K) of your choice to ensure compatibility with devices that support video playback. However, encoding can be costly and time-intensive, and depending on how many files you have and the variations of those files you want, it can require a lot of storage. It can also increase streaming costs due to the higher bitrates the traditional encoding process implements. This is where Per-Title comes into play.

Instead of traditional encoding, Per-Title encoding optimizes the encoding settings for each individual video, resulting in superior video quality and reduced file sizes. This matters for industries like fitness and health, as it enables them to save dramatically on storage and CDN delivery costs, as showcased in our case study with Thrive360. It does this by minimizing the storage space needed for each resolution through optimized compression and lowering bitrates for playback while enabling viewers to see a higher-quality video. These benefits are especially true at Bitmovin, where our proprietary Per-Title algorithm can help reduce costs by up to 90%, depending on the content being streamed. Furthermore, with Bitmovin’s VOD Encoder, the turnaround time from encoding content to making it available to be streamed is lightning-fast, meaning you and your users won’t wait.

Event-based Live encoding

For health and fitness platforms that offer live streaming of workouts, classes, and wellness events, event-based live encoding is necessary. It enables these platforms to deliver real-time fitness experiences to their users, cultivating engagement, interactivity, and either a personalized one-on-one lesson or a sense of community. When streaming live, reliability and resilience are essential, which is why having a stable connection and utilizing a trustworthy open-source software or commercial hardware contribution encoder make the difference.

Once your live source is connected to the software or hardware of your choice and is generating the encoded content in a supported protocol (RTMP, RTMPS, SRT, etc.), a live encoder and packager, such as the Bitmovin Live Event Encoder solution, is then needed to make the content available for playback over the internet. Bitmovin’s Live Event Encoder makes it possible for you to input your live content and output multiple renditions, ensuring your content is available to be streamed across any device.

Want more insight on live streaming? Check out our latest blog on the 20 best live streaming encoders.

The Bitmovin Live Encoding Workflow

Adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming and a Custom Player Experience

The video player is the next important piece of the puzzle, as it is how users engage with and experience your brand. Having a player that causes a bad viewing experience (long load times, buffering, etc.) or doesn’t support devices users want to stream content on can cause users to cut ties, which is why the video player is vital. To provide a consistent viewing experience, video players must be able to detect available bandwidth and adapt the bitrate being streamed to ensure users can stream even in low bandwidth environments. This helps users avoid experiencing buffering issues and maintains customer satisfaction as the video continues to play, even at a lower quality, without a drop in the stream flow.

Another major factor for the player is providing a unique experience when streaming. Specifically for health and fitness, having a player with a custom overlay showcasing information about the user’s progress while streaming provides an interactive experience. An example of this can be seen below with Bitmovin’s Video Player. Our robust Player solution gives health and fitness platforms the ability to customize the player skin for users, along with the ability to integrate and enable over 32 other modules such as DRM, ABR, advertising, and more that improve and benefit the streaming experience. Additionally, it is built to allow for the best viewing experience possible, meaning it will detect and adapt to the user’s available bandwidth by providing the highest quality rendition available for them to view.

CycleMasters Player skin with Bitmovin. See more in our case study with them.

Quality and Audience Metrics for Video Analytics

The user experience on health and fitness platforms is critical, and quality of experience (QoE) is a part of how that is measured. Many factors affect QoE, such as the application users will access when engaging with your content and the viewing experience that users will have after requesting the content they want to stream. Regarding the streaming portion, accessing metrics that track player performance, video quality, and audience analytics is vital, as it will empower you to understand how your users are experiencing your content. Having the right analytics can make or break your platform, which is why Bitmovin’s Video Analytics is key to helping you analyze your user base and even get as granular as a single user session, giving you a complete picture of how they viewed your content.

Summing it up

Ensuring a high-quality experience in the health and fitness industry is crucial, as it directly impacts your user engagement and keeps your users coming back for more. Each component, including video hosting, encoding, the player, and analytics, is essential and can impact user retention and the overall cost of your streaming workflow, depending on implementation. The right partner matters dramatically, as they can help set you up for success, and that’s precisely what our solutions bring to the table.

If you’re in need of solutions and tools that will take your health and fitness platform to the next level, sign-up for a free 30-day Bitmovin trial today!

The post The 5 Essential Pieces for Every Health and Fitness Streaming Workflow appeared first on Bitmovin.

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.

Q:  Paul, thanks for joining us, can you provide an overview of this partnership and integration?

A:  This has been in the works since the latter part of 2022 and was born out of the opportunity to bring Vimond’s enterprise CMS solution alongside our Encoding solutions (Live and VOD). When it comes to offerings and solutions in the market, you could argue that there is a slight limitation in routes for you to take, with many vendors only offering an end-to-end OTT management platform. It was clear from the start that a partnership and integration with Vimond and our Live Encoder solution is a value driver considering the best in class products working easily with each other.

By using the Vimond VIA OTT CMS Platform, you’ll be able to select the Bitmovin workflow/pipeline which provides efficient and advanced transcoding packaging for VOD and Live content. The Vimond CMS Platform offers a comprehensive solution for storing, file management, content organization and the ability to promote, distribute news, sports and entertainment content.

Q:  What does this solution look like today?

A:  As of right now, the proof of concept built by Vimond is up and running and ready, having used our Bitmovin APIs. You are able to start and stop your Live Encoding and manage the necessary metadata attached to the asset, include DRM and utilize our Live-to-VOD workflows. 

Q:  Who is this solution ideal for?

A:  A starting point is the need for a leading-edge CMS solution for your growing video content (Live and On Demand Content). Well established companies who are seeking best in class CMS alongside top-performing encoding and the same goes with growing platforms and  businesses that are looking to provide users an advanced and highest quality user experience rather than going down the rabbit hole of trying to build your own CMS platform. There are many factors to consider and we believe that this partnership is anchored to the following themes:  ease of use, scalability and high value seamless integrations. 

Q:  Can you go into more detail about this partnership being linked to the statement above of “high value seamless integration”?

A:  What we’ve built allows for more flexibility and more options rather than being tied down to an end to end solution. The quality of the Vimond solution speaks for itself, being able to partner and integrate their offering with the Bitmovin solutions makes absolute sense and provides buyers/users with more options that are of the highest standards. 

Q:  What’s the best way to find out more information?

A:  I recommend speaking with our Partnerships Team who can provide plenty of information and also guide you through the process regardless of what your current situation is. The best way to reach them is through our contact form and check out the Vimond website too for more details.

The post Bitmovin Partners with Vimond for Advanced Encoding Workflows and State of the Art Content Management appeared first on Bitmovin.