VIENNA—Bitmovin, a provider of video streaming solutions, is collaborating with Simplestream, a provider of OTT and broadcast solutions, and technology provider Xperi, to extend playback to TiVo OS smart TVs and devices.

Under the new partnership, Bitmovin and Simplestream have created a fully integrated streaming platform combining Simplestream’s content management and application framework with Bitmovin’s advanced playback technology.

The consolidated platform enables video providers to deliver a consistent, high-quality user experience to viewers with TiVo OS devices, the companies said. Bitmovin’s automated testing system uses AI analysis to process and analyze over a million tests each week to pinpoint root causes of playback issues faster and with greater accuracy to ensure the highest quality viewing experiences. Bitmovin first extended support to include TiVo OS in October 2025.

The companies claimed that the joint solution will help media companies and operators simplify their technology stack to reduce operational complexity and integration risk, while ensuring consistent and reliable playback across devices. It also enables flexible monetization capabilities including support for a range of ad formats such as pre-roll ads and pause ads, as well as standardized accessibility features that support inclusive viewing experiences.

“This collaboration represents an important step forward in simplifying and modernizing OTT delivery for our customers,” said Ashley Reynolds-Horne, Technical Director for Simplestream. “By combining Simplestream’s end-to-end platform capabilities with Bitmovin’s proven playback technology, we’re enabling media companies and operators to deliver reliable, scalable streaming experiences while unlocking new opportunities for monetization and service growth.”

James Varndell, Senior Director of Product Management, Bitmovin, commented: “Video providers want their service to be accessible by as many viewers as possible including those running TiVo OS, which is rapidly gaining traction. By extending support to include TiVo OS and collaborating with Simplestream to simplify launching on TiVo OS, we’re supporting customers to reach more viewers across a wider range of devices.”

Stephane David, Senior Director, Content Partnerships and Business Development EMEA, Xperi, added: “TiVo OS is designed to put great content front and centre. Collaborating with Bitmovin and Simplestream will help more streaming services to launch on TiVo OS with a high‑quality, consistent playback experience, so audiences can find, watch and enjoy more of what they love.”

Developed by Xperi and launched in 2022, TiVo OS is a content‑first operating system designed to make it easier for viewers to find, watch and enjoy great television. The platform powers smart TVs from leading brands, as well as a range of smart TV devices including set‑top boxes.

When most people talk about artificial intelligence (AI), they usually mean Generative AI (GenAI). While this has brought a great deal of flexibility and freedom to video, audio and text creation, it is also responsible for a substantial amount of ill-conceived or poor-quality material. This has not only sullied the reputation of AI but also overshadowed the potential of a more practical form of the technology, agentic AI.

More of a background technology than GenAI—which has also been around a lot longer, the modern iteration being formalized between 2014 and 2017—agentic AI is less generally known, even though it began to appear around three years ago. The crucial difference between the two is that while GenAI reacts to prompts or triggers to create content, agentic AI is intended to autonomously establish and control a function or situation.

AUTONOMOUS WORKFLOWS
In the context of broadcasting, agentic AI is regarded as key to the development of applications—known as “agents”—to run specific technical tasks, such as monitoring, dealing with system faults or failures, and manage a variety of functions across production and distribution chains.

"Unlike GenAI, which creates content on demand, agentic AI orchestrates entire content workflows autonomously," explains Stephanie Lone, global leader of solutions architecture, Media and Entertainment, Games and Sport at AWS. "This means systems can coordinate complex multi-step processes without constant human intervention at each decision point."

The basis for this, Lone adds, is multiple "specialized agents" working together proactively to natural language requests. This combination—and simultaneous operation of applications— forms the basis of systems from other developers, including Witbe's Agentic SDK, which was launched in February this year. Intended as a "test automation framework" to run and scale monitoring, testing and validation over video workflows, Witbe chief executive Mathieu Planche describes it "a suite of different agents" designed to automate test processes.

"Test automation used to be a script that people had to develop," he says. "We have moved away from this manual process into something that is, while not human-less because we still have [a] human to control what the Agentic SDK is doing, but it's a process that is largely simplified."

The first of the agents in the suite is Test Designer, which was developed to understand the testing strategy of the video service being analyzed and then write test cases based on that. "Agentic AI technologies can observe inputs, plan… actions and do most of the heavy lifting in different workflows that are otherwise taken care of by people," Planche adds.

As with previous methods of automation, the developers of agentic AI systems are quick to emphasize that the aim is not to replace human operators. Fares Birke, principal practice lead for Applied AI at Qvest, comments that the goal is to enable people to "work better, faster and with fewer interruptions" by automating tasks that are either repetitive or require a lot of coordination.

"Agentic AI is about achieving outcomes, while GenAI is primarily about creating outputs – text, audio, video—in response to prompts," Birke says. "This makes agentic AI far more relevant for complex media environments where speed, reliability, compliance and coordination matter as much as creativity."

‘ENRICHED METADATA’
Agentic AI-based systems are now proliferating in the broadcast sector for a variety of applications. These include: searches of archives, transcripts and live feeds; managing ingest, logging, review and delivery; triggering MAM, newsroom, post-production and distribution systems; and ensuring operational and editorial rules. This can be seen in the number of recent system launches, including ThinkAnalytics' ThinkMetadataAI. Launched at IBC 2025, with a U.S. debut at last month’s NAB Show, it uses agentic AI to automatically create "enriched metadata" for content catalogs.

ThinkAnalytics co-founder and chief technology officer Peter Docherty comments that over the past 20 years the company had focused on deep metadata enrichment for personalization and viewer engagement but in the last three to four years has moved into targeted advertising.

"A lot of agentic processes enable automation and operational efficiencies that weren't there before," he says. "That's obviously quite different from GenAI because agentic AI helps streamline operations. What we've done with our Metadata AI is combine GenAI with Agentic and other capabilities to automate processes that were previously manual. This enables huge automation at scale but with intelligence behind the decision-making."

At the NAB Show last month TVU Networks showcased “TV Cortex,” a service that uses Agentic AI to aggregate and manage the audio and video content used to create news stories. TV Cortex has the power to act autonomously and purposefully to achieve an outcome independently of our interaction with it. In theory, operating this way may involve less “human shading” of events and more factual coverage.

According to TVU Networks President Paul Shen, TV Cortex is intended to augment human productivity, not to replace it. If used effectively, the system frees up producers and editors to focus more on the creative aspects of news production, like crafting compelling stories and providing more human context.

“TV Cortex leverages agentic AI, deploying a hierarchy of master and subordinate agents that dynamically scale to handle the volume and complexity of incoming stories,” Shen said. “These agents automate the retrieval, categorization and scoring of stories based on factors such as recency, relevance, market size and customizable editorial priorities.”

KEEPING QUALITY—AND THE TRUTH IN CHECK
A crucial area of broadcast and streaming distribution that has undergone a high level of automation and streamlining in recent years is compliance and Quality of Service (QoS) monitoring. AI—and agentic in particular—is now offering the potential to take this further through new systems such as Bitmovin's Observability, which was introduced last October.

"We're leveraging AI in different areas of our product range, including the Observability product for looking at sessions, playback, QoS metrics, root cause analysis and error debugging," explains Jacob Arends, product manager for playback at Bitmovin. "AI is really good at summarizing data, for example, so we are using that in our Observability products to make it easier for customers to understand complex datasets [and] what actually went on in a session."

In the last year or so, doubts have arisen surrounding GenAI chatbots, especially with systems “hallucinating”—basically making things up— or just agreeing with a question. Because compliance monitoring is a crucial failsafe in the broadcast distribution chain, there can be no such doubts; any automation technology must be 100% trustworthy.

"Our Agentic SDK is not creating bugs within our customers' platforms," states Witbe's Mathieu Planche. "They detect errors and flag them for people to review and analyze. Then people decide if they are escalating them internally or if they just discard it."

As for the future, Planche acknowledges that agentic AI technology for broadcast is still "new for everyone" and that media control rooms, staffed by operators, are "not going away right now."

At AWS, Lone observes that the potential for Agentic AI in media production "is massive" but says the broadcast sector does have to be careful with it. "The industry still needs to establish strong guardrails around data governance, transparency, content provenance and responsible automation practices," she comments. "Once these are firmly in place, companies can have more confidence in AI-driven decisions and feel comfortable deploying the technology on a broad scale."

Standards and oversight are absolutely necessary for such an autonomous technology as agentic AI could be. But, right now, the broadcast sector appears to be weighing up whether there is already enough automation in key processes or if these new agents are the key to more efficient and fault-free operations.

VIENNA—MUBI, a worldwide film distributor and producer, has selected Bitmovin as the cloud video-on-demand (VOD) encoding partner for its streaming platform.

MUBI replaced its legacy on-premises encoding technology stack with Bitmovin’s encoding infrastructure. The move brings greater scalability and faster turnaround times to MUBI’s growing film catalog, Bitmovin said.

Bitmovin is providing support for three-pass encoding UHD and a multicodec strategy, supporting AVC, HEVC and AV1 for film-grade quality optimization via a managed cloud service, the company said.

“At MUBI, every film we deliver deserves the highest possible quality. We needed an encoding partner who could match our ambitions, not just for today’s catalog, but for where we’re taking our platform,” MUBI Chief Technology Officer Andy Dust said. “Bitmovin’s HDR and AV1 expertise, fast response times and collaborative approach made the decision straightforward. We’re excited to build our next chapter of premium content delivery together.”

A close collaboration between Bitmovin and MUBI has enabled the company to complete a rapid integration and full encoding workflow migration from its legacy solution to the cloud encoding service ahead of a hard deadline for decommissioning the previous approach. The migration took place without disrupting MUBI’s ability to deliver films from its catalog, according to Bitmovin.

“With its carefully curated catalog of film content, MUBI brings quality cinema to film lovers globally. Bitmovin’s VOD encoder delivers outstanding quality of experience as well as multi-codec streaming support, so it is well positioned to support MUBI in this endeavor,” Bitmovin co-CEO Ian Baglow said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

VIENNA, Austria—Video streaming solutions provider Bitmovin and ThinkAnalytics, a provider of AI-powered data analytics for TV, have formed a strategic partnership that integrates the former’s AI Scene Analysis into the latter’s ThinkMediaAI platform.

The integration offers streaming service providers with a seamless way to transform raw video into rich, structured metadata that fuels smarter recommendations and deeper viewer engagement, the companies said.

Bitmovin’s AI Scene Analysis optimizes the viewing experience by helping streaming services unlock new information about an asset catalog that would otherwise take significant effort to analyze. The solution uses multimodal AI to automatically generate valuable metadata that reflects the context of every scene, making them instantly more discoverable, reusable and monetizable.

ThinkMediaAI is an AI-powered platform that unifies audience, content and metadata intelligence to help video service providers unlock the full value of their first-party data. The platform enables personalized discovery, enriched metadata and high-performing advertising across linear, connected TV and streaming environments. The flexible, modular solution uses AI to drive new monetization opportunities, maximize content value and enhance audience targeting.

Bitmovin’s AI Scene Analysis captures granular contextual information about the content viewers are watching on a scene-by-scene basis. The ThinkMediaAI platform processes this data to create precision-targeted experiences, including:

• Increased engagement with Bitmovin’s vertical clipping solution to provide hyper-personalized short-form content or up-next trailers from content catalogs.
• Smarter ad placement and targeting with ThinkMediaAI’s contextual advertising and Bitmovin’s intelligent scene-aware ad marker insertion workflow.
• Scene-based discovery for search and recommendations boosting discovery and unlocking hidden value in content libraries.

For example, by combining AI Scene Analysis with ThinkMediaAI, the enriched metadata and personalization can enable next-gen viewing experiences by creating highlights, micro-stories and snackable content that match the habits of younger viewers, drive stronger engagement and unlock more value from content catalogs.

More information is available on the Bitmovin and ThinkAnalytics websites.

VIENNA, Austria—Bitmovin has launched Bitmovin Observability, a new stand-alone video data solution that delivers real-time insights into video playback. The solution enables video providers to easily instrument video playback, provide proactive viewer support and gain new visibility across both content and advertising playback, according to the company.

Originally a feature within Bitmovin Analytics, Bitmovin Observability has now been launched as a solution in its own right. Unlike general purpose observability platforms, it provides observability tailored for video playback. With its deep session-level insights, advanced error debugging,incidents screen with alerts and award winning monetization telemetry, the platform has been designed specifically for real-time monitoring, making it ideal for enterprise streaming services alongside high-profile events such as sports.

The new Bitmovin Observability solution is fast to deploy, easy to use and features AI-powered capabilities tailored to video data, as well as an MCP server to enable LLMs and AI agents to access the data and tools. Built in advertising observability provides insights which streaming services can act on immediately to enhance ad performance and engagement.

Additionally, the solution also analyzes playback data and assigns the service a Playback Score from 0 to 100 based on factors such as start-up, smoothness, video quality, and session success. To improve their score, video providers can use Bitmovin’s AI Session Interpreter to get clear actionable insights and recommendations to optimize performance and enhance the viewer’s experience.

“While general purpose observability products have a lot of value in enterprise IT, they aren’t designed for video," said Stefan Lederer, CEO and Co-Founder of Bitmovin. "Bitmovin Observability is different because it’s tailor made for video streaming so it provides the necessary detail to identify and resolve issues with playback quality, advertising or viewership. Real-time observability is also particularly important for live events streaming because monitoring video playback globally is extremely challenging, and service disruptions directly affect revenue.”

Bitmovin will demo Bitmovin Observability at Demuxed in London, Oct. 29-30.

Quality of experience shapes brand perception. If a video is slow to start, buffers during playback, or suffers a noticeable drop in resolution, it can quickly erode trust, result in negative reviews, and drive subscribers away. Bitmovin’s 8th Annual Video Developer Report found that nearly 20% of video providers struggle to deliver a consistent quality of experience, while more than 24% find it difficult to identify the root cause of playback issues. Without the right visibility into performance, even a minor disruption can lead to a lasting impact on viewer satisfaction and retention.

The same report shows that it takes most video developers between 12 and 24 hours to identify the root cause of a playback issue. Traditional approaches rely on post-issue analysis and user-reported errors, which are too slow to protect the viewer experience at scale. The delay between a playback issue occurring and resolution leaves providers exposed, especially during high-profile events or peak viewing periods.

Understanding the Quality Challenge
Viewers expect seamless playback across any device, whether it’s a phone, tablet, smart TV, or set-top box. To meet this expectation, video services must support an expanding mix of platforms and hardware configurations, all while accounting for different operating systems, browsers, and firmware versions, which creates a complex testing environment. Manual testing is slow and expensive, while automated testing requires a lot of effort to stay current with evolving streaming protocols and codecs.

This is where viewer-side metrics become essential. Backend systems may report that everything is operating normally, but that doesn’t help when a user is stuck buffering or receives a lower resolution than expected for their device. Metrics such as startup time, buffering frequency, playback resolution relative to screen size, and error types, offer far more meaningful insight into real viewing conditions.

These data points allow teams to move beyond generalized performance assumptions to understand what users are actually experiencing, across all devices and environments.

The Case for Real-Time Observability
Observability is frequently used in the IT industry to identify, diagnose, and resolve issues in real time, yet in video streaming, it remains underutilized. Many providers still rely on static dashboards or user complaints to surface problems, creating a lag between failure and resolution.

As the video ecosystem becomes increasingly fragmented, this reactive approach falls short. Ensuring a seamless viewer experience requires deeper, real-time insight into how video performs at the session level. That means moving beyond averages and aggregates to understand the specific conditions that impact playback quality as they happen.

Forward thinking streaming teams are beginning to adopt this model of granular, actionable visibility. With the ability to detect anomalies early, isolate root causes, and correlate quality issues across environments, they’re shifting from firefighting to prevention, reducing churn and improving satisfaction. Analytics platforms are helping make this shift possible by embedding observability into the heart of the video workflow to help providers scale diagnostics and accelerate resolution.

Enhanced Visibility = Higher Quality Streams
To deliver video in the best possible quality, service providers also need to optimize video encoding. And to do this, providers need to understand how content is performing in the real world, across devices, networks and regions. Relying on fixed bitrate ladders can lead to quality issues, especially when viewing conditions vary as much as they do today. If video providers can access metrics such as download speed, resolution changes, and the bitrates actually being delivered, they’re much better equipped to work out where the viewing experience is falling short.

Another key aspect of delivering a quality viewing experience is ad playback. Issues such as stalled playback, buffering and blank screens can quickly ruin the viewing experience. However, ad performance can be difficult to monitor, especially with server-side ad insertion (SSAI), where these issues can often go undetected. To address this, providers need tools that make it possible to track how ads are really performing, so that ad playback issues can be spotted and resolved quickly.

Raising the Bar
Viewers today have high expectations and little patience for playback issues. Most will abandon a stream within seconds if it buffers, crashes, or the quality drops, and many won’t return after a bad experience. To meet these expectations, video providers must account for a wide range of variables, including device type, screen size, connection quality, geographic location, and user behavior.

Observability enables teams to manage this complexity by monitoring key playback metrics as they occur. This gives providers the clarity and speed needed to resolve problems before they affect the viewer. The services that succeed won’t just be the ones delivering popular content, they’ll be the ones delivering it flawlessly, every time, on every device, without users ever noticing the work going on behind the scenes.

LONDON—Sony One, a new video-on-demand service offering a wide selection of content from Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) library, has selected an integrated solution from Simplestream to power its expansion into Latin America.

Simplestream reported that Sony One selected a comprehensive end-to-end service from Simplestream to increase the distribution of its premium content across multiple devices, including Android, iOS, LG, Samsung and web platforms.

Simplestream’s service for Sony One also includes integration with Bitmovin’s Player which includes support for Digital Rights Management (DRM) feature, along with third-party authentication, payment gateways, video streaming workflows and real-time analytics.

Using Simplestream’s Media Manager and App Platform products, the Sony One platform has broadened its reach to Argentina, giving viewers access to the extensive SPE catalogue of family favorites, such as “Men in Black”, the Spider Man movies, “Peter Rabbit” and “Jumanji”.

The Simplestream platform supports multilingual content, allowing Sony One to ingest and display content in English, Spanish and Portuguese simultaneously. DRM is handled via the common encryption CENC scheme.

This latest project for Sony One expands Simplestream’s growing customer base in the Americas. The announcement follows similar projects that the company has recently undertaken across multiple broadcast verticals and regions for the likes of Virgin Media Television, News UK, GB News, Hearst Ventures, AMC Networks, GAA, URC, Telus, and TVSN among others.

“This was another fantastic project to work on with the Sony team, which we delivered on budget and on time,” Dan Finch, Simplestream’s co-founder and chief commercial officer stated: The telco authentication workflow and support for multi-lingual content, with functionality such as progressive downloads, enhances our capabilities as a leading OTT provider in the market.”

“This is our first collaboration with Simplestream in Latin America, and we’re super excited to work together to simplify Sony’s One’s live and on-demand media workflows and provide secure, high-quality streams to audiences across Argentina and help meet the growing appetite for digital content in the region,” added Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder at Bitmovin.

Bitmovin is exhibiting at the 2025 NAB Show in the West Hall at W3221.

Connected TVs have revolutionized video consumption and transformed the digital advertising landscape. And as we’ve seen over recent years, an increasing number of streaming providers and broadcasters are turning to advertising to support growth.

However, to maximize this revenue stream personalization of ad content is key. When ads are tailored to align with the viewer’s preferences and behavior, they resonate more deeply, driving higher engagement and conversion rates. This benefits broadcasters by strengthening their appeal to advertisers, who naturally want maximum return on their investments. Yet personalization in advertising remains a huge challenge.

Ad personalization on CTVs relies heavily on the use of tracking cookies, but growing privacy concerns, regulatory shifts and a widespread aversion of third-party cookies are making this model unworkable. And so, the industry needs a new advertising strategy—one that respects user privacy while still delivering effective ads. Many are turning to contextual advertising as a potential solution. While this advertising model is itself not new, what is new, is the use of AI to significantly enhance it, making it much more powerful and effective.

Unlocking Contextual Advertising’s Potential
Rather than relying on personal data, contextual advertising works by tailoring the ad to match the content. As the name suggests, contextual advertising, it’s all about context. By matching ads to the content being viewed, contextual advertising aims to deliver an enjoyable ad experience that feels natural to the viewer.

For instance, if the viewer is watching sports content, then ads showing sports clothing brands might be selected. This alignment enhances the likelihood of viewer engagement, because the ads are relevant to the immediate context of the content they are watching. Importantly, this strategy also aligns with evolving privacy expectations, allowing broadcasters to provide personalized experiences without intrusive data collection.

While contextual advertising can be effective on its own, AI takes it to the next level by analyzing video scenes in incredible detail. AI can be used to identify key elements such as mood, setting and pace, as well as objects in the frame, to create a precise match between ads and content on the screen at any given moment.

For example, if a scene shows a person on a sandy beach heading to the sea to surf, with the power of AI, contextual advertising tools may suggest advertising for surfboards, watersports equipment, beach wear, and outdoor adventure activity vacations. Or if the scene features a person chopping fresh vegetables while preparing to cook a meal, suggested advertising may include kitchen knife sets, fresh vegetable delivery services, or healthy meal subscription service kits. Similarly, if the content shows a person practicing yoga, contextual advertising tools may suggest ads on yoga equipment, fitness apparel, wellness supplements, or healthy living and wellness apps and services.

Engagement = Conversion
The reasoning behind this approach is that if the viewer is already watching content that features the things being advertised, or similar, it’s reasonable to assume that they may appeal to or interest the viewer to some degree. If ads are delivered that the viewer is more likely to be interested in and engage with, this leads to higher rates of conversion.

Additionally, while standard contextual advertising works to identify objects in the scene, AI can analyze the content at a much deeper level. It can help determine what mood the viewer is in so that ads can be placed that they will be most receptive to at that moment. This enables streaming providers to select ads that resonate with a scene’s emotional tone, creating a more immersive and engaging experience for the viewer.

Pairing contextual advertising technology with prediction tools can also help video providers to optimize ad placement for maximum impact. These types of tools can measure conversion rates enabling video providers to track viewer engagement patterns to identify when viewers are most attentive or most likely to convert.

Shaping the Future of CTV Advertising
By incorporating AI into contextual advertising strategies, broadcasters can deliver hyper-personalized ads that have higher relevance to the viewer, at precisely the right moment when the viewer is most likely to take action. This combination of relevance and precision is reshaping the way media companies approach advertising, ensuring an enhanced viewing experience, improved conversion rates for advertisers, and increased ad revenue for service providers.

This approach offers broadcasters a solution to a major challenge: how to deliver impactful, personalized ads without relying on personal tracking data. As such, AI-powered contextual advertising has the potential to transform CTV advertising, and it is only going to get better as AI technology evolves and improves.

As the reliance on advertising to support growth intensifies across the media landscape, the adoption of AI-driven advertising solutions will become a critical differentiator. Broadcasters and video providers who invest in these technologies now will be well-positioned to lead the industry into a new era of smarter, more effective advertising.

VIENNA—Bitmovin said it has launched its AI Contextual Advertising solution, combining the company’s playback and encoding offerings to provide hyper-personal advertisements for audiences based on what they are watching.

Bitmovin AI Contextual Advertising optimizes ad placement for users by relying on a machine-learning model that extracts relevant characteristics from every scene in a video and analyzes viewer engagements, the company said.

The solution is based on cookieless workflows, Bitmovin said, so it provides relevant ads to viewers with no need for personalized tracking.

“We’re extremely proud of Bitmovin’s AI Contextual Advertising, which is a unique solution that will deliver personalized and relevant content to the viewer, which will translate into increased ad conversions revenue and brand loyalty,” Bitmovin CEO and co-founder Stefan Lederer said. “We believe our AI Contextual Advertising will help propel the industry forward by harnessing the power of AI into the integration of our award-winning technologies for smarter ad placements that will positively impact the customer’s bottom line.”

Bitmovin’s encoding solutions leverage AI to analyze both video and audio content. It uses an AI model from OpenAI to extract metadata to enable a more content-focused advertising placement. Each extracted piece of content metadata is assigned a time stamp to map that information to the specific position where it belongs, Bitmovin said.

Metadata descriptions are detailed enough to allow for targeted ad placement but can also describe a scene more broadly, Bitmovin said. The Bitmovin Player sends this metadata to a content-aware ad server, which replies with contextual ads, the company said.

Using a conversion heat map generated by the Bitmovin Player, the ad's position is optimized to increase its chance of conversion. Categories are based on the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s taxonomy in tandem with an AI analysis of historical data and the current user environment, it said.

“More and more media and entertainment companies are looking to advertising to support growth,” Lederer said. “Yet lack of personalization in advertising remains a huge challenge for brands. AI can help make advertising experiences more tailored to the viewer by analyzing the content they are watching, which can help pinpoint what mood they are in and place ads that they will be more receptive to in that moment.”

Bitmovin AI Contextual Advertising & Prediction measures conversion rates at various points in the video. Combined with information about a user’s viewing environment, it places a specific ad when the viewer is most likely to convert, the company said.

Metadata also can be used to ensure brand safety and avoid placing ads with content incompatible with a brand, it said.

Bitmovin’s AI Contextual Advertising integrates two existing products, making integration simple for customers, the company said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

In advance of the 2024 IBC Show, Sept. 13-16 at the RAI Amsterdam, TV Tech spoke with Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder of Bitmovin, who will be exhibiting at Stand 5.H48 in the show's Content Everywhere Zone.

TV Tech: Why did you choose to exhibit in the Content Everywhere Zone this year?
Stefan Lederer: Bitmovin was founded to shape the future of video, creating best in class video development solutions that enable customers to create memorable digital experiences, worldwide. This makes the Content Everywhere Zone our natural home at IBC, as it is the go-to-place for the latest trends and innovations in OTT streaming and the monetization of content.

Being in the Content Everywhere Zone not only puts us in the right place for current and potential customers looking for ways to play, encode and analyze video content simply, efficiently and with the highest quality imaginable, but it also gets us close to our partners covering a whole range of solutions across the OTT video space.

TVT: What will you be highlighting at your exhibit?
SL: As always, we will be presenting our latest innovations. This year, this spans a few key areas:

Live, live, live: In the past 18 months, our live encoding team has made huge advancements to our live encoder, and we already have a number of new customers successfully using it. OneFootball is a great example of this. OneFootball is using our live encoder on Akamai Cloud Computing to deliver high-quality live streams at scale to its millions of viewers. You can read more about this in the press release and case study. We will have further developments to our live encoder that we'll be sharing at the show.

Our presence in the sports industry: We announced a brand new feature called Multiview that provides a more compelling experience for audiences by enabling them to watch multiple streams simultaneously. Bitmovin’s Multiview is designed for use cases such as sports, esports, and live events, where it’s advantageous to provide the audience with the option of staying immersed in the content they want by removing the need to flick between different channels. We know this is a feature that a lot of sports customers want. We already have a number of sports customers, including ORF (which was a broadcaster for the 2024 Euros), Sportall, OneFootball and Globo.

AI will naturally continue to be a big talking point and our Bitmovin Analytics AI Session Interpreter will make its IBC debut. Launched ahead of NAB, it is a new feature for Bitmovin Analytics that aims to simplify data analysis and provide concise text summaries accessible to users with varying degrees of technical knowledge. It's an innovation we're proud of as it's making video streaming more accessible by presenting video analytics in a more accessible way so users can troubleshoot any streaming issues faster.

TVT: Which trends do you expect will be most important at the show this year?
SL: AI will certainly remain a huge topic as we head into this year’s IBC. We have already seen significant advancements in this area over recent months and I’m certain that the show will be awash with vendors launching solutions and services related to AI. Indeed, our most recent Video Developer Report found that over 90% of developers plan to use AI/ ML to improve the video experience for viewers. And it certainly makes a lot of sense when you consider the cost and resource efficiencies afforded by AI. Of course, we are no exception here. The Bitmovin Analytics AI Session Interpreter leverages the power of AI to help users better understand playback sessions with explanations and recommendations for improving their service.

Monetization will remain a big talking point. The industry has faced a number of challenges over the past couple of years. The global economic climate has led to a decrease in spend on video services, which in turn means the industry is focusing on cost-reduction. However, that won't drive growth. What we need now is to focus on new ways to create additional monetization opportunities to promote growth. This is beginning to happen with many video services introducing ad-funded tiers, for example. I believe we will see further innovation in this arena, with more technology and solutions emerging that make it easier than ever for video providers to diversify revenue streams.

TVT: What brings you back to IBC every year?
SL: Each year, IBC drives thought leadership, innovation, best practice and diversity across the 250,000-strong global community. As the flagship media and entertainment conference and trade show in Europe, IBC is one of the most important events in our calendar and a must-attend for us.

While the world has gone a lot more online, it is clear that face-to-face meetings remain invaluable. IBC delivers a unique opportunity to meet customers, prospects, and partners under one roof, helping us continue, or in some cases start, meaningful conversations and ultimately forge better relationships.

For more information, visit https://show.ibc.org/content-everywhere

VIENNA, Austria—NAGRA, a provider of content protection and security solutions, is integrating Bitmovin’s Player with its streaming security and consumer engagement solutions including OpenTV Video Platform. The partnership empowers NAGRA to offer enhanced video streaming capabilities to its media, entertainment, and sports customer base through a fully customizable white-label solution, the companies said.

“NAGRA is an undisputed leader in media technology solutions, and it’s a huge honor that the Bitmovin Player will be integrated into its product suite as part of its solution partner ecosystem to help power world-class streaming solutions for service providers and content owners globally,” said Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder of Bitmovin.

Bitmovin’s player includes features like advertising support, low-latency streaming, and DRM. NAGRA says it will also benefit from the Bitmovin Player’s extensive device reach, including its ability to quickly deploy on new devices and platforms such as smart TVs.

“The Bitmovin Player is market-leading, and we are impressed with its playback quality, device reach, ability to scale at speed, and the range of features it offers, all of which match the quality of NAGRA’s solutions,” Stephane Le Dreau, SVP, Global Products & Partnerships at NAGRA. “This key addition to our solution partner ecosystem will ensure we can deliver a comprehensive, high-quality, and secure experience to our customers and their millions of viewers.”

DENVER—Video streaming infrastructure provider Bitmovin has announced that the Graham Media Group has selected Bitmovin Playback to enhance its viewer experience. 

Since deploying Bitmovin Player, Graham Media Group said it had doubled its online viewer engagement time. The solution is being used in Graham’s  Houston, Detroit, Orlando, San Antonio, Jacksonville, and Roanoke markets.

The Bitmovin Player ensures video playback across a wide range of devices. Bitmovin Analytics provides real-time monitoring, optimizes playback performance, and enables data-driven decisions to improve content and advertising strategies.

Graham Media, which operates seven local TV stations and digital hubs, chose the solution, which includes the Bitmovin Player and Bitmovin Analytics, to free its developers from the time-consuming task of maintaining playback quality. This allows them to focus on innovative user experience features to boost engagement and deliver local journalism to their communities.

Kenny Elshoff, senior web engineer at Graham Media Group, explained that “The speed to get the player into our codebase and extensibility of the SDKs made this the best player for us for now and the future.” 

Graham Media Group also deployed Bitmovin Analytics alongside the Bitmovin Player for real-time monitoring and to help optimize playback health. 

Before Bitmovin, Graham Media Group did not have integrated playback analytics, so the team didn’t have detailed insights into the quality of streams. Bitmovin Analytics ensures each stream's reliability by analyzing real-time user session data and sharing it with the player. Bitmovin Analytics reports any playback issues so they can be fixed before they impact the viewer, the company said. 

“Bitmovin is a well-known player in the video streaming industry and our top choice for a technical partner as we seek to expand our audience reach by offering game-changing viewing experiences powered by high-quality streams that drive viewing engagement,” said Michael Newman, director of transformation at Graham Media Group, “We can't wait to see the positive impact that Bitmovin's solutions will continue to have on our operational efficiency and viewer satisfaction as we continue on our quest to deliver content that informs and celebrates local communities.”

“Graham Media Group is a trusted local voice, and we are deeply honored that Bitmovin’s solutions will help deliver content that helps nurture community spirit,” added Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder of Bitmovin “The combined power of the Bitmovin Player and Bitmovin Analytics meets Graham Media  Group’s need for flawless playback for its millions of viewers with real-time analytics that resolves any playback issues and always optimizes for the best streaming experience.

DENVER—Bitmovin has launched its Live Encoder running on the Akamai Cloud Computing, optimizing live streaming and reducing total streaming costs by up to 90%, and announced plans to show the combination at the 2024 NAB Show, April 13-17, the company said.

Immediately available, the combination reduces data transfer out (DTO) costs, leveraging the performance of the Bitmovin encoder and Akamai’s distributed cloud platform, Bitmovin said.

“Bitmovin can help its live-streaming customers deliver higher-quality viewing experiences and reduce and better control costs by running Live Encoder on Akamai Cloud Computing,” said Dan Lawrence, vice president of cloud computing at Akamai.

“Placing and executing Live Encoder’s critical compute functions closer to end users can realize lower latency streaming while maintaining the high quality of service that consumers have come to expect and demand from streaming providers. It can also help dramatically reduce DTO fees in many cases. Collectively, we believe this meets the industry’s desire to continue raising the standards of live streaming, provide lower and more predictable operational costs, and more opportunities to monetize content.”

With an intuitive user interface, Bitmovin’s Live Encoder simplifies setup of live streams. Its robust API offers developers complete control over all aspects of the encoding pipeline, the company said.

Live Encoder is also pre-integrated with Akamai Media Services Live to support live-to-VOD and live clipping, which is part of Akamai Connected Cloud and enables secure and efficient streaming at massive scale across Akamai’s global content delivery network (CDN), it said.

Those who run Bitmovin’s Live Encoder on Akamai will also benefit from pre-integrated third-party solutions for their video streaming workflows, including Videon's LiveEdge contribution encoders; Grass Valley’s Agile Media Processing Platform (AMPP) for live production; Zixi for secure transport and ingest; EZDRM for multi-DRM and content encryption; and Yospace for Server-side Ad Insertion (SSAI), it said.

“Our Live Encoder elevates live streaming, eliminating sub-par image and audio quality so audiences can enjoy truly immersive live experiences,” said Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder of Bitmovin.

More information is available on the Bitmovin website and Akamai websites.

See Bitmovin in NAB Show booth W3013.

See Akamai in NAB Show booth W235LMR.

Every move made by Apple has far-reaching implications. The force touch feature may have originated at Apple, but is now found on every device. 

This is but one example. Recently, Apple announced that its iPhone 15 Pro and Max, as well as its new M3 desktop processor will include an AV1 decoder. At first glance, this seems like a significant leap forward for AOMedia, as uptake in AV1 has remained relatively low with Netflix and YouTube being the most notable media companies to have implemented the codec. However, as with many things in the tech world, the reality is a bit more complex.

The introduction of an AV1 decoder into Apple systems raises several key questions: Is this a sign of Apple leading the charge in industry innovation? Will it pave the way for widespread adoption of AV1, or is it yet another step towards exclusivity and inaccessibility for smaller media companies?

A Shift in Industry Direction?
Apple's move to introduce AV1 into its products is indeed indicative of a broader industry shift. AV1, developed by the Alliance for Open Media, is a royalty-free, open-source video codec offering superior compression efficiency and video quality. Whilst the codec is more complex, and those wishing to use it will need to educate themselves to make the most out of it, AV1 does have a far higher innovation ceiling, alongside a higher ceiling for video quality and efficiency. Therefore, implementing AV1 can be a sure fire way to stand out from the competition.

By supporting AV1, Apple is also sending a clear message: it values innovation in the video industry, and understands that consumers are demanding far more from their video experiences.

The introduction of AV1 into Apple's products is likely to serve as a catalyst for other tech giants, who risk falling behind in video innovation. Ultimately, Apple’s adoption of AV1 should prompt a wave of adoption throughout the industry, leading to a new minimum standard in video encoding whilst placing video as a key battleground in the war for device primacy. 

This shift will significantly benefit consumers, as it will improve video streaming quality and reduce bandwidth requirements, particularly in an era where high-definition and 4K content are becoming the norm, and consumers increasingly watch content on the move with unsteady connections.

Exclusive Club or Equal Opportunity?
Incorporating AV1 into Apple's devices, and it also being included in the latest Google Pixel phones, could potentially create a divide between those who have the new, highest-end devices with AV1 support, and those with older or cheaper models lagging behind, who will need to upgrade to take advantage of AV1. Meaning in the near term, media companies pushing forward with AV1 will still need to consider other codecs for backwards compatibility, which may be difficult for smaller media companies.

(Read: Where is AV1 Heading?)

If the adoption of AV1 is not widespread, it would further fragment the streaming landscape with the impact being far greater on the smaller media companies, who may not afford the upfront cost of AV1. Smaller media companies, with limited resources, often find it more challenging to keep up with the constantly evolving technology landscape, and there is a risk AV1 could simply pass them by.

However, Apple’s adoption will prompt a rapid decline in the upfront cost of implementing AV1. This is as a result of infrastructure providers putting greater emphasis on maximizing AV1’s potential and creating new, efficient products for it. This investment by infrastructure businesses, and increased interest in the products will mean that the initial investment needed for AV1 will decrease iteratively opening up opportunities for smaller media companies.

Tech giants, as well as AOMedia, can also work collaboratively alongside smaller media companies and open-source projects to try and remove some of the larger barriers to AV1 adoption, which currently requires a significant upfront cost. This is where the imbalance between the big tech players and smaller companies becomes dramatically apparent. 

The Road Ahead
The introduction of AV1 by Apple is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can drive the industry towards a higher standard of video quality and compression efficiency, ultimately benefiting consumers. On the other hand, it could create a wider technology gap between the tech giants and smaller companies. 

The road ahead hinges on a collaborative effort within the industry to ensure that AV1 is adopted widely and made accessible to everyone. The AOMedia's goal with AV1 is to create a royalty-free, open-source codec that promotes innovation and inclusivity. Apple's adoption can be seen as a step in the right direction if it aligns with this vision.

In conclusion, the introduction of AV1 by Apple is indeed significant and promising. It reflects a potential shift in industry standards and could lead to better video streaming experiences for all. However, it is essential for the industry to work together to ensure everyone can benefit from AV1. 

The true test of its success will be whether it paves the way for inclusivity and accessibility in the ever-evolving world of video streaming and encoding technology. The future of AV1 will ultimately be determined by the collective actions of industry players and the commitment to fostering a level playing field for all.

PHOENIX—Edgio has announced a strategic partnership with streaming technology providers Accedo, Bitmovin, Grabyo, and Vimond to provide a roadmap for M&E companies looking for a more simplified, more cost-efficient platform for delivering OTT video, providing them with the ability to quickly assemble and manage a streaming ecosystem that delivers high-quality linear, live or on-demand video. 

Edgio is leading the alliance as a Managed Service Provider, working with its partners to seamlessly integrate technologies across the entire streaming tech stack—from content production, personalization and distribution to user experience and monetization. This not only simplifies the intricate processes associated with delivering and managing streaming workflows, it also helps provide a frictionless entry into the market, the companies said. As Managed Service Provider, Edgio will provide a single point of contact for all support needs, regardless of vendor. 

"For media companies, piecing together an ecosystem like this on their own would be costly, time-consuming, and risky," said Eric Black, CTO and GM of Media for Edgio.  “By bringing together companies at the forefront of streaming and managing the entire process under one service partner, media companies can focus on creating innovative content versus navigating the complexities of a streaming workflow.”

The pre-integrated workflow provides increased flexibility for M&E companies to experiment with distribution and price point models, such as AVOD, SVOD, and FAST, to find the most profitable individualized offering for their specific audiences, Edgio said.

At launch, the partner ecosystem includes Accedo, which provides Video Application management, which includes custom templates and bespoke development for state-of-the-art UX that attracts and retains users. Accedo is pre-integrated with Vimond and Bitmovin to provide a seamless end-to-end solution.

Bitmovin’s Bitmovin Player guarantees flawless playback and viewing experiences across an extensive range of devices at speed and scale. Bitmovin Analytics ensures stream reliability by user session data and pinpointing any playback issues in real-time so they can be resolved before they impact the viewer. Bitmovin’s Analytics delivers real-time operational monitoring to optimize video and ad workflows based on viewer experiences across all platforms. Bitmovin Analytics also offers benchmarks across different performance metrics to gain industry insights.

Edgio’s Uplynk Platform empowers media companies to deliver the highest-quality streaming experiences to global audiences, while reducing time-to-market and driving operational scale. Its best-in-class components deliver exceptional viewing quality and reliability while maximizing monetization through advanced advertising. Uplynk, coupled with Edgio’s expert services, provides an exceptionally quick time-to-market and improves ROI. The Uplynk platform will be the foundation through which the OTT ecosystem is built upon using a mix of open standard video protocols and flexible APIs. 

Grabyo is a modern, cloud-native SaaS solution for live production, video clipping, real-time editing and distribution. The platform can scale from single operator digital streams to multi-camera productions with a larger remote team, combined with integrated live clipping, editing and publishing tools. With the recent introduction of SCTE-35 marker insertion, Grabyo’s cloud production users can now create ad breaks to monetize their live video across linear broadcast, FAST and OTT platforms. The platform supports live feeds from on-site cameras, audio sources, remote guests or mobile field kits, with ingest streams up to 50Mbps, 1080p/60FPS using leading video protocols including SRT, Zixi, RIST, RTMPs, HLS and RTP. Grabyo provides unlimited capacity for live video clipping and will sit in front of Uplynk, so customers can ingest video with Grabyo then publish to Uplynk where it’s distributed to end viewers.

Vimond’s CMS enables customers to provide contextual metadata to describe and curate content presented to users in apps and websites. With support across the workflow, from media ingest, asset management, metadata enrichment, to distribution, Vimond VIA provides customers with a flexible and user-friendly CMS to handle videos, freeing valuable resources to focus on winning new viewers and content strategy. Vimond’s VIA product will use Uplynk as its backend video management system by integrating with Uplynk APIs.

Each of the companies will be demonstrating their technologies this week at IBC2023, RAI Amsterdam, Sept. 15-18. Accedo: Hall 5, Stand F40; Bitmovin Hall 5, stand D72; Edgio, Hall 5 stand F18; Grabyo, Hall 5, Stand A20; Vimond, Hall 5, Stand H59.

VIENNA—Bitmovin will provide playback health analytics to complement the existing analytics offered as part of Amazon Interactive Video Services (IVS), Amazon’s managed live streaming AWS solution that makes it easy to build live streams and interactive video experiences, the company said.

The Bitmovin Analytics helps to optimize playback health and support data-driven decision making for content and ad strategies. They supplement Amazon IVS’ stream health analytics with playback health to bring a deeper understanding of each viewer’s streaming experience, the company said.

Bitmovin Analytics fully monitors the health of video streams in near real-time, including key performance metrics, such as video start time, average bitrate, view time, buffering and top errors, it said.

“Amazon IVS is powering live interactive video experiences for use cases that span social media influencers to retail, household consumer brands and public institutions, and so it’s a huge honor to add to the service's existing metrics with the announcement of Bitmovin Analytics,” said Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder of Bitmovin. “Bitmovin Analytics with Amazon IVS is a robust solution, providing deeper session analytics that can pinpoint playback issues and provide actionable insights to resolve them to ensure IVS-powered streaming services are delivering exceptional viewer experiences to their audiences.”

Bitmovin Analytics complements Amazon IVS to provide a complete understanding of audience preferences and viewing habits with insights into audience retention, geographical distribution and device utilization to inform decision-making on investment into new content and the prioritization of what’s popular with audiences, the company said.

Bitmovin’s Analytics delivers near real-time operational monitoring to optimize video and ad workflows based on viewer experiences across all platforms. Bitmovin Analytics also offers benchmarks across different performance metrics to gain industry insights, it said.

More information is available on Bitmovin’s website.

POZNAN, Poland—OTT solutions provider Insys Video Technologies and video stream infrastructure provider BitMovin have partnered to provide an all-in-one solution to stream live content and secure videos with Cloud DRM by integrating Cloud Video Kit and the Bitmovin Player, the companies said this week.

Insys Video Technologies’ Cloud Video Kit makes it easy to prepare video for streaming as well as transcodes video to VOD formats with quick, scalable deployments thanks to Cloud DRM. The Bitmovin Player and Analytics are now integrated with the kit. The integration gives users access to a multifunctional and simple all-in-one tool. Pre-integrating the Cloud Video Kit with the Bitmovin Player adds video playback and ad support, they said.

“Together, Bitmovin and Insys Video Technologies will provide customers with a powerful, all-in-one solution that minimizes complexity, ensuring they can deliver superior viewing experiences to audiences worldwide. We’re incredibly proud to be collaborating with Insys Video Technologies and continue raising the standard of video streaming with innovation-led partnerships,” said David Rushton, Director, EMEA Channel at Bitmovin.

The first collaborative project was the implementation of Bitmovin Player and Analytics integrated with Cloud DRM for the Austrian public broadcaster – ORF 

“The partnership with Bitmovin is an opportunity for Insys Video Technologies to tap into new markets,” said Insys Video Technologies co-CEO Piotr Czekala. “The integration of our video streaming and transcoding product, Cloud Video Kit, with Bitmovin Player creates a solution for customers to easily prepare their video content for streaming and secure their video content with Cloud DRM, all in one easy-to-use panel.”

More information is available on the Insys Video Technologies and Bitmovin websites.

DENVER—Buffering video and poor-quality video can cost streaming services dearly—as much as $390 million per month, according to research from Bitmovin, a streaming infrastructure and adaptive streaming player developer.

Poor quality video and buffering can be dealbreakers as U.S. streaming subscribers get a little pickier about their streaming subscriptions, especially in the midst of belt tightening, the company said. Nearly half (47%) said they have unsubscribed due to buffering. The research also found 27% said they would drop service due to poor video quality.

Bitmovin estimated the lost monthly revenue being as much as $390 million a month based on there being 122.3 million U.S. households, 85% of which subscribe to at least one streaming service. These subscribers pay an average monthly subscription fee of $7.99, with nearly half dropping subscriptions due to buffering. 

Subscribers will consider cancelling service when their buffering wait reaches 13.5 seconds on average. However, subscribers are more tolerant with certain types of content. For example, religious content subscribers said they would consider cancelling if waits exceed 15.5 seconds on average; eSports and eLearning, 15.4; and paid-for streaming services after 14 seconds, the research found.

Males were less tolerant of buffering than females. Male subscribers to paid services said they would tolerate only 13 seconds of buffering before contemplating cancellation, while female subscribers would put up with buffering for 14.9 seconds, it said.

With OTT services like Netflix announcing an ad-supported tier, the research polled people on their reaction. It found that on average 68% would happily pay a little bit extra for a subscription to not encounter advertising. That number climbs to 78% among 18-to-35-year-olds. A total of 58% will tolerate ads on free streaming services.

Among the other research findings: 25% of Americans value the ability to use streaming services across all devices and chose that as one of their three top reasons to keep subscribing; and connected TVs (CTVs) are the primary viewing platform at 67%; mobile phones are second at 49%, laptops third at 25%, and tablets came in last at 23%.

“We are in an era of technology-driven experiences, and so, within this tech-savvy generation, streamers need to go above and beyond just offering entertaining content. The consumer, especially when paying for these services, also wants a seamless and enjoyable experience. Streamers need to realize that it’s not just great content that will help them win out but also top-notch delivery of its content,” said Bitmovin CEO and founder Stefan Lederer.

An external research agency conducted the research and provided results from 2,000 U.S. respondents, the company said.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—A new survey of video developers by Bitmovin highlights a number of ongoing tech challenges facing streaming services, with 41% of those technologists citing live low latency as a challenge, followed by controlling costs for such things as bandwidth and storage (33%), playback on all devices (32%), consistent monitoring and analytics (31%) and ad insertion (31%). 

Bitmovin’s fifth annual “Video Developer Report” also found that 41% of developers cited low latency streaming as an important tech opportunity for innovation at their service, followed by live streaming at scale (33%), viewer engagement and consumption (28%), media delivery and distribution (26%) and content protection and security (26%.)

In terms of the adoption of AI and machine learning, the survey found that 43% of respondents said they were using AI and machine learning in their audio transcription and speech-to-text efforts, followed by tagging and categorizing video (35%), personalization (34%), identifying scene or shot boundaries (34%), video quality optimization (33%), object detection (33%) recommendations (30%) and quality of service (24%). Only 12% said they had no plans to use AI or machine learning. 

In terms of other technologies, the survey found growing interest in commercial encoders, with 54% saying they used them versus 37% using open source encoders. 

The  use of cloud-based encoding services is also on the rise, hitting 33% in the 2021 survey, up from 32% in 2020 and 29% in 2019. 

The survey also found increased consumption and variation in device preference, with 81% of respondents delivering streams via HTML5 in desktop browsers, followed by 57% via HTML5 on Android. Philips was the preferred Smart TV brand in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and while Vizio led the pack in North America. 

Interestingly, Sony PlayStation 4 (PS4) is the most popular console for streaming in North America, outranking many Smart TV brands. Console use in all other regions of the globe is much lower.

The report also found that streaming device usage differs significantly worldwide. While Apple TV is most popular in North America and Asia Pacific, it comes in at only #5 in Latin America (LATAM).  Android TV is preferred in LATAM (44%) and EMEA (51%), with others, such as Chromecast TV, closely behind at 44% in LATAM and 38% in EMEA.  

The survey also highlighted some notable and important changes in codec usage. The AVC/H.264 video codec continues to dominate device reach, however newer and more efficient codecs, such as HEVC, VP9, and AV1 all saw increases in testing and production usage in 2021. HEVC is being deployed currently by nearly 50% of survey respondents.  

The survey also found increased AV1 usage on consumer platforms like YouTube and Netflix and support from affordable devices like Fire TV Stick 4K Max signals a potential shift toward broader AV1 adoption across the ecosystem. 

The reigning audio codec AAC continued its position at the top but did see some incremental decline over the past year while multiple Dolby audio formats rose in popularity and usage, the researchers said. 

Interestingly, the most popular streaming format, HLS, saw its first usage decline while CMAF rose in adoption from 21% to 26%.  

“This year’s Video Developer Report reveals several indicators about the continued maturity of the industry as a whole,” said Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder of Bitmovin. “We’re seeing increased consumption across the board, along with accelerated innovation and pressures from consumers to enhance innovation and personalization to deliver the seamless streaming experience they continue to expect. Center stage as well in this year’s results is the rising importance of video analytics platforms as a key element of scalability and successful workflows.” 

Now in its fifth consecutive year, Bitmovin has conducted its Video Developer Survey between July 7-August 22, 2021. Bitmovin surveyed a sample set of 538 video developers, industry experts, customers and prospects from 65 countries.  

The full report with more details on specific technologies and trends is available here. 

SAN FRANCISCO—Digital video technology provider Bitmovin has announced that Globo in Brazil used its encoding technology to deliver 8K streams from the Tokyo Olympics.

Using Bitmovin, Globo debuted the Tokyo 2020 Olympics 8K VOD content on Globoplay for free, as a limited experiment. This marked the first time the Olympics have been streamed in 8K outside of Japan.

“With the industry moving to a TV 3.0 model, we wanted to work with a partner to debut 8K in a high-visibility cultural moment,” said Lucas Stephanou, video platform product owner at Globo. “Globo’s Olympic Games broadcast presented a unique opportunity to showcase 8K HDR to the widest possible audience, and help subscribers maximize their experience on the platform.”

The cloud-based system provided the elasticity needed for a job that demands tremendous processing power in a short period of time to preserve the quality while transforming the content offered in Ultra HD 8K HDR into a size that can be transported over broadband internet connections, Bitmovin said.

Bitmovin has over 400 customers across the globe including BBC, ClassPass, DAZN, discovery+, fuboTV, Globo, and Hulu Japan.

SAN FRANCISCO—Streaming video technology provider Bitmovin has launched the Bitmovin Cloud Connect platform, which is designed to enable OTT content providers working on Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services and Azure to deploy Bitmovin’s encoding system in their existing cloud.

Bitmovin Cloud Connect can be used simultaneously with the Bitmovin Managed Cloud platform. Bitmovin Managed Cloud provides a development environment for integrating Bitmovin’s encoding capabilities, but with Bitmoving Cloud Connect, users get a vendor-agnostic service that allows them to stay in one secure environment and encode where their content already exists.

Users of Bitmovin Cloud Connect can leverage chunk-based encoding with GCP, AWS and Azure; use existing security measures and discounts that may be part of cloud provider contracts; better manage their current cloud resources and infrastructure; use a “split and stitch” approach like the Bitmoving Managed Cloud; and use their own cloud environments in tandem with the Bitmovin Managed Cloud for developer flexibility and additional fault tolerance.

“Many of our customers have made significant investments in cloud services,” said Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder, Bitmovin.  “Additionally, many organizations have strict security guidelines that mandate the work be done within their current environment. With Bitmovin Cloud Connect, customers will have the flexibility to take advantage of all of Bitmovin’s benefits in the comfort and safety of their own development environment.”

For more information, visit www.bitmovin.com.  

SAN FRANCISCO—Bitmovin has closed a Series C financing round in which it raised $25 million. This new funding will be used to drive Bitmovin’s expansion of its product innovation and technology leadership in the streaming space, according to a press release.

Swisscom Ventures led the way in the Series C round, along with Climb Ventures and existing Bitmovin investors Atomico, Highland Europe and Constantia New Business. According to Bitmovin, the video infrastructure provider has $68 million in total funding.

As the streaming industry boomed in 2020, Bitmovin reports it saw a 174% growth in the number of broadcasters going with OTT. Bitmovin itself reported a 118% increase in video play with 220% more minutes watched, as well as 380% growth in network traffic of video on the internet. 

With this surge in streaming, which caused a 15% slowdown on average bandwidth available to viewers, Bitmovin says that it enabled tier-one media companies to reclaims upwards of 60% of their streaming bandwidth.

“Bitmovin continues to set the pace for industry innovation, pushing video streaming to new heights while allowing new market entrants to compete with established players,” said Stefan Kuentz, investment partner at Swisscom Ventures. “We are extremely proud to be a key partner of Bitmovin’s in seizing this tremendous market opportunity.”

Bitmovin already provides OTT online video services to the likes of Discovery+, fuboTV, DAZN, BBC, RTL, RedBull Media House, Globo, ClassPass, The New York Times and more. Bitmovin was honored in 2020 with a Technology & Engineering Emmy. 

SAN FRANCISCO—COVID-19 stay-at-home mandates are proving to be a double-edged sword for the streaming and OTT industry, as viewers in droves have turned to these services to keep them entertained but in the process have driven up their costs, according to a new report from a video infrastructure provider serving digital media companies worldwide.

The latest edition of the “Video Developer Report” from Bitmovin revealed the top challenges facing video developers, the state of the video streaming and OTT industry and other key trends. Findings come from the company’s fourth Annual Video Developer Survey.

LOWERING COSTS

According to the report, reducing costs topped the list of challenges facing respondents and replaced concern over complex technology, such as “live low latency,” as the No. 1 challenge identified in the 2019 edition. More than half of respondents identified the cost of items like bandwidth and storage as the greatest challenge—this despite the majority of respondents holding technical roles at their companies.

The results indicate there’s a clear belief in the industry that video streaming services must focus on cost optimization as a means of survival, the report said. 

The report noted that although the COVID-19 shelter-in-place requirements propelled growth around the world in subscriptions to video streaming services and hours of content viewed, uncertainty over the global business landscape is resulting in companies scaling back on new projects as a cost control mechanism. 

When it comes to the biggest challenges to remaining competitive, the results showed “reducing cost” and “taking services and assets faster to market” topped the list.

LIVE STREAMING AT SCALE

The survey found that while mastering live streaming at scale remains a major challenge, respondents viewed it as the greatest opportunity for innovation. Not even the abbreviated and improvised schedules of some sports leagues due to COVID-19 could discourage respondents from selecting live streaming at scale as the No. 1 item on their list of innovation topics.

Respondents also identified innovations by developers in the areas of streaming content “recommendations” and “personalizations” as service providers look for different ways to engage viewers.

CODECS

The report revealed software encoding on premise remains the top location for video encoding. It also found cloud-based encoding is increasing slightly—up three percentage points to 32% when compared to the report’s 2019 findings. 

Hardware encoding saw a reversal from last year. In 2019, there was an increase of 5% in the category. This year, it recorded the biggest drop, down 9%. The reason for the decline is unclear. The report offered some possible reasons, such as fewer live events being produced due to COVID-19 and the cost efficiencies of cloud encoding.

This year’s survey asked video developers for the first time about the types of encoders they use. Fifty-one percent reported using a mix of commercial encoders. When it came to open source alternatives, ffmpeg was the encoder of choice, it found. 

Choosing a codec to use is driven by business goals. While multicodec use is a reality, adopting and supporting a new codec depends on the business criteria of developers and organizations. Reaching a targeted audience, targeted device or platform as well as supporting 4K and 8K content are among the commonly cited reasons respondents selected a particular codec, the survey found.

When it comes to audio, the study revealed AAC continues to be the dominant audio codec. Offering higher sound quality at the same bitrate, it promises to become the successor to the MP3 format, it found.

With the role sound quality plays in enhancing the viewing experience, Dolby Atmos immersive sound technology is being widely accepted by artists, content creators and developers, and is trending to be widely used in the future. Helping to drive uptake is the effect COVID-19 had on movie theaters, closing many and prompting studios to go straight to on-demand. That in turn enhanced the role of living room and large screen viewing and drove demand for innovation, the report said.

BROWSERS VS. GAME CONSOLES

The survey revealed HTML browsers on devices like PCs and Macs are the top place where developers are focusing their efforts. That’s followed by native iOS and native Android and then Apple TV.

Only 13% are developing for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and just 3% are streaming to Nintendo Switch, it found. While game consoles have not caught up with streaming devices, that might change with the launch this fall of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S and Series X, the report said.

“In today’s COVID world, there is huge volatility that is accompanied by large demand. The industry players that best recognize the changing technological and financial landscape will be the ones to not only survive, but to thrive,” said Bitmovin CEO Stefan Lederer.

This year’s Bitmovin Annual Video Developer survey was conducted June 29-Aug. 9. Seven-hundred ninety-two of the company’s customers, which include broadcasters, integrators and OTT streaming services, from 87 countries made up the survey sample. 

More information is available on the company’s website.
 

PARIS—Dalet and Bitmovin have announced a new collaboration focused on the preparation and delivery of OTT content, which has a user in the form of Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL).

The workflow integration features Dalet’s Ooyala Flex Media Platform for media logistics and Bitmovin’s encoder technology. The workflow is designed to expand existing offerings into new markets and geographies at scale; engage viewers through multiple services, including VOD, apps and subscriptions; and augment revenue opportunities with better visibility across production and distribution operations, according to the announcement.

NRL will utilize this technology to fully optimize their OTT strategy. The league’s digital division creates, produces, archives and livestreams hundreds of hours of content to NRL.com, Telstra NRL official app and Telstra TV OTT device.

Using the combination of Ooyala Flex Media Platform and Bitmovin tech enabled NRL’s staff to build ad-hoc workflows that could better tap into their inventory and distribute more editorial content, imagery and video across NRL’s applications. The Ooyala Flex Media Platform orchestrated the media catalog’s encoding, media movement and content discovery to surface near-live video to audiences.

“By combining the Ooyala Flex Media Platform and the Bitmovin solutions we have been able to reduce complexity and issues, optimizing inefficient steps while successfully accelerating our delivery workflows,” said Quanah McBride, head of digital media operations, NRL.

For more information, visit www.dalet.com.  

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—Online video technology company Bitmovin has announced that it now supports Dolby Vision, Dolby’s HDR 4K video format. Bitmovin will license and implement Dolby Vision into its transcoding system to boost its 4K viewing experience over streaming.

With the integration, Bitmovin says its customers can use Dolby Vision HDR to deliver high-quality pictures with minimum bandwidth via its Bitmoving Video Encoding platform. Dolby Vision adjusts the picture on a scene-by-scene basis to allow the viewer to see more detail with better color accuracy, per Bitmovin.

Bitmovin Video Encoding offers per-title and three-pass features that automatically select the best encoding options according to the complexity of a piece of content, adjusting the bitrate requirements as needed.

“By integrating Dolby Vision into Bitmovin Video Encoding, our customers will be able to create and stream content that delivers transformative HDR experiences on minimum bandwidth and provide customers with the viewing experience they deserve and expect,” said Stefan Lederer, CEO of Bitmovin.

For more information, visit www.bitmovin.com.  

SAN FRANCISCO—Latency is the most significant issue faced by over half (54%) of video developers, according to Bitmovin’s annual Video Developer Report.

Bitmovin is a provider of video infrastructure for digital media companies and works with companies across the globe to build new video products.

Based on the views of 542 industry professionals in 108 countries, the survey found that 53% expect to achieve live streaming latency of less than 5 seconds, and 30% said their aim was under 1 second.

The report further showed that H.264/AVC is by far the most widely used video codec, used by 91%  of all respondents. Planned usage of AV1 is also set to triple, with 20% expecting to start using it in the coming year.

Meanwhile 24% of video professionals expect to start using AI/ML as part of video workflow solutions before the end of 2019, while 32% plan to do so in 2020.

Bitmovin CEO Stefan Lederer said: “The Bitmovin Video Developer Report is an inside look at the technology adoption plans of companies that are collectively delivering video to huge global audiences. We’re excited to share the results with the community of video developers.

“The findings show a shift toward new breed technologies such as AV1 and artificial intelligence. We’re also seeing the industry continue to face huge issues with latency and ensuring playback on all devices.”

You can download the full report here.

LONDON—The BBC is adding a new tool to its arsenal to help deliver content to its viewers with the announcement that it is now using the Bitmovin Encoder to speed content preparation of live programming for video on demand services.

With Bitmovin’s system, BBC can shorten the amount of time it takes for its live shows on BBC TV channels available on satellite provider set-top boxes. This is done with parallel processing for fast encoding, which speeds up the process of converting content to required formats and delivers it with a public cloud-based platform.

The encoder will also be used in UHD and HDR trials, including the BBC’s “Dynasties,” which is on the broadcaster’s on-demand service. 

ONTARIO—When you think about artificial intelligence (AI)–specifically software capable of performing self-directed tasks historically performed by human intelligence–it conjures up images of Skynet; the evil AI in the Terminator movie franchise.

That’s fiction. But in real-life, AI is finding its way into the workplace, and that includes the encoding, transcoding and decoding of compressed video. Using the power of AI in their programs, vendors such as Bitmovin, Cobalt Digital, MediaKind, Telestream and V-Nova are speeding up their encoding programs while reducing bandwidth demands; resulting in faster, more affordable products for their customers.

“AI is starting to play an important role in encoding, where it has enormous potential to dramatically improve workflows,” said Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder of Bitmovin, a developer of cloud-based media streaming technology. “With the emergence of new codecs, new video file formats and delivery methods, the TV and media industry needs solutions that improve encoding in the automated, immediate and highly efficient way that AI offers.”

[Read: How We See: The Human Visual System]

That said, there is a debate underway among vendors as to the limits of AI in the encoding process. Certainly AI–also known as “machine learning”–can accelerate the encoding process. But can it do everything that a human observer can to detect and remedy artifacts in compressed video? No one really knows.

It’s important to remember that the the improvement in speed is in the process of removing humans from the review stage after an encode has happened, according to Paul Turner, of Turner Media Consulting. “Encode parameters can be set to a predefined set of values, but you still have to look at the result and assess if the encoded output is of sufficient quality,” he said. “If not, you have to iterate on the settings.”

(For the record, ML is a narrower version of AI, in which AI-enabled software is charged with making decisions about specific data within predefined parameters; rather than becoming self-aware and choosing to annihilate the human race. In this article, we will use the two terms interchangeably, as the people who were interviewed tended to.)

HOW AI CAN IMPROVE ENCODING

Today’s video codecs use algorithms to analyze video imagery, to determine which bits can be removed to reduce file size without degrading the subjective image quality perceived by the viewer.

Injecting AI into the encoding process takes this process a step further. AI allows the software to proactively assess the quality of the compressed video before transmission. This lets the encoding system detect and remedy any artifacts inadvertently generated by the codec. As the AI does this, it “learns” from its actions, and uses this knowledge to improve its performance over successive applications.

The result: “By using AI, encoding solutions can make smart decisions about the compression settings and visual parameters of each frame, speeding up processing and improving encoding efficiency,” said Lederer. “Trained AI models can even predict the optimal encoding settings, as well as preprocessing tools, for every given source asset.”

There are other ways that AI can be used in encoding, according to Guido Meardi, CEO and co-founder of V-Nova, a U.K.-based developer of codecs. One of the most common is to improve an existing codec’s predictive capabilities, for deciding which bits can be safely removed.

“The better you predict the image, the less residuals you have to eventually encode,” Meardi said; “therefore the less you have to send down the pipe without compromising quality.”

THE LIMITS OF AI

In each of these examples, AI is trying to improve the video production process by automating quality control. This is meant to reduce much-slower (and more costly) human intervention to perform the same tasks.

“What you’re fundamentally trying to do is emulate human assessment,” said Shawn Carnahan, CTO for Telestream in Grass Valley, Calif. “You’re trying to use machine learning to emulate how the viewer perceives the quality of the content, and use that to decide questions such as ‘can I drive the bitrate even further, or do I need to increase the bitrate to maintain subjective quality?’”

If this sounds like a daunting task, it is. AI software is literally trained “to look for things in the image that human viewers would find objectionable,” Carnahan said. “You are training a machine to spot things that shouldn’t be there.”

This is where the limits of AI-enabled video encoding come to bear. “Mapping or trying to best represent the human visual system using software is near impossible,” said Carl Furgusson, vice president of Portfolio Management for MediaKind (formerly Ericsson Media Solutions). “People have been trying to do it for 20 or 30-plus years without success, and I don’t think anyone will ever really get to an accurate mapping of the human visual system.”

The problem is the subjective nature of human viewing, compared to a metrics-based AI viewing model. “You will always get different results between what people think in reality is better picture quality, and what the measurement tools will give you,” Furgusson said; no matter how sophisticated the AI viewing model may be.

Quality assessment isn’t only about absolute picture quality; there are artifacts that non-trained human viewers will not notice, according to Turner.

“That has to be factored in to the AI training too,” he said.

Does this mean that AI is doomed to play a minor role in video compression? V-Nova’s Guido Meardi doesn’t think so. Even with its limits, he predicts that AI will become “an integral part of compression engines in the future.”

Still, until this technology can actually match the complexities and nuances of the human visual system, human intervention will remain a necessary element of high-quality video compression. At best, AI will continually drive down the percentage of instances when humans have to step in to fix the picture quality.

PALO ALTO, CA.—A new report from online video technology provider Bitmovin finds that in 2018 the H.264/AVC video codec has continued to dominate video encoding used by developers around the world while the use of H.265/HEVC has grown significantly from 2017 to the present.

In its second year, the “Video Developer Report 2018” draws on the responses of 456 survey developer submissions from more than 67 countries to paint a picture of the current state of video streaming technology and what will be important over the next year.

Besides video codec technology, the report presents findings on other key streaming technology, such as streaming formats, software vs. hardware encoding, audio-video format delivery popularity, native playback and OTT streaming device technology, ad architecture and other topics.

[Read: Can Video Compression Tame The Internet?]

As in 2017, the results reveal that nine out of 10 developers continue to use H.264/AVC, while the percentage saying they are using H.265/HEVC has climbed from 28 percent in 2017 to 42 percent this year. VP9 saw a slight 1 percentage point uptick in the 2018 total to 11 percent, and AV1 remained flat at 6 percent.

Future plans for codec use paint a different picture. In 2017, 40 percent of developers said they planned to use H.265/HEVC in the 12 months, while 36 percent said the same this year; 18 percent said their plans called for using VP9 last year, while 15 percent said they did this year.

AV1 recorded the biggest increase with 14 percent in 2017 saying the codec would be used in 12 months, while 29 percent said so in 2018.

Other highlights of the report include: 82 percent saying they are using the HLS streaming format, while 61 percent use MPEG-DASH; 43 percent saying they use hardware encoders, while 54 percent use on-prem software encoders, and 38 percent use a software encoder in the cloud; and 52 percent saying they use client-side ad insertion, 44 percent saying they use server-side ad insertion and 25 percent saying they use dynamic ad replacement.

The free report is available online from Bitmovin. Registration is required.

ALEXANDRIA, VA.—You knew it was coming, right? When you walk around with more computing power in your pocket than it took to launch a Saturn V rocket to the moon, you get the hint that computers are increasingly doing work that we either don’t like doing or never could do before.

For example, take logging raw video and creating data files to let news organizations search for just the right clip when we need it. Need a shot of a burning building on East Main from November? Bingo… the AI system logged it and made it available on the server.

AI is also the tool behind giving viewers a better experience when they visit a station’s web page.

[Read: AI And The Digital Transformation]

“As consumers become more driven to personalized experiences, news stations need to keep up with dynamic content,” said Drew Martin, technical product manager for Grass Valley. “AI can provide rich end-user experiences with minimal manpower. This generates more viewership and small operating costs.”

WORKFLOW BENEFITS

And AI is not just for the viewers.

“AI can bring huge potential benefits to broadcasters, with particular relevance in areas of the workflow that are labor-and time-intensive—like ingest,” Martin said. “By enabling broadcasters to track how operations are being used across their organization, AI-based solutions can create more efficient operations and bring costs down by identifying trends. As broadcasters of all sizes are under pressure to produce more with lower budgets, AI-based solutions can help them focus their resources on creating more compelling content.”

Although Grass Valley has no current AI-related products, Martin said the company plans to add AI functionality to upcoming product releases.

Brick Eksten, chief technology officer for playout & networking at Frisco, Texas-based Imagine Communications, recommends using AI to test supply chain management enhancements before integrating them into a facility’s workflow.

“In a machine learning/artificial intelligence solution, the system could learn enough about the content types [by watching content] and could experiment with various combinations in an offline environment, until you have sufficient confidence that it is providing better management of the supply chain in real time than manual methods, optimizing for cost and quality at the level of each individual piece of content,” he said.

Another potential role is in monitoring. “An AI-assisted multiviewer could provide more in-depth information about each signal, but also put that in context across all of the individual devices that make up that particular channel of content,” Eksten said. “Today we monitor by exception; Tomorrow that monitoring will be more predictive and seamless.”

HUMAN OVERSEER

As promising as AI technology is, many operations touched by AI still need to have a human overseer to ensure smooth operations.

“We’re already seeing artificial intelligence being used as a tool to create content like highlight clips, with Aspera being used for the ingest of video content and the automated delivery of the produced assets,” said Richard Heitmann, vice president of Aspera, an offshoot of IBM. “The natural next step to automated production is automatic publication of personalized media experiences. But we are still in the early days of the technology, and there is a human-review element that won’t go away anytime soon.”

IBM has been developing AI applications for decades, and Aspera has been leveraging that background for its broadcast products.

In April 2018, IBM partnered with the Masters to bring cognitive highlights to the golf tournament, according to Heitmann. “IBM’s AI technology quickly identified key highlights based on cheering, high fives, commentary and TV graphics such as banners within specific video frames,” he said. “As a result, video editors were able to use Aspera technology to distribute highlight reels at high speed in near-real-time for fans.”

INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT ROLE

For broadcasters, it’s all about what you do with your bandwidth—the more effectively a broadcaster uses its broadcast bandwidth, the more profitable it can be. For this reason, AI products can now address bandwidth, including learning from one encoding session to improve the next.

“AI plays an increasingly important role in video encoding, where it can significantly help improve workflows,” said Reinhard Grandl, director of product management for Austria-based Bitmovin. “By continuously learning the parameters used in previous encodes, AI-optimized settings can be applied to every new video file. Furthermore, every asset that will be encoded with our service helps to train this machine-learning model and makes the prediction for future encodings more accurate. This results in faster processing times and significantly higher quality with no increase in bandwidth.”

The savings from properly configured AI-driven encoding are substantial, Grandl said.

“Netflix, for instance, estimates that its use of AI to automate workflows and reduce customer churn saves the company around $1 billion annually,” he said. “This not only increases the quality of experience and quality of service for users, but also reduces the number of bits required to achieve the same quality stream. YouTube is also at the forefront of using AI to reduce overall video latency and encoding costs.”

Netflix and YouTube are noteworthy examples, but is there anything AI can do for a call-letter TV station?

“Call-letter stations can receive immediate benefits from TVU Networks’ products with AI,” said Paul Shen, CEO of Mountain View, Calif.-based TVU Networks. “For example, the TVU Transcriber service is available today and ensures FCC compliance of any video content a station puts on air, on social media or any digital media platform. The AI engine in Transcriber detects the need for closed captioning in content and will automatically transcribe the missing speech as closed captions. In addition, TVU Transcriber uses AI to detect profanity and can automatically mute the audio.”

The tantalizing ability to deliver targeted content to web viewers is also within reach of TV stations, Shen said.

[Read: Media 4.0: Using AI To Meet Viewers’ Preferences]

“With the TVU MediaMind Platform, all digital and broadcast production groups can truly collaborate to cover the same story, while allowing each group to customize and deliver the completed program based on viewer demographics,” he said. “As a result, a station can cost-effectively create targeted content and allow it to better serve digital and broadcast viewers using the same raw videos. This becomes a truly story-centric workflow.”

Not only will a properly configured AI system process video as it is ingested, it can also dip deep into existing library files and process those.

AI functionality has recently been integrated into Prime Focus Technology’s, Clear Media ERP, Media Asset Management system, according to T Shobhana, vice president and global head of marketing & communications for the company. “[Clear] helps automatically recognize elements within audio and video, and generate associated metadata, making it easier to sort, locate and use content across all MAM workflows,” she said. “With Clear, content owners no longer have to rely only on manual effort to tag and catalog assets, as this is a time-consuming and expensive process.”

However, keep in mind that AI capability in MAM systems is not completely hands-off from a human standpoint—yet.

“All these functionalities require human review and quality control right now, but one of the key characteristics of AI and machine learning is the ability to learn and improve over time,” Shobhana said, “so we expect these functions to continue to evolve going forward.”

Over the past five years, artificial intelligence has moved out of the laboratory and into real products—you only have to go as far as Apple’s Siri and Google’s Alexa to find examples in the real world. The idea of a computerized assistant has now become real to millions, and that increases the pressure for similar machine aids in various professions and industries… including broadcasting.

It’s clear that the most efficient use of bandwidth and the ability to quickly create targeted programming are of great interest to broadcasters, and artificial intelligence is helping to make that possible.

The rise of online video has impacted media distribution at unprecedented levels. Providing great video quality is no longer a competitive advantage, but rather a “must have”—and the crux of this lies in how video is delivered. As the amount of data we need to get content delivered increases, new approaches to video compression are an absolute necessity.

Enter AV1, the open-source, next-generation, royalty-free alternative technology for delivering video over the internet.

[Read: Royalty-Free AV1 Codec Turned Loose]

Launched in late March 2018 by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), this new codec marked a significant shift in the balance of power in online entertainment by challenging traditional business models and enabling innovation in social video, mobile video, VR and online TV—all without having to pay historical IP owners. Backed by the biggest tech leaders—from Apple to Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel, Cisco and more recently Vimeo—AV1 is in solid standing to become a widespread standard in the future.

But what makes this new codec stand out?

These are five key encoding and decoding techniques that make AV1 an interesting choice to use in video streaming.

FILM GRAIN SYNTHESIS

Film grain occurs commonly in photographic film—most noticeably in over-enlarged pictures—but can also be applied digitally for artistic effect. During digital video compression, film grain creates massive problems as it is hard to recognize and creates a lot of traffic in the bitstream—leading to high bitrate requirements for transmitting very little information. Since the information is of little value for the perceived quality, finding a way to not transfer the information with the bitstream—but rather re-apply it later—is a desirable solution.

This idea forms the base for AV1’s film grain synthesis. The goal is to de-noise the initial content before encoding it and then re-add the noise or grain effect before output during the decoding process. This way, the unnecessary information does not have to be transmitted at all and the overall load of data can be reduced substantially. The potential in bandwidth savings for content providers using this technology is enormous. 

CONSTRAINED DIRECTIONAL ENHANCEMENT FILTER

Filtering is an essential process in every video codec, drastically increasing the perceived quality of an encoded video as well as the overall coding performance. AV1 contains various sets of filters, most of which are derived from existing codecs.

The Constrained Directional Enhancement Filter is among the most impactful of additions to the range of filters. CDEF merges two existing filters: a directional de-ringing filter and the constrained low pass filter (CLPF). CLPF is applied to filter out artifacts that stem from quantization errors and have not been corrected through the preceding application of a de-blocking filter. The directional de-ringing filter works by recognizing edges within each block and identifying their orientation. It then conditionally applies a directional low-pass filter along those edges, resulting in a smoother picture.

CDEF merges the two filters and works by analyzing the contents of each block – smoothing out artifacts along edges and de-blocking the picture. The search for the filtering parameters—direction and variance—is applied on the decoder’s end, after the actual video has already been encoded. The filtering process is also performed by the encoder, in order to get the correct reference frames. Since the filtering operation can be run on the consumer hardware, required network bandwidth can be reduced—and with it, the traffic load. 

WARPED MOTION AND GLOBAL MOTION COMPENSATION

Predicting and compensating motions is an important principle in video compression. It reduces redundant information that would otherwise be part of a bitstream, hence increasing the amount of data being transmitted. Warped motion compensation is a particularly interesting technique that predicts spatial movement trajectories within videos. Based on calculated predictions, redundant information is identified and omitted in the coding process, resulting in a significant reduction in the required data load.

Global motion compensation predicts motions for an entire frame and uses this analysis to limit the amount of information transmitted in the bitstream. Motion-compensation algorithms have been used and theorized on for some time, but only on a two-dimensional level. AV1 marks the first time that non-planar motion compensation has been implemented into a video codec. Particularly suited to predict large area movements, like background motion or camera movements, this technique can also handle consistent backgrounds and color schemes very effectively, which is one of the reasons why animated videos tend to deliver great encoding results—even with very high levels of compression.

INCREASED CODING UNIT SIZE UP TO 128 x 128

As video resolutions keep getting larger, an increase in block size is an effective way to scale the compression process along with high resolution contents. Each frame is partitioned up into individual coding units or blocks, which are then processed individually during the coding procedure. Consequently, smaller resolutions like 1280×720 (720p) can be divided into blocks with an individual size of 64×64 quite easily, whereas the same block size is less practical for large resolutions, such as 7680×4320 (8K UHD).

NON-BINARY ARITHMETIC CODING

This technique is an interesting change from other codecs like HEVC or AVC. For those, every symbol which is entered into the arithmetic coding engine has to be binary. With AV1, these symbols can also be non-binary—meaning that they can have up to eight possible values instead of just two. The symbols are then processed by the arithmetic coding engine, which produces a binary bitstream as output. Both ends—encoder and decoder—operate using probability calculations to estimate how many output bits will be created from a given symbol. 

Theoretically, any given input symbol could therefore produce multiple bits or even just a fraction of a bit. Although non-binary coding renders the coding process more complex by combining multiple values into a single symbol, it is still less complex than if it were one bit per symbol. One major benefit lies in the possibility to process more symbols per clock cycle using this procedure. As clock cycles have to be performed serially, non-binary coding achieves improvements by allowing multiple symbols to be handled during each serial cycle.

Over the last decade, video delivery has evolved rapidly. Up until now, a lot of the focus has been on video quality and improving the user experience, but the attention is now on video delivery—especially AV1. This codec is going to have massive impact on the world of video streaming in the near future. User demand for high-quality video streaming is already high, and the coming generation of high resolution mobile devices and VR-enabled devices is about to push its way into mainstream availability. Incorporating AV1, and the newer enhancements that come with it, will enable content providers to dynamically serve AV1-encoded content to users with compatible and complex systems.

Christopher Mueller is the CTO and co-founder of Bitmovin.