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Dear readers and Bitmovin customers,

Our company was founded on the belief that the future of online video delivery should be high quality, fast and cost-eff ective, giving development teams worldwide the power to deliver high-quality video streams to every device in the world with interoperable API-based standards. Now more than ever, we’re relying on a robust and stable video infrastructure that can deliver on those beliefs without compromise. With the dramatic increase in time spent at home through social distancing, the world’s population is turning to streaming video more than ever before, to stay current with the latest news, events, and entertainment. This content is provided by our customers, some of the largest media companies in the world, who are relying on our products, services, and infrastructure to deliver this content. The demand has never been higher to maintain quality while reducing costs, especially with bandwidth being severely compromised. Bitmovin is committed to playing a critical role in this, and we have a responsibility to our customers and the people that they serve, especially during this challenging time.

This new edition of our Bi-Annual Bitmovin Magazine sees us getting back to our roots, to the source of what makes us the most promising streaming video company in the world. We want to open the doors and shine a light on our origin story, the history of why we came to be. To support this you’ll see some insight into our work with the University of Klagenfurt, where we learned and honed our craft before embarking on the intergalactic crusade to create Bitmovin. We’ve also applied laser-like focus to our sales structure, redefi ning what our value is to our customers.

We encourage you to browse through this magazine, get to know us, and feel free to contact us directly to discuss anything at all about the future of video.

Best wishes and stay safe,

Stefan Lederer

Shaping the future of video through testing times

LETTER FROM THE CEO

Our teams, in particular thesupport, solutions and sales organizations, are globally distributed over fi ve continents. This enables us to provide “follow-the-sun” support 24x7 with short response times all over the world, as well as being fl exible and balancing capacity with demand.

Table of contents

Where it all began - A Bitmovin origin story

Built to Shape the Future of Video - A virtual roundtable discussion

Innovative video transmission technology - A University of Klagenfurt collaboration

Redefi ne the viewer experience

Faster time-to-market

Operational optimization

Encoding - Prepare content at highest quality and speed. Deploy in any environment

Player - Reaching viewers on the largest number of devices.

Analytics - Monitor infrastructure performance insights, anytime, all the time.

2

3

7

11

19

25

31

37

43

Our roots, our core, and our futureP A R T 1

P A R T 2

P A R T 3

Video market drivers

Our suite of solutions

Companies that can adapt to changes quickly and manage the complexity of the video workfl ow will be the winners of 2020 and beyond.

- Chris Mueller, CTO

Our roots, our core, and our future

Want to hear more how everything started? Listen to the founders telling their story.

https://bitmovin.com/zine5/11

Bitmovin’s suite of solutions enables their customers to control costs, mitigate risk, get to market faster, and redefi ne the viewer’s experience.Bitmovin’s technology makes it possible to distribute high-quality video to audiences wherever they are and on any device they may be using – leveling the playing fi eld with traditional media owners and broadcasters. The company’s focus is on quality of experience through speed, effi ciency, and optimization. This enables video content to load faster, with minimal buff ering, transcoded in the highest quality in the industry, reducing the amount of bandwidth one needs to see premium-quality video.

The Bitmovin platform has three SaaS solutions consisting of a video encoder, back-end video player, and analytics APIs. Together they each support the growing trend of consumer expectations that online video quality should match the quality and user experience of Netfl ix, Amazon, and Disney’s video streaming services. In turn, companies are fi nding that building an in-house solution can be prohibitively expensive, one that is prone to becoming obsolete as new technologies and codecs appear and older video infrastructure technology becomes obsolete.

Bitmovin started as a spin-off from research of the Alpen-Adria-University Klagenfurt, in Austria. Stefan Lederer and Chris Mueller together with Associate Professor Christian Timmerer embarked on technical research which would eventually contribute to the new MPEG-DASH video standard, which is used by YouTube, Netfl ix, Hulu, amongst many others, and represents more than 50% of the peak internet traffi c.

The switch from academic research into a commercial entity came when the two young entrepreneurs joined Bay Area’s YCombinator as a member of the Summer ‘15 cohort. The go-to-market strategy at that time was focusing on developers. Their claim to fame, “we are diff erent from the existing vendors as we are deeply developer and API focused, with a passion for innovation and disruptive technologies. That’s our background, we are engineers, and we like to build the best products. Thus we’ve been the fi rst ones in many new technologies on the market, setting the bar on performance and effi ciency of video streaming.”

Series A and B funding rounds fueled a global expansion, establishing teams and offi ces in Klagenfurt, Vienna, Berlin, London, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, New York and Hong Kong. The aim of Bitmovin today is to power the world’s largest OTT online video content providers with video software solutions, built by leading industry experts.

We are getting a lot of interest in the market, with a lot of new customers and we want to make sure we continue to provide the best service and products to our customers. So we invest heavily in our engineering, solutions and support teams and together we shape the future of video.

A Bitmovin origin storyWhere it all began

Operational optimizations that OTT streaming video services can implement to reduce bandwidth expenditure at no cost to quality. Per Title Encoding is an example of such an optimization.

Explosion of new streaming devices that deliver stunning quality video to viewers, quickly, and effi ciently.

Industry insights that benchmark performance relative to the competition or industry norms.

Recent improvements on the technology side include:

- Chris Mueller, CTO

2A Bitmovin origin story

A virtual roundtable discussion2019 was transformational for Bitmovin. We matured as an organization and went from an early-stage startup, blossoming to become a growth-stage startup that’s positioned to be the market leader in streaming video technology.

Our teams work tirelessly to propel us forward into the future. We took some time out of our busy schedules to hear from the department leads what are the challenges and opportunities they are facing and dealing with on a daily basis including projects their teams are working on, and how they work harmoniously together with the aim to shape the future of the video industry.

Howard SewellSVP Sales

Jamie Attfi eldHead of Design

Stefan GruberVP Engineering

Igor OreperVP Solutions

Kieran FarrVP Marketing

Reinhard GrandlDirector Product Management

Built to shape the future of video

Participants

3 A Bitmovin origin story

Q: It’s no news that the online video industry is very complex. What do you see as the biggest challenges from a business perspective and from a technical perspective?

Howard: I’d like to see it from the viewer perspective because that is the audience our customers are ultimately serving. Everyone is streaming videos every day and on all kinds of devices. The expectations of people watching videos are high. Content providers are investing billions of dollars creating and producing captivating, entertaining, and informative content. Delivering stunning picture and sound quality is a must. No one wants to see the buff ering wheel or pixelated images.

Kieran: What sounds straightforward becomes very complex on the backend. From our developer report, a survey which we conduct every year, we know that one of the biggest challenges for developers is to achieve playback on all devices. Reinhard: Playback on all devices is indeed a big challenge. There are already many devices and new devices coming out on a continuous basis. The question is not if you support a device, it’s when you support the device. To reach viewers on the largest numbers of devices and platforms we further strengthened our comprehensive coverage. This brings the average coverage for streaming, playback, and audience measurement to over 90% for our clients.

Stefan: It’s new devices but also new formats and codecs that add to the complexity. It is a multi-codec world, no doubt. Adopting the new generation compression is important because shrinking video fi les means you can send higher-quality video over the same network infrastructure, for a richer, more compelling user experience and reduce delivery costs for popular content. Bitmovin has been an early adopter of AV1 on this front.

Q: With the need to deliver quality video content in a timely fashion, how is Bitmovin positioned to succeed in the OTT space?

Kieran: I think it is fair to say to all the new and old services entering the market, if you want to have Netfl ix grade quality, you also have to deal with Netfl ix grade complexity. Netfl ix is using a lot of very complex technologies like the Per-Title Encoding,

for example, to deliver the best possible quality for their viewers. If you want to compete, you need to deal with the same complexity. For most of the companies, it’s unrealistic to support this end-to-end internally. Instead they need to partner with somebody who is really an expert in the OTT space, like Bitmovin. So that they can focus on what they do well and also focus on the content.

Jamie: It’s no secret that successful companies listen to their customers and motivate their eff orts on their needs. Bitmovin is laser focused on their customer base and what they need in order to succeed. One of our core values is, “think through the customer lens”, which drives us to create the best technical solutions to a problem, enabling our customers to deliver the best experiences to the markets they serve. We’re driven to go the extra mile to surprise and delight our customers. This is how we deliver quality, by clearly understanding the problems in the market we need to solve.

Q: What recent product and product features did you release that resonated well with your customers? What’s on the roadmap for 2020?

Igor: There is so much to choose from. My team is helping our customers integrate equally our encoding, playback and analytics tools to provide an OTT SVOD or AVOD service to their consumers. As for features, most popular are multi-codec and Per-Title and 3-Pass in our encoder.

I think it is fair to say to all the new and old services entering the market, if you want to have Netfl ix grade quality, you also have to deal with Netfl ix grade complexity.

- Kieran Farr, VP Marketing


Howard: I second that, our Per-Title Encoding solution has been resonating well with streaming providers. By encoding video at bitrates appropriate to the content of the video fi le, content providers can make signifi cant savings as well as quality improvements. It’s not a brand new concept, but under the current circumstances where Netfl ix and YouTube, for example, reduce their bandwidth in the EU to handle increased Internet demand, we encourage all providers to adopt this solution. Reinhard: We see a lot of what we call value-added-features coming out. What we mean with that is basically things like high dynamic range HDR or Dolby Vision, offl ine playback, 4K and soon 8K and Advanced Dolby and DTS audio. And this is just a short list. This list continues to grow. So you can not think that that’s it. Quality, time-to-market and operational effi ciency are also the themes that the projects on our product roadmap will follow to ensure success in the market.

Q: How do your customers use and implement your solutions? How do you work with and support your customers?

Stefan: We know how diffi cult it can be to integrate an infl exible encoding API, or mess around with ff mpeg on the command line. Our API is uniquely designed to make integration simple, giving our customers the development tools they need. As for our Player, we are equally aware of the amount of work required to display high quality, adaptive video streams smoothly across all browsers, operating systems and devices. DRM, multi-DRM and advertising support all combine to add to the complexity. Our SDKs are built to off er a shortcut in solving these problems. Last but not least,

setting up our Analytics tool is very simple as it is fully integrated into the Player API. A minimal confi guration can be set up with 5 lines of code.

Igor: As much as we strive for easy and fl exible integration and deployment, in addition we have worldwide 24/7 support with our offi ce locations. That works out really nicely. That’s exactly what the enterprise businesses need from an infrastructure layer provider. You see our player infrastructure as well as our cloud encoding, and the integrators typically go for the fi rst-level support and we provide a technical deep-dive tier, but also the content providers. We are scaling a critical part of their revenue fl ows. What we provide is also the necessary support layer for them and make sure everything is running. Similar to cable to broadcast, the online channel has to work 24/7.

Q: Speaking of broadcast and cable, that medium has historically used household viewership as a primary measurement of success. With the global shift towards VoD and OTT services, should we reassess our success metrics? If yes, to what extent?

Kieran: For every second of delay in video start-up time, you lose 5.8% of viewers on that particular piece of content. You can track total viewership any day, but it won’t tell you the full story of how much of the market share you’re losing or leaving dissatisfi ed. Total start-up time is an indicator of video performance as much as it is a measure of viewership engagement and experience. In an OTT or VoD environment, it’s imperative to track these metrics or you’ll quickly fi nd your viewership numbers dropping.

Reinhard: Devices are coming out or coming to market on a six months basis. And only companies that are able to adapt very quickly to that are the companies that are the winners of 2020. You can no longer track “household” viewership - almost every individual human in a household has access to at least one personal streaming device. Implement as many codecs as possible and track your total impressions, this is a much more accurate tracking metric than household views and provides valuable insights like device type and maximum perceptive quality.

There are already many new devices coming out on a continuous basis. The question isn’t if you support a device, but when.

- Reinhard Grandl, Director Product Management

5 A Bitmovin origin story

Q: We are in the midst of one signifi cant development - the spread of COVID-19 - that no one could have seen at the beginning of 2020. How do the measures taken impact the use of OTT streaming video and what downstream impacts do you see on the OTT industry?

Reinhard: The data we see across our global customer base shows a signifi cant increase in video plays and a huge growth in time watched. Thanks to our video streaming monitoring technology we can zoom one level deeper and see the impact on the technology side. This unique perspective reveals a stunning growth in not just video plays and time watched, but in the amount of data consumers are using in order to access all of this content. We have seen over 3x growth in downloaded data.

Howard: As I mentioned earlier, this massive global increase in data consumption for video streaming has been noticed by the media and governments alike. Now there is public pressure on content distributors to lower bandwidth consumption while still delivering a positive experience for viewers.

Stefan: Fortunately the streaming market has a lot of room for improvement on the technology side. Right now most of the streaming market uses AVC (H.264) which is a 15 year old technology. However, most devices that users access media from supports newer standards, such as VP9 and HEVC which off er much higher effi ciency compression.

Reinhard: Not only are there improvements available from next generation codecs, but using patented technologies like Per-Title Encoding and 3-Pass Encoding we can combine these tools together to provide unprecedented performance improvements for OTT streaming operators.

Q: Besides increasing video and bandwidth consumption, COVID-19 also caused big events like the NAB 2020 to be cancelled. What does that mean for Bitmovin?

Kieran: We can prove our fl exibility and put one of our core value drivers “to improve time-to-market” on display. With the launch of Bitmovin Live: NAB Edition, we’re practicing what we preach. To win in the video streaming industry, you need to launch your app/service in a timely fashion to compete against the big players - this applies to our marketing and sales organizations in exactly the same way. NAB being cancelled this year shouldn’t be perceived as a loss, rather an opportunity to lead the way for our industry.

Jamie: A good brand is instantly recognizable in every medium. Last year we sought to improve Bitmovin’s brand presence in the market, particularly with our new and improved website design. We’ve crafted a robust design system that is light on its feet, allowing us to produce digital artifacts swiftly and accurately. NAB is always such a mammoth event experience and designing an event that supports our sales team to have the best customer meetings is vital to our success as an organization. This year, we’re putting as much eff ort we would normally put into our physical NAB booth into Bitmovin Live - NAB Edition. We’re able to create a dramatic and functional virtual brand presence for Bitmovin to represent this event, one which we’re immensely proud of.

The video streaming stack for major online distributors is surprisingly outdated and facing unprecedented pressure for improvement. Bitmovin provides state-of-the-art technology to improve the Quality of Experience (QoE) for our customers’ viewers. The impact of COVID-19 has been felt all across the industry and has required a signifi cant shift in content programming, delivery infrastructure, and both B2C and B2B marketing.

In summary


Industry leadership and innovation requires constant support and investment in research and development. Bitmovin has a strong academic background and went back to their roots by actively funding research grants. 2020 kicked off with the celebration and announcement of Bitmovin teaming up with the University of Klagenfurt and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Digital and Economic Aff airs (BMDW). The joint research project is set to uncover techniques that will enhance the video streaming experiences of the future.

The research team investigates potential tools and methodologies for encoding, transport and playback of live and on demand video using the HTTP Adaptive Streaming protocol that is used by online video and TV providers. The resulting fi ndings will be used by the next generation solutions for higher quality video experiences at lower latency while also reducing storage and distribution costs.

Margarete Schramböck, Federal Minister for Digital and Economic Aff airs: “Video represents 60% of the Internet data volume and, correspondingly, the potential for optimization and resource conservation is enormous. At the same time, the Christian Doppler Laboratory contributes to the development of high-tech in Carinthia, secures jobs and draws qualifi ed personnel to the region. A win-win situation for companies, science and society.”

Innovative video transmission technologyA University of Klagenfurt collaboration

A C A D E M I A

7

“The partnership with the University of Klagenfurt allows us to investigate the basic building blocks of video delivery in greater detail. This will help us to remain in pole position in the years ahead”, says Chris Mueller, CTO at Bitmovin. Christian Timmerer, Associate Professor at the Institute of Information Technology (ITEC) at the University of Klagenfurt and Laboratory Director, goes on to explain: “Increasing competition between online video providers will accelerate the need for innovation. We continuously strive to maintain the optimum balance between cost, quality of user experience and increasing complexity of content.”

ATHENA stands for Adaptive Streaming over HTTP and Emerging Networked Multimedia Services and off ers a fantastic opportunity for further pioneering developments in global leading-edge technologies. Video streaming has permeated our everyday lives; most of us use it on a daily basis. This lab of the future is an ideal blend of research and innovation. In Klagenfurt, members of the Institute for Information Technology have been working on the development of innovative multimedia technology for around 20 years. Bitmovin, which operates on a global scale and maintains sites on three continents today, originally began its operations in Klagenfurt: The three founders (Stefan Lederer, CEO, Christopher Mueller, CTO, and Christian Timmerer, CIO) fi rst collaborated on the development of the MPEG-DASH video streaming standard during their time at the University of Klagenfurt. This standard is currently used by YouTube, Netfl ix, ORF-TVThek, Flimmit and many more.

Fierce competition increases the need for innovation6

Publications have been accepted since

the inauguration

https://athena.itec.aau.at


Video market drivers

Our competitive advantageThe online video industry is complex and can be overwhelming. To make sense of the recent developments and trends from an industry, business and technology perspective Bitmovin is providing a roadmap that follows a set of core themes that map back to our customer needs. Each market driver comes with its own set of challenges. Our goal and competitive advantage is to help content providers and our customers to solve for those challenges, enabling companies to be the leaders in their individual segments.

We introduced these market drivers in our Video Trends 2020 Webinar. Listen to hear more!





For your viewers, experiencing video in stunning visual quality is of the highest importance. Imagine a reliable video software solution that provides your team with the highest video quality imaginable, with the lowest latency and the fastest startup time, anytime, anywhere. With real-time actionable insights to continuously monitor and improve your content quality, reduce the number of support tickets while increasing your support center resolution times. With Bitmovin, scale and optimize your content globally, utilizing future proof codecs on the largest number of devices and screens in the market today.

The race to spin up new services to bring them to market quickly is an intense one. Being fi rst to market is key and we understand that not doing so can negatively impact churn, market share, ROI and a brand’s reputation. Bitmovin’s suite of solutions enables businesses to free up internal resources, bringing the focus back to making the service and content as irresistible as possible to their target audience.

Being able to control costs, mitigate risk and manage workfl ow complexity is vital to the success of your business. Diff erent monetization models have to look out for diff erent optimization challenges such as content protection for SVOD businesses and smooth ad play for maximizing revenue for AVOD businesses. With Bitmovin, insert a fl exible, scalable video infrastructure directly into your business that enables development teams to customize media workfl ows to align with rapidly evolving changes to your business.

10Video market drivers

From cord cutting to streaming on-demand and live content, our research show video consumption is going up. Video content is delivered and consumed on a multitude of devices and platforms, such as via browser, mobile, gaming consoles, streaming sticks and Smart TVs across the globe. Content owners are investing large sums of money in their premium content, so it is more important than ever that they invest in maximizing the visual quality upon delivery as well. Content needs to be prepared and streamed in impeccable quality in order to satisfy viewer expectations, and those expectations are increasing on a daily basis.


11

A 2019 study by Bitmovin partner, Akamai Technologies, revealed that 33% of users leave a stream due to poor streaming quality. Verizon has also estimated OTT video services delivering average or poor-quality experiences account for as much as 25% loss in revenue. Plus, recent events have shown that fans are not shy to air their grievances when things don’t look or stream right. With the explosion of OTT services competing for consumption, it is vital that quality not be a reason for your audience to churn or tune out.

Viewer experience — more than meets the eye

But there is not only an explosion in OTT services, the typical OTT viewer accesses content via three diff erent devices and the expectation for quality as we just saw has never been higher. With devices coming to market every six months the device fragmentation will continue to grow.

When looking at device profi les (devices combined with an operating system) there are well over 63,000 profi les on the market with an annual growth rate of 20%. This results in a multitude of devices that consumers can access at any given time with the ever-present expectation of a superior experience. So no wonder that in this day and age, the need for rigorous testing and analysis has never been greater.

Our in-depth annual developer report from 2019 outlined the vast number of platforms that video developers are being tasked to support with some regional diff erences - adding further complexity for those who want to enter international markets. The top three platforms across all regions are Apple TV, Android TV and Chromecast with one regional outlier; Roku made it into the top three in North America only.

Living in a multi-device world

Most developers want to make sure their eff orts ensure a good experience on 95% of devices. But reaching 95% of devices gets harder and harder over time.

12Video market driver / Redefi ne the view experience

Our in-depth annual developer report from 2019 outlined the vast number of platforms that video developers are being tasked to support with some regional diff erences - adding further complexity for those who want to enter international markets.

The top three platforms across all regions are Apple TV, Android TV and Chromecast with one regional outlier; Roku made it into the top three in North America only.

Which of the following platforms and devices do you use to stream video content?

27%APPLE TV

40%ANDROID TV

25%NATIVE FIRE TV

32%CHROMECAST

17%ROKU

17%SAMSUNG TV

15%LG WEBOS

21%SONY TV

11%PANASONIC

5%XBOX ONE

16%PS4

5%NINTENDO

A P A C

N O R A M L A T A M

E M E A

37%APPLE TV

30%ANDROID TV

30%NATIVE FIRE TV

37%CHROMECAST

39%ROKU

24%SAMSUNG TV

15%LG WEBOS

9%SONY TV

9%PANASONIC

18%XBOX ONE

15%PS4

5%NINTENDO

42%APPLE TV

47%ANDROID TV

8%NATIVE FIRE TV

58%CHROMECAST

13%ROKU

42%SAMSUNG TV

32%LG WEBOS

34%SONY TV

24%PANASONIC

13%XBOX ONE

16%PS4

5%NINTENDO

33%APPLE TV

37%ANDROID TV

19%NATIVE FIRE TV

42%CHROMECAST

14%ROKU

32%SAMSUNG TV

29%LG WEBOS

15%SONY TV

14%PANASONIC

12%XBOX ONE

14%PS4

3%NINTENDO

Check:What’s your number? How do you measure device coverage?

Check out our Annual Developer Report to hear more from the community about their take on top industry topics.


With the integration of the new Bitmovin Player, a European Telco company immediately saw a drop of 30% in customer support incidents. Furthermore, the player startup time increased by 20%. With a smooth-running player in place and the ongoing support of the Bitmovin team, the customer’s engineering team was freed up to focus on developing unique features on top of Bitmovin’s technology. The close collaboration between the development teams ensured the compatibility of these features across all platforms.

European Telco company

C A S E S T U D Y


Unfortunately, the complexity does not stop there. The popular H.264/AVC codec is utilized on almost 100% of devices, however, it does not mean that this codec delivers the best quality. There are newer codec kids-on-the-block such as VP9 and HEVC which are 40% more effi cient and are also compatible on a vast number of devices. These highly effi cient codecs can help reduce costs or at least keep costs equal but also greatly improve the viewing experience for the viewer. Other revolutionary codecs such as AV1 are on the horizon as well and, according to our developer report - 1 out of 5 video developers plan to implement it in 2020.

The relentless focus on delivering the most superior viewing experience, plus the increased level of competition is the reason that the bar is set high. Take the market leader Netfl ix, for example. If you want to have Netfl ix grade quality, you need to deal with Netfl ix grade complexity. They are using a variety of diff erent codecs and a lot of very complex technologies like Per-Title Encoding to deliver the best possible quality for their subscribers.

For most broadcasters and newer services, it is unrealistic to support end-to-end solutions internally. More focus should be placed on the core competencies and partnerships with experts in the OTT arena as the best path forward.

It’s becoming a multi-codec world

Check:How does your video stack compare to other industry leaders?

Codec effi ciencies compared to H.264

More effi cient than H.264

More effi cient than H.264

More effi cient than HEVC/VP9

E.g. a HEVC encoded fi le will use 40% less bitrate than a H.264 encoded fi le at the same perceived quality.

15 Video market driver / Redefi ne the view experience

TV’s have advanced enormously over the last couple of years and viewers in a typical living room environment can experience a host of value-added features, such as 4K, HDR (High Dynamic Range), Dolby Vision, HD10+, Dolby Atmos, and High Frame Rate Video (HFR). This is just a shortlist and will continue to grow as time goes on. Companies that are agile enough to adapt new features quickly will be the winners of 2020 in terms of viewer experience.

Value-added features


Content is not the only mechanism that is used in the decision making process for viewers. Seeing and experiencing content through the viewers’ lens should guide our customers and in return guides us to create superior solutions that enable them to deliver the best experiences to the markets they serve.

How to compete in a crowded market

Check:How do you measure video quality? What are your service metrics?

So, you put all measures in place. How do you ensure that they are working? Before you can even start to optimize you need to measure. Unfortunately, we see a lot of companies that don’t do this and the results from the developer report agreed with that observation: over 40% of the participants said they have no measurement tools in place.

Only when companies thoroughly test their workfl ows and encodings on a regular basis via metrics such as buff ering, bitrate quality and playback failures and quality with VMAF, PSNR, and SSIM, can the relevant action to course correct be taken.

Measure and optimize

17 Video market driver / Redefi ne the view experience

A US broadcasting company that is in the process of switching all of their assets to process with Bitmovin’s Per-Title Encoding is already seeing improved quality during the test phase of 5-26%, depending on the content type.

BitmovinPer-Title Encoding

C A S E S T U D Y


The US market has long been dominated by Netfl ix and Amazon Prime, but with the recent launches of Disney+, AppleTV+, Peacock, and the upcoming HBO max, the whole industry is getting a shake-up. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Nielsen reported that consumers are willing to pay more to add SVOD services that replace their expensive cable services. Current COVID-19 surveys show consumers are being more cautious and 36% are likely to cut out OTT subscriptions should they need to reduce expenses. Either way, it’s imperative that companies bring their service or application to market as soon as possible to capture a share of the newly fragmented landscape.


19

Video market driver / Faster time-to-market

For all the new OTT services every lost week means a number of subscribers are lost to the competition and the market leaders are pushing forward. Netfl ix’s Q4/2019 earning calls announced that they had added 8.76 million subscribers worldwide, exceeding every expectation.

The competition is becoming fi erce and even with the current pandemic adding uncertainties and potential headwinds, all the major OTT services are still launching as planned.

20

Check:What challenges arise when making live content available for catch-up or streaming services?

One of the most publicized strategies to set one streaming service apart from the other is the mantra that “content is king”. More than 500 scripted series in the United States alone were released in 2019 which is a 52% increase since 2013. Streaming services clearly helped drive this growth.

While there are a number of articles about the billions of dollars that are being spent on content creation, it’s the heavy lifting of making this content available that gives companies huge competitive advantage. Fast encoding off ers almost instant turnaround time in the highest quality, where cloud-based workfl ows enable it to scale horizontally.

With most new content productions being on-hold due to shelter-in-place measures, OTT providers will have to compete on the strength of their existing libraries and potential acquisitions. As soon as the content that is now on hold, or a newly acquired content library becomes available, the content distributor will need to have it encoded and streamed as quickly as possible to stay or become attractive for viewers.

Content, content, content

21 Video market driver / Faster time-to-market

From hoursto minutes

C A S E S T U D Y

Another scenario where fast turnaround time can be a game-changer is when legacy broadcast content is made available to be streamed on-demand. One of our customers, the BBC, came to us to make their encoding workfl ow more effi cient, making popular shows like Strictly Come Dancing available on their iPlayer platform in minutes, not hours or days.

22Video market driver / Faster time-to-market

2020 will be the year where consumers and distributors alike will anticipate their content to publish effi ciently and instantaneously. As previously mentioned, with content being king, turnaround time is equally important and the ability to quickly publish entirely new libraries with the push of the button ensures strategic advantages. Cloud-based workfl ows are crucial because that’s the only way to support the fl exibility or elasticity that’s needed to support these workfl ows.


The OTT market is still lagging behind in terms of latency when compared to broadcast, which impacts a companies ability to be quickly in market with content that relies on low latency, such as live sporting events. All parts of the chain from encoding, storage, CDN to the video player need to play together to deliver a true low latency experience.

By comparison, OTT streams lag 8 seconds behind the typical broadcast platforms. But with CMAF Low Latency streaming providers have the opportunity to level the playing fi eld.

Low latency dominated OTT media in 2019. But 2020 will be the year where the fi rst applications really hit the market: MPEG-DASH and HLS low latency formats will be used much more. There will be new problems at scale with these formats, but the learning will help in 2021 and beyond to further improve workfl ow effi ciency, bringing it to the point where the diff erence between broadcast and OTT is minimal.

Latency

We already saw in the previous section that the media market is very dynamic, complex and fragmented. New formats, codecs, and devices appear quickly and on a seemingly constant basis. Companies that show the ability to fl ex and move with the speed of new devices coming on the scene will be the ones to succeed.

It’s not IF you support a device, but WHEN

Check:What does your multi-device strategy look like? What are the platforms that your service currently is not available on but that you’d like to be on?

23 Video market driver / Faster time-to-market

Live videogaming

C A S E S T U D Y

A video game company was looking for a new player and analytics solution that provided a stable experience and real-time monitoring for a high traffi c event. Bitmovin deployed a multi-platform player for stable streaming and provided analytics for visibility into the performance.

24Video market driver / Faster time-to-market

Video streaming is seeing an incredible surge in growth with regards to acquiring new users and increased revenue. In a market research report* from February 2020, the global market size was pegged at $42.6 billion USD in 2019 and it is expected to register a compounded annual growth rate of slightly over 20% in the next seven years.


25

What monetization model do you follow?

What DMR/content protection systems do you use?

Subscription and ad-based models are the leading ones as confi rmed by our developer survey.

* Video Streaming Market Report 2020-2027, Grand View Research

For now consumers also still prefer subscription based services mainly because of the premium and high-quality content. Suprisingly, our developer survey showed that 40% of participants are not even protecting their content and using a form of DRM (digital rights management) exposing their business to high risk.

Eff ective contentprotection

With booming markets the competition intensifi es and to stay competitive in the long run operational optimization can be one of the keys to success. Businesses that keep costs in check and are able to cover them with the money generated all while achieving healthy margins will come out on top. So, let’s start by looking at the business models in our industry:

26Video market driver / Operational optimization

One common and recurring denominator in the video industry is fragmentation - from devices, codecs to services. One contributor is the DIY approach lots of companies have when it comes for example to building and maintaining your own HTML5 player. That can be distracting and using up a lot of technical resources, only companies that will focus more on their core competencies will become effi cient and eff ective.

API-based services off er great advantages. They can be integrated and adapted quickly based on the market and customers’ needs. Unifi ed Player APIs, for example, give you access to more platforms effi ciently. By using a common video infrastructure layer with building blocks that companies start to build upon they become more effi cient and agile.

The average American video streaming subscriber uses and pays for 3.4 services, that costs approximately $29 per month. That is less than a third of the average monthly cable bill of $107 according to Fortune. The dominant players - Netfl ix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ - are already pushing people’s spending limits and ad supported services will gain in popularity.

The use of ad blocking technology is prevalent in society. Ad’s are seen as noise, interrupting a viewers ability to consume the content they want. That is not good for the ad-supported business model. Video advertisers need to be cleave in how they involve the consumer in the message in order to gain their trust. There’s a lot of potential in this space to deliver richer advertising content that doesn’t feel cheap or irrelevant.

Currently often basic problems such as ad failures, long startup delays and badly designed ad experiences lead to lost revenue. To be successful technical issues behind the viewer complaints need to be resolved and a smoother and better experience for the viewer needs to be achieved. Targeted advertising that focuses on the current mood of the customer will dominate in the future. Technology such as Server Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) will lead to more broadcast like ad experiences in the OTT world.

Common infrastructure layerThe next evolution of advertising

With revenue streams fl owing and being in check, let’s direct our attention to the cost of the business. Costs for video delivery are exploding. Quality is an important factor, but without operational optimization it’s not possible to deliver a superior experience as budgets are not endless.

Here is a list of advanced technologies that help you optimize overall cost:

Per-Title Encoding

Multi-Codec

3-Pass

CMAF segments for HLS and DASH

Check:Are your engineering resources more focused on maintenance and support or on new features and innovation?

Balancing quality versus cost

27 Video market driver / Operational optimization

Companies now rely on data to gather insights into ways to improve effi ciencies in their video workfl ows. What is key however, is how this data is leveraged to highlight workfl ow ineffi ciencies that can help improve their workfl ows on a continuous basis. Usually just parts of the workfl ow are tracked

and metrics are not correlated across systems. Another shortcoming is that the metrics that are in use are usually very basic and don’t go deep enough. Typically systems don’t work in realtime and data is only analyzed in a retroactive fashion, if at all.

Operation effi ciency requires measurements

Streaming services with a sustainable business - regardless of the monetization model - need to employ reasonable economics on a per-viewer basis. Part of it is keeping costs in check while scaling. A common infrastructure layer with technologies on top that help to reduce delivery cost while still increasing the quality increases effi ciencies. Don’t forget to make eff ective use of your data!


Bitmovin conducted a proof of concept for a newly launched streaming service that focused on ad-insertion and performance. During the test phase the playback performance increased by 200%.

Proof of conceptC A S E S T U D Y

K E Y W I N S

28Video market driver / Operational optimization

Our suite of solutions

Enjoy a product walk through to learn more about our solutions


As a company, we are built to deliver solutions that provide our customers with the ability to deliver their content with quality in a timely manner. Viewers today expect an ever evolving improved level of quality in the end experience, for which there are a myriad of operational considerations that goes into making this possible. While the end experience is important, the ability to make that content available in-market faster than the competition is also a key consideration. It’s these complexities, and how we as a company solve for them, that we’ll be delving into in the next chapter.

29

We won’t pretend that the video workfl ow process is a simple one. On the contrary, we pride ourselves in taking this complex and intricate series of steps and making it simple for our customers to integrate. Our solutions ensure rapid deployment enabling content providers to quickly reach the most subscribers and viewers, and an unparalleled level of customization making it easier than ever to integrate with more

third-party technologies. This fl exibility also reduces time-to-market, enabling swift adaptation to new market technologies.

In this chapter, we expose the mystery as to just how fl exible and advanced Bitmovin’s products are. So that your business can be counted on to become a fi rst adopter and faster mover.

Your video workfl ow reimagined

Flexible integrationand deployment

30Our suite of solutions

Video quality is no longer a luxury, but rather a necessity. With content-spend at record highs and the explosion of streaming services available to consumers, perceptual quality expectations must be met, and it starts with encoding.

At the same time encoding has traditionally been seen as a high-cost function of the streaming workfl ow, but our latest product innovations are shifting this perception. By analyzing the economics of the overall streaming workfl ow, and off ering bitrate optimization tools as well as multi-codec capabilities, we have leveraged the power of encoding to reduce overall costs associated with streaming (CDN and storage) — without compromising video quality.

Traditional transcoding solutions require a lot of processing, memory and storage. Even then, most encoding services run far slower than real time. The rapid growth of online and mobile video, along with the dynamic evolution of formats, standards and distribution make cloud computing indispensable, bringing more choices to consumers.

Organizations have embraced the cloud and containers, and 77% of respondents of a survey conducted by DivvyCloud in 2019 use more than one cloud. For us, it was never a question; Bitmovin Encoding was originally created to be cloud based, and to run in any environment in order to scale as fast as our customers needed. Horizontal scalability allows us to get content to end viewers at lightning speed with turnaround times in as little as 1/100 of the content duration. Distributed, parallel processing removes the bottleneck to get the job done as fast as you need.

Bitmovin wants you to take full advantage of all the resources cloud based encoding has to off er. We, of course, also understand that running our encoding product in your preferred environment can help you control costs. Cloud encoding - deploy anywhere

E N C O D I N GDeliver content in the highest quality at the lowest streaming costs. Encode content at high speed and deploy in any environment.

Our deployment-agnostic solution makes it easy and fast to deploy in (and move between) diff erent environments with a single-line code change on a per-job basis:

Bitmovin-hosted

Public cloud(i.e., bring your own cloud/connected cloud)

Private cloud

On-premise hardware

31 Our suite of solutions / Encoding

of their annual CDN cost

Bitmovin helped a leading VoD service serving Indian and South-East Asian markets to shave off around 40% of their annual CDN cost by letting them use their own cloud services, VP9 support, multi-pass and Per-Title Encoding.

Annual CDN costsC A S E S T U D Y

K E Y W I N S

Codecs play a very important role behind the scenes in delivering high quality streams to consumers. Many video developers are moving away from using one preferred codec and are starting to select the right codec for the right job.

Use of multiple codecs decreases bandwidth, not quality

Multi-codec streaming allows you to switch between codecs depending on the users platform capabilities, ensuring that your videos stream at maximum quality and bandwidth effi ciency, improving QoE (Quality of Experience) and reducing CDN cost.

H.265VP9AV1VVC

32Our suite of solutions / Encoding

Choosing the best Per-Title technology

W H I T E P A P E R

Per-Title Encoding is not a new concept, and has been used by industry leading content providers like Netfl ix for years. The idea behind the technology is that not every video is the same and hence does not need to be encoded at the same bitrate. Action and sports scenes typically require a higher bitrate to store the information, as they contain a lot of motion and less redundancies making each scene more complex. The art of Per-Title Encoding is to customize the encoding ladder of each encoded fi le to produce the best possible mix of quality and bandwidth effi ciency.

Of course, if you ask any Bitmover, they will tell you that we’ve mastered the art of achieving the most effi cient bitrate ladder while keeping the optimum perceived quality for each content piece. But don’t take our word for it. Jan Ozer, leading industry expert on encoding for live and on-demand production rated the diff erent Per-Title technologies.

Check:What type of content assets do you have? How is your content being viewed?

Want to read the full whitepaper? Check it out here


The paper gives you real world results of: Cost-saving compared to competition Quality compared to competition Bandwidth/storage savings compared to competition

33

The goal of his comprehensive analysis that tests and compares Mux, Elemental and Capped CRF (encoding mode/”open source” method) against Bitmovin is to help you understand what Per-Title technologies do and what factors to consider when choosing among them.

Bitmovin has been recognized for its encoding excellence by customers and industry organizations alike. Streaming Media’s 2019 Europe Readers’ Choice Awards recognized Bitmovin as the best Cloud Encoding Solution for the 3rd consecutive year in a row.

EUROPEAN READERS CHOICE AWARDS

WINNERSTREAMING MEDIA MAGAZINE EUROPEAN EDITION

2019

VMAF Accuracy: How “consistent” VMAF scoring is between 1080p resolutions. Standard Deviation. Lower is betterStorage Effi ciency: Diff erence between standard ladder and optimized ladder in terms of absolute size (total disk space)QoE: 1x times VMAF + 2.5x times PSRN +100 times SSIM, higher is better Ladder Integrity: Number of Bitrates removed minus errors, higher is better **Least Important**Decision making: 1x times good decision + 2x times great decision minus 1x time bad decisions and 2x times awful decisions, higher is better **More important metric**Scoring: Win = VMAF > 1, Home Run = VMAF 1.5, Loss = VMAF >1 , Catastrophe = VMAF > 3.5 1x times win + 2x times home run minus 1x time loss minus 2x times awful decisions, higher is better **Most important metric**

The battle results - the lower the score the better

Jan Ozer is a leading expert on H.264 encoding for live and on-demand production, and as contributing editor to Streaming Media Magazine, has tested most cloud, enterprise, and desktop encoding tools, worked with most online video platforms (OVPs) and live streaming services, and many webcast platforms.

Bitmovin won by a substantial margin. Notably, Bitmovin provided the largest improvement to Quality of Experience while delivering the second most storage effi ciency… What was particularly impressive was that Bitmovin performed well with all types of videos.

Jan Ozer

Test is weighted in terms of which birates are viewed - IE if the top variant is being served to 90% of viewers then the quality of encode for the top variant is weighted more heavily than lower bitrates. Assumptions were made. Need a more scientifi c approach to this going forward.


There has been a wave of standardization in how content is prepared. This has led to innovation and wider adoption of HDR technologies in general, and some diff erentiating benefi ts of Dolby’s fl avor of HDR, specifi cally. PQ/HDR10 and HLG formats are now standardized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). As a result, nearly all proprietary raw formats can be distributed and

played back as HDR. Dolby was able to leverage this standardization to enhance some of the raw input formats and enable more accurate color mapping schemes. There are many reasons why you should consider multiple HDR formats, however, Dolby has deep support amongst devices and off ers several enhancements features on top of open source substitutes.

HDR vs Dolby Vision

As is the case with most pieces of the streaming puzzle - whether its multi-cloud, multi-CDN or multi-codec - a multi-HDR workfl ow is necessary to meet the requirements of viewers everywhere. It is important to work with an encoding vendor like us who has integrated support for HDR10 and Dolby Vision, and who can help you understand when and where you should deploy each.

We debunked 5 HDR myths in this webinar with our partner Dolby.


Only a decade ago, viewing high defi nition video online was a luxury, now high video quality has become a commodity and continues evolving. High Defi nition and 4K resolutions are currently the industry standards (with 8K just around the corner). In addition to high pixel count, the quality of pixels has consistently improved over the years as well.

Today, pixels are comprised of more bits – which translates to more vibrant colors and details, enabling HDR technologies. Dolby Vision is rapidly becoming the de facto HDR standard for 4K TVs.

Streaming services have been at the forefront of Dolby Vision 4K content. We have updated our Bitmovin Encoders to support Dolby Vision HDR, delivering cutting-edge pictures and an astounding visual experience featuring a depth of color that has been previously unknown to consumer-grade devices. Brighter colors, a wider color gamut, increased contrast, and increased highlights enable more details to be visible than what was previously possible. Having the ability to deliver images with greater details in dark scenes or very bright scenes gives an artistic edge to content creators.

Advanced quality-based features

35

Bitmovin implemented larger fi le size processing and Per-Title Encoding for an Australian streaming service. They furthermore wanted to deploy new technologies like Dolby Vision, 4K and AV1. The encoding turn around time went from days to hours.Their CTO noted positively that at the intersection of creation and distribution Bitmovin’s cloud Encoder has enabled them to maintain the highest perceptual video quality.

Deploy new technologies

C A S E S T U D Y

K E Y W I N S

Check:What advanced features would you like to leverage in order to diff erentiate your product or service in the market? How do you evaluate speed, cost, and quality?

It is really the proliferation of device and screen technology which support playback of HDR content that is pushing demand to create it. In the years past, organizations were slow to implement HDR due to diffi culties scaling and implementing the technology. Once devices and screens which support HDR playback became widely available this drastically changed.

It’s also cheaper to produce HDR than ever before. Cinema-grade cameras are all capturing and storing raw images, and Dolby enables an “HDR-First” color grading workfl ow designed to take these raw fi les and create SDR and HDR variants from the same color grade. This can substantially reduce post production/color grading time and costs.

Why Now?


Having been a contributor to the creation of MPEG-DASH, Bitmovin understands the challenges developers face when building or modifying video players. We value simplifying the process for engineers and have developed additional native player SDKs to make cross-platform reach as seamless as possible.

We have SDKs and APIs which reach over 10+ platforms ranging from browsers, mobile, connected TVs, consoles and Smart TV devices. They all share the same code-base which means that they come with the same feature-set, confi guration and capabilities. The unifi ed UI means you just build your front end once, instead of three times.

P L AY E RReach viewers on the largest number of devices using our multi-device player. It’s fl exible and easy to deploy, utilizing built-in SVOD and AVOD features, giving complete control of the viewing experience.

Check:What is your strategy to expand device support for your service? How does it compare to your competitors?

37 Our suite of solutions / Player

A global media company had diff erent teams working on diff erent players across various properties. Bitmovin’s unifi ed player codebase reached all of their desired platforms. The player infrastructure is easier to support while still giving fl exibility to individual business units and freeing up engineering resources that can work on core competency projects.

Unifi ed player codebaseC A S E S T U D Y

Our player possesses a wealth of features and functionalities that are core to the streaming experience. We have created a modular player framework which enables you to choose what features and functions are important to you and seamlessly enable or integrate them for an unmatched player experience.

Multi DRM support, multi-codec streaming, low-latency support, and a wide variety of advertising solutions make it easy for engineers to address diff erent monetization needs in a fl exible manner.

Subscription based video on demand is often premium content which needs to be protected by DRM. Here is an excerpt of our upcoming whitepaper.

Leverage SVOD and AVOD capabilities out of the box

All desired platforms reached

K E Y W I N S

Engineering resources freed to work on strategic projects

38Our suite of solutions / Player

When implementing a new DRM strategy you should check that the content protection technologies are accepted by the original content owner. This means that if you distribute Hollywood content you must implement a DRM solution that is accepted by Hollywood studios. Even if you don’t deliver Hollywood content it’s important to know what’s the acceptable minimum protection required to deliver in the future. Almost all major studios

have done their due diligence as it pertains to DRM solutions and have existing minimums in place. Replacing an existing DRM solution can be diffi cult, so additional research is an easy precaution to take to avoid long and costly security updates. Currently, PlayReady, Widevine, and Fairplay are all Hollywood grade DRM systems.

Hollywood content

Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems allow you to control how (and where) people can consume your content. Most content owners and producers (like Hollywood studios and standard TV/broadcast networks) force their distributors to use DRM systems to protect their proprietary content by including content protection in their

licensing agreements. However, Hollywood-grade DRM protection is not needed in every content distributor’s case; sometimes basic protection through token-based secure authentication or with a simple Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) of the video without a sophisticated license exchange and policy management is enough.

What is DRM?

Encoding


Standard workfl ows for DRM requires encoding, packaging, playout, and communication mechanisms to one or more license servers. The following sections will describe each step within a video workfl ow that interacts with DRM in detail. As a content provider, it’s important to know and understand each step in a workfl ow. However, it’s important to note that the most effi cient way to implement a reliable DRM workfl ow is to use an “out-of-the-box solution” from one provider as opposed to designing your own or taking on a “one size fi ts all” solution. This ensures that every step in the process is seamlessly connected to the next and limits unnecessary integration costs.

Bitmovin off ers exactly this type of solution by providing encoding, packaging, and a player that is pre-confi gured to communicate with multiple licensing servers. License servers are off ered by specifi c organizations that provide multi-DRM solutions. It’s also possible to run your own license servers and negotiate terms directly with Google (Widevine), Microsoft (PlayReady) or Apple (FairPlay), but this is typically over the top and unnecessary. On the player side, one can utilize the HTML5 Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) to enable DRM playback without plugins.

How does it work?

Encoding

Packaging

Playout

40Our suite of solutions / Player

The other monetization model is advertising supported video on demand (AVOD), where it is all about seamless, smooth and non-intrusive ad delivery. The Bitmovin Player supports all the major advertising standards - from VAST, VPAID to VMAP for cross-platform video advertising.

In the last year lots of upgrades were made to the Bitmovin Ad Module. The support for adaptive streaming (HLS/DASH) ads provides a great user experience also during ad breaks. We also reduced the time to transition from an ad back to the main content which tremendously increases the quality of experience for users, and thus reduces drop-off s.In addition, we also integrated Yospace, a new Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) partner across all of our player SDKs to provide a seamless ad serving experience for customers that prefer an HLS only workfl ow.

SSAI helps prevent ad blocking by seamlessly stitching together the content and the ad. This way viewers experience an optimal, broadcast-like viewing experience that often provides high quality video and ad creatives. Moreover, the technology can adapt to diff erent bandwidths to support poor connections by rendering a lower quality stream without buff ering.

SSAI provides some operational effi ciencies as it eliminates the need to maintain multiple SDKs. It also helps media owners with large scale live event inventories deal with concurrency.

AVOD Bitmovin Ads Module

What are some other benefi ts of SSAI?

AVOD

Bitmovin has been recognized for its Adaptive HTML5 Player by customers and industry organizations alike. Streaming Media’s 2019 Europe Readers’ Choice Awards recognized Bitmovin as the best Adaptive HTML5 Player for the 3rd consecutive year in a row.

EUROPEAN READERS CHOICE AWARDS

WINNERSTREAMING MEDIA MAGAZINE EUROPEAN EDITION

2019


Live in person sporting events and concerts might be cancelled for the foreseeable future, but this gives live streaming the opportunity to bring these events to living rooms across the globe. Individuals, companies, governments and other organizations can benefi t from live streaming events as it off ers an almost comparable level of interactivity and engagement.

But live events are often plagued with issues, the main one being latency. For developers, low latency presents a big challenge to making live events feel truly live. Delays in the transmission of content for live sports for example can ruin the experience for viewers who hang on every second of the event in question. Our Video Developer Report reveals that latency is a concern for 54% of all our survey participants. Digging into the numbers, subsequent analysis reveals that almost 50% of survey participants plan to implement a low-latency solution over the next 1–2 years, with over 50% seeking latency of under 5 seconds and 30% seeking latency of under 1 second.

By looking at a slightly more technical defi nition of live latency we see why it is such an intricate and complex challenge. Every component in the chain introduces a certain amount of latency that eventually accumulates to what is considered “live latency”. In other words, live latency is the time diff erence between a video frame being captured

and the moment it’s presented to the playback client. It’s the time that a video frame spends in the media processing and delivery chain.

One key ingredient to reduce latency is CMAF (Common Media Application Format) which defi nes the encoding and packaging of segmented media objects for delivery and decoding on end-user devices in adaptive multimedia presentations. In particular, this is storage, identifi cation, and delivery of encoded media objects with various constraints on encoding and packaging. That means CMAF defi nes not only the segment format but also codecs and most importantly media profi les (i.e., for AVC, HEVC, AAC).

The advantage of CMAF is that media segments can be referenced simultaneously by HLS playlists and DASH manifests. This allows CDNs to store only one set of fi les which in turn doubles the cache hit rate making the process more effi cient.

The Bitmovin Player supports CMAF Low Latency streaming by playing back chunked-transfer encoded streams from a variety of compatible encoders, including the Bitmovin Encoder. This enables our customers to provide live streams with 3-15 second glass-to-glass latency (broadcast delay) to their consumers for high profi le live events.

Low Latency

Low latency streaming with chunked CMAF

For a deeper (technical) dive read our three part blog post series about Live Latency - what it is and how it can be improved.

https://bitmovin.com/zine5/7 42Our suite of solutions / Player

Being able to react swiftly to issues and glitches, having a 24/7 insight into what viewers are experiencing and utilizing a robust, fl exible Analytics API are all key to unlocking the full potential to what streaming video has to off er. At the end of the day, analytics is here to help us learn more about our customers and their experiences. When integrated, content providers can gather insight into exactly how to optimize their video infrastructure to make critical changes to their workfl ow, before their viewers even realize it, ensuring that they stay competitive and maximize revenue in this ever evolving video landscape. Analytics provides a guide to help us to make better decisions.

Bitmovin’s Analytics tool collects metrics from three key areas: audience, quality of service and advertising. The video analytics dashboard is built from various sets of metrics or data that fl ows

from your system to the analytics engine. These data sets can be grouped in any number of ways, with 40 diff erent metrics containing 30 fi lters and breakdowns available across three distinct dashboards, including access to around 200 dimensions and fi lters. By analyzing these basic metrics against the timeline, you can also quickly see trends in viewing behavior such as spikes at various times during the week, or that coincide with particular events.

Let’s make that more digestible by looking at examples of key metrics and how the data can be leveraged to garner vital insights you can to learn from.

A N A LY T I C SFix playback issues with real-time data before your viewers see it. Monitor infrastructure performance insights, anytime, all the time. Visualize data, your way.

43 Our suite of solutions / Analytics

Before taking a closer look at the metrics, how are they fi rst gathered? Rather than embarking on a lengthy integration phase for diff erent players, Bitmovin Analytics has custom ready-made collectors for all Bitmovin Player SDKs, including all major native players (iOS, Android, Roku), and all major open-source players.

By removing the hurdles to implement Analytics across platforms and devices, content providers and distributors get fast access to real-time data - across the dashboards and via the API. In addition to the Bitmovin Analytics dashboards, integration with various data visualization tools such as Grafana, Tabelau, and Google Data Studio is available.

Check:Does your analytics provider give you access to aggregated data with latency only?

Do you get real-time data only for a fraction of the available metrics?

Easy integration across diff erent players

44Our suite of solutions / Analytics

There is one metric that everyone in the video streaming industry will agree is the most important metric you need to monitor at all times: total startup time. According to our data, the average video startup time across all customers is 1.54 seconds, off ering room for improvement to match offl ine playback. This number provides valuable insight, however, we need to look deeper into how we can further optimize this to improve performance.There are a variety of factors that would result in

slower startup times. Video streaming workfl ows are often complex with elements coming from a variety of diff erent systems and vendors. Hence, Bitmovin Analytics not only provides granular insights into core metrics, like video startup delays, but also itemizes the contributions of video segments, the player, DRM requests, and Ad load time - thus identifying the largest impact on startup delays.

Startup time: Match offl ine experience

Check:Does your analytics provider only show one metric to measure startup delays

or summarize the startup parts under one metric?

Hear in this Tech Talk how analytics metrics can be extremely useful when optimizing your video workfl ow and business.


In light of the COVID-19 crisis, one of the world’s biggest opera houses decided to give away access to their streaming service for free. This increased their average daily audience size by over 1000%. With Bitmovin Analytics they had the tool in place to analyze in real-time what content performed best with those new viewers identifying and solving region-specifi c startup delay problems.

Opera house:Free streaming analysis

C A S E S T U D Y

K E Y W I N S


In our content-driven world, it’s of utmost importance to deliver consistent and high-quality content within reasonable budget limitations. A factor that most content creators and distributors may not consider is the high price potential for effi cient encoding. When uploading a video, it’s encoded into a collection of renditions, each suitable for a typical range of a viewers’ expected bandwidth. Out of six potential renditions of a video bitrate ladder, chances are high that some of them will not be consumed by viewers.

The video bitrate heatmap in the Bitmovin Analytics dashboard displays the encoding rendition consumption patterns of viewers for OTT streaming service providers, telcos, and publishers. Our dashboard even off ers a heatmap for per-video titles, with additional fi lters for specifi c dimensions like device-type, browsers, and CDNs.

Via the Analytics dashboard heatmap API, one can optimize encoding settings by identifying redundant bitrates in the ladder where the highest rendition off ered is optimized for the bandwidth conditions for viewers.

Bitmovin heatmap: Optimize your encoding

Check:Does your analytics provider only show you average bitrates? Does your provider diff erentiate usage bitrate rendition?

Want to see more examples of how to to optimize your encoding with the heatmap?


4.8 Mbit/s1920x1080

2.4 Mbit/s1280x720

795 kbit/s854x480

3 Mbit/s1280x720

1.2 Mbit/s960x540

1.21 Mbit/s1024x576

250 kbit/s320x180

0:0036:49

1:13:39

18:2455:149:12

46:02

1:22:5

227

:37

1:04:274:36

41:26

1:18:15

23:01

59:5013:

4850:38

1:27:0

8

Impressions

26 (10%)

45 (18%)

29 (11%)

46 (18%)

41 (16%)

16 (6%)

54 (21%)

32:13

1:09:03

47

During the Rugby World Cup an African OTT ran close to capacity on some CDNs. They needed to reduce bitrates to increase capacity without increasing cost. Using bitrate data available in our Analytics solution, they identifi ed higher bitrate renditions that were rarely watched by viewers. Based on the bitrate heatmap, the customer is now using a customized bitrate set for their viewer base. They save on effi cient use of CDN and on encoding by not producing bitrates customers were not viewing anyway.

Rugby world cupC A S E S T U D Y


Industry Insights provides industry benchmarks that empower operators to make sense of their data relative to similar businesses to drive insights and action. For selected metrics the dashboard shows the median data point for that metric across the

entire Bitmovin Analytics customer base. For organizations that see the advantages of and employ data-driven optimization, Bitmovin Analytics is the way to go.

Industry Insights


COVID-19’s impact on streaming videoStreaming video consumption is increasingDuring a crisis, viewership booms as consumers ramp up media consumption to stay informed, distracted, and entertained. In the month of March alone, Bitmovin has seen exponential growth in impressions served. However, impressions aren’t the only indicator of change - this clear shift in behavior is visualized opposite.

We started our Bitmovin LIVE event series with a webinar moderated by Variety that featured EY, Nielsen, and Verizon Media as panelists to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the OTT streaming industry with global data and actionable steps you need to take to succeed.

https://bitmovin.com/zine5/10 50Our suite of solutions / Analytics

Large opportunity for streaming improvements

Encoding: 3-Pass, Multi-Codec, Per-Title

Analytics: Data to optimize in line with viewers’ streaming conditions (Codec distribution, bitrates, bandwidth...)

YouTube Defaults to Lower-Quality Video Worldwide During COVID-19 CrisisTodd Spangler

Netfl ix Streaming Traffi c Hits All-Time Highs on AT&TTodd Spangler

Technology impactThere is extreme public pressure on content distributors to lower bandwidth consumption while still delivering a positive experience for viewers.

As providers see record levels of growth, they also need to ensure they are managing costs appropriately as they scale.

Percentage of device support for codecs


COVID-19 is making its mark way beyond the streaming media world. We hope you are healthy and in good spirits. We surely missed meeting you in person at NAB. Instead you might have enjoyed one of our webinars, tech talks, and demos.

You missed Bitmovin live? Not to worry! The recordings of each session are availible here at bitmovin.com/nab2020

You heard plenty about our solutions and have more questions, contact us at [email protected]

Stay safe, The Bitmovin Team

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frost radar global breach and attack simulation

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