IBC: Bitmovin Launching New Product Category, Playback

Bitmovin, a provider of video streaming infrastructure, has announced a new product category, “Playback.” Playback brings together Bitmovin’s player, analytics and stream lab products, and, it says, “is the next evolution of streaming infrastructure. Playback embeds video playback into mobile, web and big screen applications with automated device testing and optimizations to deliver the highest quality viewing experiences.”

Viewers are watching more video, and on more devices, than ever before with the total time spent streaming jumping by 18% from February 2021 to February 2022, Bitmovin says. Currently, application developers are tasked with optimizing video playback with minimal insights into performance or quality issues. The analytics available to application developers is often limited during development and production, therefore optimization predominantly occurs through a process of trial and error.

“Our goal with Playback is to make it easy for developers to guarantee high quality playback in their applications” said Stefan Lederer, Bitmovin CEO and co-founder. “Developers now need to support playback on tens of devices, with thousands of configuration possibilities. Our solution makes it simple for developers to embed video playback with confidence and ensures that their viewers will get a great experience.”

Bitmovin said Playback solves developers’ challenges with an embeddable video player that is tested and optimized for any video streaming device. Once deployed, Playback’s integrated video analytics assess the viewing experience and allows streaming services to optimize playback based on real-world conditions.

Diagnosing problems, and pushing new configurations (e.g., digital rights management) to viewers is made quicker and more efficient as playback issues and errors are surfaced to developers with automated testing allowing changes to be validated prior to deployment. “This fast feedback loop between testing, deploying and optimizing allows developers to elevate the experience they offer viewers and provides them with more time to work on new feature development,” the company said.