Bitmovin is a multimedia technology company which provides services that

transcode Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target de ...

digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...

and audio to streaming formats using

cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

, and streaming media players. Founded in 2013, the Austrian company contributes to

MPEG-DASH Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), also known as MPEG-DASH, is an adaptive bitrate streaming technique that enables high quality streaming of media content over the Internet delivered from conventional HTTP web servers. Similar to Appl ...

, an

open standard An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a common prerequisite that open standards use an open license that provides for extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in their development due to ...

that allows streaming video to be played in HTML video and Flash Video web players.

History

Bitmovin was founded in 2013 after research and standardization in the area of

at the University of Klagenfurt. In 2014 the company secured an investment round with the venture capital fond Speedinvest and Constantia Industries. In 2014, the company was part of the top 100 companies in online media. Bitmovin is the author of the

reference software

libdash libdash is a computer software library which provides an object-oriented interface to the Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) standard. It is also the official reference implementation of the ISO/IEC MPEG-DASH standard, and maintained by t ...

and contributes to the standardization at

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...

, DASH-IF,

IETF The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet standard, Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster ...

, etc. In 2015, Bitmovin participated in the YCombinator program.

Products

The company provides the cloud-based transcoding service bitcodin, which increases the efficiency of transcoding by using

Cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

, and also enables transcoding of ultra-high definition video. The company also created the HTML media and Flash-based web player bitdash which can be used in

Web Browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

s on desktop computers and

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

s. This player supports the streaming and playback of

or Apple's

HTTP Live Streaming HTTP Live Streaming (also known as HLS) is an HTTP-based adaptive bitrate streaming communications protocol developed by Apple Inc. and released in 2009. Support for the protocol is widespread in media players, web browsers, mobile devices, and ...

, using either the Media Source Extensions or Flash, depending on the platform. DRM is enabled through the usage of the

Encrypted Media Extensions Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) is a W3C specification for providing a communication channel between web browsers and the Content Decryption Module (CDM) software which implements digital rights management (DRM). This allows the use of HTML vide ...

as well as Flash. It is compatible to tools such as x264 or MP4Box.

Usage

* Live or on-demand transcoding of video or audio streaming to HLS, progressive and

DASH The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen ...

* Web-based players for streaming for HLS, progressive and

content in HTML video or Flash Video * Streaming of DRM protected content in HTML video

References

{{Reflist Streaming software Streaming media systems Media servers Internet properties established in 2013