Austrian start-up from Klagenfurt conquers the world

Video streaming software provider Bitmovin is the technology leader in this field and full of enthusiasm.

Since the invention of television broadcasting in the 1900s, the broadcasting industry has always sought innovative technology that can improve the viewing experience for users. Over the years and with the introduction of over-thetop streaming services, the bar keeps rising as the industry continues to pack more visual quality into fixed spectrum and bandwidth allocations. More and more data is being streamed and video players are struggling with lag. Then Bitmovin came along.

Bitmovin began as a spin-off of the University of Klagenfurt and has since morphed into Austria’s first start-up on its way to gaining unicorn status. The company offers products for high-efficiency streaming and the provision of multimedia data via the internet. It developed a cloud encoding service that processes high-quality videos without lag and which is up to 100 times faster than its competitors. Bitmovin is also offering a HTML5-based video player that is in high demand among video platforms, media and entertainment companies around the world – such as Ooyala, YouTube and Netflix in the United States, Technicolor in the United Kingdom and Flimmit in Austria.

Who is Bitmovin?

Bitmovin was founded in 2013 by a group of students at Klagenfurt University: Stefan Lederer, today the CEO of Bitmovin, Christopher Müller and Christian Timmerer, both board members. The three of them researched and developed MPEG-DASH video streaming, an open-source technology, and quickly realised that their solutions were far superior to those offered by large corporations such as Apple or Microsoft, who also had their hand in the game. They filed a patent application for their improvements and implementations – today’s basis for all Bitmovin products.

In just a few years, Bitmovin made it to Silicon Valley. In 2014, the business received subsidies from the AWS (Austrian Promotional Bank) and the KWF (Carinthian Business Support Fund) as well as from investors such as Speedinvest or Constantia Industries. In 2015, Bitmovin was the first Austrian business ever to be accepted into the Y Combinator programme for start-ups and received 10.3 million US dollars. Investment fund Atomico is also among those who invested in the company, as is German TV giant RTL and other big players such as Zattoo and Bouygues Telecom.

Today, Bitmovin is an award-winning leading provider of video infrastructure for global digital media companies and service providers. The company has been at the forefront of industry innovation and all major developments in the digital video streaming industry. Bitmovin built the world‘s first commercial adaptive streaming player and deployed the first software-defined encoding service that runs on any cloud platform. Its cloud-native technology offers the most flexible and scalable media encoding, playback, and analytics solutions available with unparalleled device reach, ease of integration, and world-class customer support. Bitmovin customers benefit from optimised operations, reduced time-to-market and the best viewer experience possible.

© Bitmovin

Bitmovin won the 2020 Technology & Engineering Emmy Award of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) in the United States.

Maximum efficiency with maximum speed

Bitmovin continues to be a leader in the research and development of actual perceptual quality metrics standards. The metrics are used to emulate the human perceptual system and leverage the information to maximise the efficiency of video encoding parameters. Bitmovin customers such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Hulu Japan, are actively working to implement perceptual quality metrics with the Bitmovin Encoder product and its per-title encoding capabilities.

Another key area where Bitmovin has played a significant role is in the use of massive parallel encoding to enhance encoding speeds. Bitmovin‘s DNA and its origin story came from its founders‘ contributions to the development of the ISO/IEC MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) standard, which today is used by most streaming services worldwide. Thus, the Bitmovin Encoding product has been created with segmented processing in mind which allows for massive parallel processing to accelerate encoding speeds across all available cloud infrastructure while maintaining the highest quality in the market and minimising bitrate.

With this technology, media and entertainment companies such as the BBC, the National Rugby League (NRL) Australia and Globo Brazil are able to reduce the encoding time of their content from hours to minutes and reduce delivery costs by up to 50 percent.

Award-winning technology

Bitmovin has been honored with a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS). Through its submission, Bitmovin demonstrated how its use of machine-learning and optimisation techniques have contributed to the ”Development of Massive Processing Optimised Compression Technologies.“

“Bitmovin is extremely honored to receive an Emmy Award for our technical contributions to the booming area of online video streaming,“ says Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder Bitmovin. “Since we founded Bitmovin, our mission has been to help the transformation of video consumption towards online streaming using technology, and in particular improve the industry‘s viewing experience with the most advanced encoding technology developed by our R&D team. The Emmy award validates our tireless efforts to optimise workflows and deliver the highest-quality streaming video across all devices.“

“The Technology & Engineering Emmy Award was the first Emmy Award issued in 1949 and it laid the groundwork for all the other Emmys to come,” said Adam Sharp, CEO & President, NATAS. “We are extremely happy about honoring these prestigious companies, again in partnership with NAB, where the intersection of innovation, technology, and excitement in the future of television can be found.” ◆