Encoding REST API Services

• Bitmovin CDN storage is now available for VOD(beta). The Bitmovin Content Delivery Network (CDN) helps setting up your workflows faster by simplifying the distribution of your content. It's easy to use and removes the need to set up your own output storage. Your content will be automatically distributed around the globe, enabling fast and efficient delivery to all your viewers without any additional effort.
  • Note that for your first use, it may take up to 5 minutes after encoding completes before CDN distribution is ready. Subsequent videos will be available as soon as encoding has finished.
  • This beta release is available for organizations who signed up for a TRIAL after 2022-04-05 or subscribed to a Starter or PAYG (pay as you go) plan after that date.
  • Further information can be found here.

• Fixed progressive MP4 workflow for Dolby Vision in combination with AAC audio streams.

• Identified and fixed a very rare issue which could potentially lead to less parallelity processing batch jobs when the audio merge feature was used

Manifest Generator V2 is now available for single-encoding HLS manifests by specifying manifestGenerator=V2 in the HLS Start-Manifest Request. The minimum encoder version for that feature is 2.111.0. Differences to the LEGACY generator include:

• Additions
  • V2 supports assoc-language and the characteristics which are not supported by LEGACY.
• Improvements
  • The order of the attributes inside the elements can be different. They are now ordered in a stable way. We remain spec compliant in this point.
  • I-FramePlaylists referencing a muxing that does not support I-FramePlaylists will cause the manifest to fail in contrary to the LEGACY implementation that writes an incorrect I-FramePlaylist file.
  • The target duration is not updated to the highest occurring value in all media playlists in some cases by Legacy HLS manifest generation. V2 now handles this more correctly.
  • The codec value of Variant Streams for ProgressiveTsMuxings and TsMuxings which contain a video and an audio stream is now more correct. In the Legacy generator it looks like this avc1.4D401E,ac-3,avc1.4D401E,ac-3 and in V2 we only write it once e.g. avc1.4D401E,ac-3.
  • For MediaInfos/StreamInfos where the provided streamId does not belong to the muxing, the manifestGenerator V2 sets the segmentDurations more accurately than the LEGACY one. We might fail fast for cases like this in the future.
  • If multiple ClosedCaptionMediaInfos are specified for a single manifest, V2 will only add a single EXT-X-MEDIA tag for each of them instead of adding duplicate entries like legacy does.
• Known Limitations
  • LIVE-2-VOD is not supported yet.
  • Dolby Vision does not work with V2 at the moment.

Simple Encoding Api

• A name can now be set for Simple Live Encodings.

• Improved the internal encoding cloud region selection for continental regions like ASIA, EUROPE etc. to take the input and output cloud providers and their regions into consideration. This will minimize potential egress costs.

• The Simple Encoding API now also supports live encodings. Further information can be found here.

• Time-based Trimming configurations with a negative duration are now disallowed and will result in a 400 Bad Request response during creation.

• For AV1 encodings these presets are now available
  • VOD_QUALITY - Higher quality
  • VOD_STANDARD - Default quality and speed
  • VOD_SPEED - Faster encoding
• Added validations for time based trimming input streams: The encoding now fails fast if the (rounded) duration of all the time based trimming input streams is 0 or negative.
• The Manifest Generator V2 now supports generating SMOOTH manifests containing more than 1 encoding.

• Added support for Per-Title AV1 encodings to the Simple Encoding API.

• The H264 presets VOD_STANDARD and VOD_QUALITY now use the H264 profile 'MAIN' instead of 'HIGH'. See documentation here.

• Manifest Generator V2 is now available for single-encoding SMOOTH manifests by specifying manifestGenerator=V2 in the SMOOTH Start-Manifest Request. The minimum encoder version for that feature is 1.108.0. Differences to the LEGACY generator include:
  • V2 now correctly sets the "QualityLevels" attribute in the StreamIndex elements to the count of QualityLevel elements present.
  • V2 now correctly sets the "Index" attribute in the QualityLevel elements by increasing the number with each element.

• Fixed info messages for GCE infratstructure creation.

• Cloud Region AWS_EU_NORTH_1 (Stockholm) is now available for encoder version 2.107.0 and newer.
• Several performance improvements to the HLS manifest generation via the HLS Manifest Start call. HLS manifest generation with many renditions is now up to 5 times faster.

• HLS Manifest generation failed when the encoding containted an MP3 Audio Muxing even if the HLS Manifest did not reference the MP3 Muxing.