No. We don’t provide a storage and/or CDN solution, at the moment. Our storage is meant to serve as a temporary location, where your encoded content is stored for at least 14 days. Doing so, you are able to transfer your encoded content to your own storage. After these 14 days your content can be deleted at any time (as stated in our FAQ on our pricing page as well).

Therefore it is highly recommended to transfer your content to your own storage, and serve it from there accordingly.

If you are not familiar with transferring your encoded content yet, please see [1] for a step-by-step guide on how to use our services. Further, please make sure to configure your storage with proper CORS settings, which fit with your needs, regarding allowed origins, methods, and headers. Otherwise, our HTML5 Player and others as well, won’t be able to access and play your content properly, as each browser would deny such requests. Please see [2][3][4] for more information about CORS and its configuration depending on the storage solution.

[1] http://bitmovin.com/tutorials/setup-adaptive-bitrate-streaming-dash-hls
[2] http://bitmovin.com/faq/how-do-i-enable-cors-on-my-web-server/
[3] http://bitmovin.com/faq/how-do-i-set-up-cors-for-my-google-cloud-storage-bucket/
[4] http://bitmovin.com/faq/create-aws-s3-bucket-can-used-output-location/

You can create an encoding profile that will keep the aspect ratio of the original video by just omitting either the width or the height of the VideoStreamConfig of the encoding profile. Please not that such encoding profiles must be created via our API.

In the following an example for an encoding profile that will keep aspect ratio:

POST https://portal.bitcodin.com/api/encoding-profile/create

{
  "name": "SD - Keep Aspect Ratio",
  "videoStreamConfigs": [
    {
      "defaultStreamId": 0,
      "bitrate": 400000,
      "profile": "Main",
      "preset": "Premium",
      "codec": "h264",
      "height": 240
    },
    {
      "defaultStreamId": 0,
      "bitrate": 800000,
      "profile": "Main",
      "preset": "Premium",
      "codec": "h264",
      "height": 360
    },
    {
      "defaultStreamId": 0,
      "bitrate": 1200000,
      "profile": "Main",
      "preset": "Premium",
      "codec": "h264",
      "height": 480
    }
  ],
  "audioStreamConfigs": [
    {
      "defaultStreamId": 0,
      "bitrate": 128000
    }
  ]
}

If your source content has a frame rate of 24.02, 25.02, or 30.02 the encoded content will have the same frame rate if not specified other in your encoding profile. Using such frame rates introduces problems with the Google Chrome MSE. However, the content will play fine on IE9, Edge, Firefox.

You can resolve this issue also for Google Chrome if you set the frame rate of your encoded content to a fixed value of, e.g., 24, 25, or 30. You can easily do that by specifying the rate of the video streams for your encoding profile. Please note that the setting is only available via our API.

Please find an example on how to set the rate for the video stream:

{
  "name": "fixed frame rate",
  "videoStreamConfigs": [
    {
      "defaultStreamId": 0,
      "bitrate": 1000000,
      "profile": "Main",
      "preset": "Premium",
      "codec": "h264",
      "height": 480,
      "width": 204,
      "rate": 30
    }
  ],
  "audioStreamConfigs": [
    {
      "defaultStreamId": 0,
      "bitrate": 128000
    }
  ]
}

This issue can occur with MSE implementations that do not correctly handle different sample rates for audio. If you manually set the sample rate in your encoding profiles, ensure, that for every audio track you use the same sample rate. If you do not choose an explicit sample rate in your encoding profile, bitcodin will encode the audio in the same sample rate as the input audio stream. If the input file has two audio streams with different sample rates this will lead to an error. In that case you need to define the sample rate in your encoding profile manually. Please find an example on how to set the sample rate manually for the PHP API client at Sample rate example

Login in the AWS Management Console and go to the S3 section.

After clicking on the Button named “Created Bucket” you can choose a Bucket name (for example my-bitcodin-bucket) and a Region (for example Ireland) where this bucket will reside. After you have successfully created the new bucket, go to the settings pane and click on the “Permissions” Item. Click on the “Add CORS Configuration” Button and add the default CORS Settings by clicking on the “Create” button. Go back to the Main Menu of the AWS Management Console (Orange Cube on the top left of the window).

Now go to the Identity & Access Management Section which is placed in the Administration & Security pane. When you’re there, select the Users entry in the left menu and click on the Create New Users button on the new Page. After adding your desired username in the first Textbox, note that the “Generate an access key for each user” option has to be checked before clicking on the “Create” button on the right bottom corner. After the user was created, click on “Show User Security Credentials” and remember the two Keys anywhere – you will need them later on to create the bitcodin Output. Click on the “Close” button on the right bottom corner.

You’re now in the Users Menu again. Click on the newly created User to open it’s settings page. In the permissions section, click on Inline Policies and create a new one. Select the “Custom Policy” option here, enter a new name for this Policy – for example bitcodin_access_policy – and add the following lines to the Policy Document:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:PutObject",
                "s3:PutObjectAcl"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::YOUR_BUCKET_NAME/*"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:GetBucketLocation"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::YOUR_BUCKET_NAME"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Please be sure to replace YOUR_BUCKET_NAME with the name of your newly created bucket. Now you should be able to add the new bucket in the bitcodin-portal and the bitcodin-api.

To add the new S3 bucket using the bitcodin portal navigate to the Create Output page which can be found in the left menu in the Output pane.

Here you can give your Output an individual name, an individual prefix where your files will take place in and configure your access keys. Please be sure to select the correct Host-Region according to the information you can find on the Amazon Regions and Endpoints page.

When your Dropbox input does not work it can be possible that the HTTP(S) URL to your source file on Dropbox is incorrectly formed. At the end of the URL there must be a GET parameter called dl which specifies if the File should be downloaded (dl=1) or displayed (dl=0) in the browser using the Dropbox Web-Interface. To use a Dropbox file as a bitcodin Input, you have to set dl=1 in the URL.