Bitmovin has introduced Smart Chunking to its VoD Encoder in order to increase the quality and turnaround times with split and stitch.
According to the company, the new functionality optimises chunk lengths and bitrate distribution, “delivering an improved visual quality throughout the whole asset that’s visible to audiences and achieving this at an even faster pace than before”.
Smart Chunking is described as the next evolution of the split and stitch algorithm. It involves a video file being split into multiple parallel encoding jobs. The split and stitch algorithm accelerates encoding but can cause the quality to drop between segments due to bitrate “jumps”, which can be visible to the viewer, said the company.
Smart Chunking intelligently optimises chunk lengths and bitrate distribution, ensuring smooth visual quality throughout the whole asset, as well as at a faster pace. To achieve this, Bitmovin decoupled the chunk duration, which allows for variable chunk size depending on the type of codec and the complexity of encoding, providing the user with immediate and visible improvements.
“Smart Chunking is a new innovation that ensures our customers can encode video files even more efficiently at speed and scale in the highest quality, with absolutely no tradeoffs,” said Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder of Bitmovin. “It doesn’t matter if you are a broadcaster with millions of viewers or a more nimble streaming service; our Smart Chunking will benefit all users with optimised split and stitch encoding that maximises the viewing experience for audiences while helping our customers achieve their business goals.”
Smart Chunking enhances low-quality frames in assets by up to 60 VMAF points based on early customer testing, added Bitmovin. This difference is visible to viewers, resulting in a noticeably higher quality of experience for audiences. The availability of Smart Chunking also marks Bitmovin’s first stage in making Per-Shot Encoding available to its customers, which can divide a video file into shots and encode each shot, further optimizing bitrate efficiencies.
“We’re incredibly excited and proud of this announcement because of the quality of the technology and because it’s an important milestone for us as we continue on our quest to make Per-Shot Encoding available to our customers,” concluded Lederer.
