Bitmovin and Akamai to debut joint CMCD solution at NAB Show 2023

Bitmovin, a leading provider of video streaming infrastructure, announces it has partnered with Akamai Technologies, the cloud company that powers and protects life online. The partnership will deliver a joint solution using Common Media Client Data (CMCD) to help media and entertainment companies drive growth by minimizing the cost of errors that occur due to the siloes between video players and CDNs. Bitmovin and Akamai’s solution will debut at NAB Show 2023 (booth #W3800 April – 15 – 19).

Bitmovin and Akamai’s shared goal is to optimize the quality of experience for audiences. The collaboration achieves this by integrating the Bitmovin Player with Akamai’s CDN & DataStream, which supports CMCD – a standardized way of passing client-side data from the player to the CDN. The Bitmovin Player sends key information and identifiers to the CDN; these enable the CDN to improve delivery performance through prefetching and optimized caching strategies. Identifiers sent via either query args or request headers are extracted, logged and published through Akamai’s Datastream.

Another key aspect of the joint solution is it enables pre-fetching in the CDN. This is made possible by the Bitmovin Player providing the correct CMCD hints, such as predictions from the player’s Adaptive Bitrate algorithm, current buffer health, stream format and playback state to enable the CDN to pre-fetch the data which the Player is likely to need at the next request. Additionally, content IDs and session IDs sent by the player help video developers to find the root cause of streaming issues and identify ways to improve the quality of experience for audiences.

Will Law, Chief Architect, The Cloud Technology Group at Akamai Technologies, said: “Combining the power of our CDN with Bitmovin’s industry-leading player has resulted in a much-needed proposition for the media industry. Enabling the player to share key client-side metrics with the CDN provides video developers with a clearer picture of the end user’s viewing experience; positively impacts a video streaming service’s overall performance, which can ultimately underpin business growth.”

Bitmovin Analytics is a complementary solution that can pinpoint which playback sessions experienced errors by analyzing user session data. Integrating Bitmovin Analytics with the Bitmovin Player and Akamai’s CDN and DataStream means video developers can investigate any errors by combining the player’s logs with CDN logs and understand the root cause. In addition, Bitmovin Analytics can also measure the solution’s impact on the quality of experience by comparing playback quality before & after enabling CMCD, using the Experiment breakdown feature in Analytics.

“Delivering a superior viewing experience while reducing costs is a top priority for media and entertainment companies, so it’s hugely exciting to have partnered with Akamai to create a solution that addresses those needs,” said Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder at Bitmovin. “With our offering, video developers can identify and solve errors in real-time accompanied by quantitative data that benchmarks our solution’s impact on quality of experience.” BCS Bureau