Coconut is Bitmovin’s main competitor

Bitmovin is a multimedia company that offers video and audio transcoding services through cloud computing. Launched in 2013, it contributes to MPEG-DASH, an adaptive bitrate streaming technique that allows high-quality media streaming over the Internet from any conventional HTTP server (Apache, IIS, Nginx and Lighttpd), as well as cloud infrastructures such as Amazon AWS. The Austrian company focuses on adaptive streaming formats (like Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming or MPEG-DASH) that can be played in HTML5 video and Flash players. DRM is enabled thanks to the use of HTML5 Encrypted Media Extensions as well as Flash. It is compatible with popular tools such as x264 or MP4Box.

Bitmovin History

Bitmovin was founded in 2013 by researchers in the area of MPEG-DASH at the University of Klagenfurt. The company secured a round of funding in 2014 by the venture capital fund Speedinvest and Constantia Industries.

Also in 2014, Bitmovin was named one of the 100 companies in online media. In 2015, Bitmovin participated in YCombinator, an American seed accelerator that funds early stage startups. In its advanced beta stage, the service was used by a large Austrian distributor of feature films. Bitmovin authored the MPEG-DASH reference software libdash, and contributes to MPEG, DASH-IF, and IETF standardization. It supports both live and VOD transcoding.

Bitmovin Competitors

Coconut is one of Bitmovin’s main competitors in the cloud-based encoding business. It offers a wide range of exclusive features, including:

• - More than 50% cheaper offering only USD $0.015 per minute for HD outputs
• - Unlimited free tests thanks to FREE plan environment
• - Unlimited transcoding pipelines that effectively eliminate queue times
• - A Flexible API for HLS, MPEG-DASH, Video Preview
• - Unlimited API Calls
• - Unlimited simultaneous transcoding jobs and downloads
• - No limits on file size
• - Lighting-fast encoding, up to 10x faster
• - 99.9% application uptime guaranteed
• - Fast and easy integration with any CDN
• - 12 years’ experience in cloud video encoding

Coconut has found its success thanks to several advantages it holds over competitors, including Bitmovin. Dedicated to Customer Development, Coconut’s developers became acutely aware of the fact that many startups are based primarily on their founders’ dreams and ideas, rather than the facts. Historically, startups are distinguished as emerging companies that hope to disrupt whatever industry they’re aiming for, differentiating themselves from established ones that execute projects based on proven business models. Before writing even the first line of code, Coconut did extensive research by consulting various transcoding customers to determine the exact needs of their target market.

In designing Coconut, developers placed the most emphasis on the happiness of the customer. They strived to make the user experience so exciting, that customers would share the experience and growth would occur by word-of-mouth. The plan refined to a two-step process - first, they focused on maximizing the performance output of the Coconut service. This was done by improving the quality of video and audio to the point of optimum resolution. They also increased the processing speed of the Coconut service, and equipped it with superior reliability when dealing with a variety of audio or video files. The second step was providing unbeatable customer support. By placing one of Coconut's engineers on the support team, who had followed the developing stack of the software, they were able to field questions in both layman’s terms and technical language. The Coconut support staff is readily available to respond to customer inquiries within minutes, placing it far and above many other support services provided by other programs.

Bitmovin In A Nutshell

Bitmovin provides users with the cloud-based encoding service bitcodin, which increases the efficiency of transcoding thanks to cloud computing. This also allows for transcoding of ultra-high definition video. The company’s HTML5 and Flash-based Web player bitdash can be used in web browsers on smartphones, tablets, and desktop PCs. The player allows for the streaming of MPEG-DASH or HTTP Live Streaming. Bitmovin is used for live or on-demand transcoding of video or audio streaming to HLS, progressive and DASH, providing web-based players for streaming content in either HTML5 or Flash. It can also be used for streaming DRM protected content in HTML5.