The Brightcove Product team is pleased to announce the release of Brightcove 5.2.2. We are excited to provide your end users with a better viewing experience on Apple devices.
HTML5 and Apple HTTP Live Streaming for Video on Demand (VOD)
In our last release, we allowed you to create Apple HTTP Live Streaming (Apple HLS) renditions when uploading new content to Brightcove. Brightcove Smart Players can now detect Apple HLS renditions and use them on Apple mobile devices when those renditions are available. Our iOS SDK and our media APIs can also support mobile development for playback of Apple renditions via HTTP streaming.
So why does this matter? Providing your users with the best experience regardless of the device is a top priority for Brightcove as a great end user experience results in longer viewing and returning users. Apple HLS provides an improved end user experience on iOS devices by utilizing the most appropriate rendition for the users’ bandwidth. When your end user accesses your video on his/her iPhone at the local coffee shop using wifi, the user will view a high bitrate rendition of the video. As the user leaves the shop, his/her connection switches to a lower bandwidth cell connection, the player switches to a lower bitrate rendition to enable continued playback without disruption or rebuffering. In the case where the bandwidth is extremely limited, audio only will play instead of no playback at all. Keeping your users engaged by providing the appropriate rendition for highest quality with lowest buffering is always a good thing. This allows publishers submitting applications to the Apple App store containing long form content to meet the delivery requirements enforced by Apple.