Bitmovin, Akamai team to debut joint CMCD solution
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Editor
| 05 April 2023
Looking to reduce costs of errors and optimise quality of experience for global audiences, streaming infrastructure technology provider Bitmovin has partnered with Akamai Technologies to deliver a joint solution using Common Media Client Data (CMCD).
Akamai 4April2023
To be launched at the forthcoming NAB Show, the new solution will look to provide media organisations with end-to-end visibility between a video player and a content delivery network (CDN) and help media and entertainment companies drive growth by minimising the cost of errors that occur due to the siloes between these two components and so optimise the quality of experience for audiences.

The collaboration will see integration of the Bitmovin Player with Akamai's CDN and DataStream, which supports CMCD - a standardised way of passing client-side data from the player to the CDN. The Bitmovin Player sends key information and identifiers to the CDN to enable it to improve delivery performance through prefetching and optimised 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. Content IDs and session IDs sent by the player can help video developers to find the root cause of streaming issues and identify ways to improve the quality of experience for audiences.

“Combining the power of our CDN with Bitmovin's industry-leading player has resulted in a much-needed proposition for the media industry,” said Will Law, chief architect, the cloud technology group at Akamai Technologies. “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."

“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,” added Bitmovin CEO and co-founder Stefan Lederer. “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.”