Brightcove launches cloud transcoding service

Online video specialist Brightcove has launched a live cloud video encoding API, designed to let content providers scale resources and stream video to any device. 

The Zencoder Cloud Transcoding service is a live open API for live video encoding in the cloud to create adaptive bitrate streams without investments in on-premises hardware.

It is designed to reduce the upfront costs of live stream transcoding and will accept input streams from software encoders such as Flash Media Live Encoder, XSplit, OBS and Wirecast, as well as popular hardware encoders such as Elemental. Outputs supported at launch are RTMP and HLS.

Brightcove bought out the previously privately-owned Zencoder – a San Francisco-based firm that developed cloud-based video encoding as well as an open source HTML5 video player – last July.

Jon Dahl, Zencoder co-founder and now vice president of encoding services at Brightcove said that the service could have a number of applications and be used across a number of sectors.

“We’re definitely talking to major broadcasters. They’re very interested for a wide range of purposes. I think second screen applications are going to be really big here… I also think there’s interesting applications in terms of back-up. We talked to all sorts of major providers about supplementing their existing media operations with cloud options,” said Dahl.

Brightcove trialled its Zencoder Live Cloud Transcoding service in beta last year and has now launched it globally, with pricing based on the duration of the input and output video streams, quality and volume- starting at US$10 (€7.76) per hour.