BitFire is dedicated to creating tools and opportunities to leverage cutting edge technology to grow and meet the new demands of broadcasting and studio production, and is proud to announce that the BitFire Media Platform has selected Phenix as its real-time video streaming partner for video delivery in less than ½ second to anywhere around the globe. The combined offering empowers customers who leverage BitFire’s ultra-low latency IP transport network to seamlessly contribute their streams directly into Phenix’s advanced, scalable, global real-time video delivery platform, resulting in sub-second end-to-end latency and complete synchronization across the entire viewing audience during live events.
Together, BitFire and Phenix deliver a full suite of real-time video cloud-based tools for production, transport, and distribution including:
- Live event production and cloud switching
- Globally distributed architecture for ingest and video transport
- Multi-hop recovery strategies
- Real-time routing
- Web-based platform to manage resources
- Cloud recording
- Cloud transcoding for real-time adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming
- Flash crowd scalability to instantly handle large crowds joining popular streams
- Less than ½ second of video latency
- Synchronized video playback on any device
Within Inferno, BitFire’s revolutionary browser-based management system, customers can effortlessly set up a stream handoff to Phenix’s real-time software encoders, seamlessly contributing to Phenix’s industry-leading video delivery platform.
Jim Akimchuk, Chief Technology Officer of BitFire explained,
“This streamlined integration enables customers to quickly and easily stream high quality video content at latencies not seen before in the market. We are excited to partner with Phenix, the leading real-time streaming platform, to build the next generation of content delivery for live sports, news, and events.”
Bill Wishon, Chief Product Officer of Phenix shared,
“BitFire is the ideal partner for Phenix to extend its real-time streaming capabilities to include modern hybrid production workflows. We’re highly impressed with BitFire’s first-in-class global IP transmission network and deep video transport expertise.”
So how does it work?
There are a number of options for customers to contribute streams into BitFire including the rack-mountable T4 Engine, smaller form-factor NUC Engine or, from third party encoders with SRT. Once in the BitFire Transport Network, clients can utilize BitFire's diverse ecosystem of production, processing, and management tools, including Inferno for centralized cloud control and Cloud Switcher for up to eight inputs with HTML5-based graphics.
MPEG Transport Streams (MPEG-TS) are fed into Phenix software encoders running within the BitFire network for real-time contribution to the Phenix platform. The Phenix encoder is pre-tuned for the highest quality and lowest latency with a full multi-bitrate ladder for ABR streaming.
The streams are automatically sent to the nearest Phenix Point of Presence (PoP). Phenix hosts 34 global PoPs, each of which is connected with private fiber and is capable of ingesting and delivering video. Content is delivered in real-time to any WebRTC-compatible device including web, iOS, Android, and connected TV platforms. HLS and MPEG-Dash outputs can also be generated when desired for VOD recording and replay.
