Updated 8/4/21: We hit pause on audience-adaptive encoding. Read more.
This was truly an eventful year at Mux. We raised a round of funding and almost doubled the size of the team which enabled us to do the most important thing–ship product that helps you build better video. This year we released features that made it easier to get started with Mux, improved video quality, and answered our customers’ requests. Read our rundown for more details!
(We may have guessed at what a rundown means.)
Mux Video
Improving onboarding
A priority for us this year was to make sure anyone using Mux for the first time has as close to a seamless experience as possible–from the moment you create an account to uploading your first video.Plus, test assets lets you test the most powerful video API on the market, all without spending a penny!
- Direct Uploads - Getting your videos into Mux just got a little easier. You can now push content directly to Mux.
- Test Assets - Test assets let you experience all of the great product features of Mux Video for FREE.
Helping you deliver exceptional video
We continue to push the boundaries on how to deliver the best quality video to your viewers. This year we released a new encoding method and also pushed to give you the lowest latency possible in the midst of a shakeup in the low latency world.
- Audience Adaptive Encoding - To further improve video quality, this new encoding method uses viewer data to deliver customized rendition ladders tailored to your audience.
- Reduced latency for live streaming - This new option offers latency as low as 8 seconds using any modern video player—no beta player features or experimental builds required.
We think about audio, too.
A video experience isn’t made up of just moving images and we wanted to optimize the audio experience for our customers as well. In addition, we wanted to support our video customers to also have audio-only assets too.
- Audio normalization - New feature that automatically adjusts audio that's either too loud or too quiet to a sensible listening volume.
- Audio-only support - Whether you have podcasts, audio books, or any other audio-only content, you can now use Mux to manage your audio assets.
Enabling you to better manage your video assets
Although innovative features are fun, we recognize that sometimes an admin feature can make your life 10x easier than the latest machine learning thing. We take a lot of customer feedback into consideration and these are the key management features we heard you request this year.
- Master Access - Download the mezzanine quality of any of your videos with this new feature.
- Live Stream Webhook Events - We added new events to Mux's Live Streams that let you build more helpful UIs for streamers and help debug issues when they happen.
- Live Simulcasting - Now offer the ability for your users to simultaneously publish live streams on multiple social platforms.
- Delivery Usage API - Now track lets you break down your delivered minutes by each asset. you need to be able to charge your customers when they make you spend money.
Security
Most of our customers have stringent security requirements and firewalls, as such we added an additional security feature for all of our webhooks.
- Webhook Signatures - We added an additional security feature for all of our webhooks–each webhook that you create now comes with a unique signing secret, exposed when you configure the webhook.
Mux Data
Making data more actionable
After launching the Real-Time Dashboard last year, we focused on giving you the ability to drill down into the data and customize how you wanted to see that data so that ops teams could identify and respond to issues even faster.
- Real-Time Filters - We’ve introduced seven filters for the Real-Time Dashboard so you can slice the data however you need.
- Real-Time Metrics Breakdowns- Introducing a metrics page that provides a deeper level of data to help you resolve streaming issues even faster.
- Enhancements: Individual video view page and Real-Time Dashboard map - We’ve enhanced actionability of the data on the individual video view page and added the ability to drill down on the Real-Time map.
Mux Data Player Integrations
Mux has re-invested in our Data SDKs for monitoring video playback, including adding support for new players and updating existing integrations. Some highlights include:
- Shaka Player SDK - A new SDK for integrating Mux Data with Shaka Player.
- JW Player SDK - A new SDK for integrating Mux Data with JW Player’s iOS SDK.
- Support for Flowplayer Native (in addition to Flowplayer 7.x).
- Updated SDK integration for ExoPlayer, supporting up to ExoPlayer r2.10.x.
- Updated SDK integration for Roku. Support for customizing error reporting for all SDKs.
For Video and Data
API Wrappers
We really wanted to help you get up and running quickly. Our SDKs are designed to make our APIs accessible in whatever language you’re using.
- Python SDK - Mux Python is a lightweight wrapper around Mux’s APIs, which make it easy to integrate Mux-powered video experiences into your Python apps.
- Node & Elixir SDK Updates - Signed URL JWT Helpers and more!
- Ruby SDK - A new SDK to make it easy to integrate Mux-powered video experiences into your Ruby apps.
- Go SDK - Get going with Mux Go! It’s a lightweight wrapper around Mux’s APIs, which make it easy to integrate Mux-powered video experiences into your Go apps.
- PHP SDK - PHP is the 7th most used language on Github, and we’ve heard your cries loud and clear - you need a PHP SDK!
Integrations
We were really excited to announce some of our first partnerships and integrations this year. These partnerships help bring the value of Mux in tools you may already use plus bring our users extra benefits.
- Cosmic - With the Mux Videos Extension, you can optimize your videos with Mux in a simple drag and drop UI within Cosmic JS.
- Dato - Every video file you upload to your DatoCMS project will be instantly available for streaming via Mux.
- Contentful - Mux is now in the Contentful Marketplace.
- Sanity - Easily upload and preview videos within their CMS.
- NS1 - Active traffic steering based on real-time performance data.
There’s still a lot of work ahead of us and we can’t wait to show you what we have planned for 2020. If there’s anything you’d like to see on our roadmap, reach out!
