Swarmcast Releases Autobahn HD for Flash

Swarmcast today released Autobahn HD for Flash, a network accelerator that provides seamless playback of Flash content using adaptive bitrate streaming to specifically tailor video quality to a user’s connection. The company will also open up their source code, giving developers the tools to take advantage of Swarmcast technology, which makes it possible to significantly improve viewer experience for very little cost.

“We just want to get the technology into people’s hands,” Swarmcast CEO Justin Chapweske said in a phone interview. “I hope that with this product we can provide the platform that solves the quality problem for online video and allows developers to focus on innovating the user experience itself.”

Swarmcast Demo

Above: Full Screen 720P Video Using Autobahn HD for Flash

In a demo, the video quickly shifted up to a fluid, high-quality stream on a shared wireless connection. Autobahn is capable of 720P HD, and the combination of network acceleration, multisource streaming and hardware acceleration that comes with the latest Flash release makes for a great viewing experience.

Swarmcast, which was founded by Chapweske in 2001, is best known for powering MLB.com’s Mosaic, which enables high-quality, live streaming of up to six games simultaneously. The company is privately held and funded by a pair of Japanese companies, Bridge Capital Fund and Nippon Venture Capital.

Swarmcast’s network acceleration works by distributing content over multiple CDNs, using the intelligence in the downloaded client to determine the most efficient routing and appropriate bitrate. “What we’re doing with this product is basically eliminating rebuffering, which allows higher quality and high-definition, full-screen video,” Chapweske said. “Breaking large files into small pieces — that’s the technology that underlies our network acceleration. The new pieces are the adaptive bitrate streaming and the fact that we’re bringing this to a Flash environment.”

While a number of companies have begun to offer higher quality video, most are prohibitively expensive to all but the biggest media companies. Move Networks, which powers ABC’s online video portal, similarly uses a downloadable client to provide the best possible quality for the end user, but it requires specialized encoders and is a very high-end solution. Speedbit offers a similar video accelerator that improves online video playback, but it’s not open source, is limited to specific sites and does not support adaptive bitrate streaming.

Hulu recently announced plans to offer HD content, as did Vimeo, but both deliver content in a single, high-bitrate stream across a single CDN, meaning that without enough bandwidth, user experience suffers.

If it can gain widespread acceptance, this release will result in a better viewing experience for consumers of online content all over the web, not just on mainstream media sites with big dollars.

Disclosure: Swarmcast is a NewTeeVee sponsor

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