Bitmovin's New HEVC Undercuts the Hyperscalers

Bitmovin's Encoder Version 3 arrives in beta with a HEVC codec that cuts bitrate 15.5 percent and AV1 pricing halved.

16 Sep 2026

Bitmovin came to IBC 2026 in Amsterdam with numbers rather than promises. Encoder Version 3, the next major rebuild of the technology behind its VOD and Live Encoders, opened for beta access at the show, with general availability due this fall.

The HEVC results carry most of the weight. With per-title encoding, the new codec matched the quality of the current one at 15.5 percent lower bitrate, and 17.6 percent lower on static ladders. Hold the bitrate steady and it returns up to 4 VMAF points more quality, while using 25 percent less cloud compute time on average.

Comparisons with the hyperscalers are sharper still. A leading public cloud encoder's per-title HEVC needed 58 percent more bitrate to match the quality of Bitmovin's new codec. That figure builds on a documented per-title advantage measured in a June 2026 H.264 study, where a comparable public cloud encoder required 10 percent higher bitrate to reach parity.

AV1 gets a different kind of fix. The codec cuts encoding time by 66 percent at equal quality and delivers three times the throughput of its predecessor. Pricing moved too, with AV1 cost multipliers halved for managed cloud customers, putting AV1 level with HEVC.

Format support widened alongside the speed work. Version 3 adds AV1-based Dolby Vision Profile 10, HDR10 for VP9 and AV1, and real-time VMAF quality scoring for H.264, HEVC and AV1. A new server also lets AI assistants query encoding jobs in plain language, which is the least measurable change in the release.

"Version 3 is our biggest leap yet: better codecs, more HDR formats, lower latency and AI-native tooling built directly into the encoding pipeline," said Stefan Lederer, co-chief executive and co-founder of Bitmovin. The claim is unusually checkable, since most of its parts arrive with figures attached.

The first wave was demonstrated at stand 5.F72 in Hall 5, during a show that ran September 11 to 14. General availability is expected later this fall, though Bitmovin has named no date.