Video Optimization Leader Beamr Announces New Funding from Verizon Ventures

TEL AVIV, Israel, Dec. 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Beamr Imaging Ltd., the only video and image encoding and processing company with commercially deployed content adaptive optimization technology, announced it has secured an additional $4 million in funding from Verizon Ventures. Joining existing investors Eric Schmidt's fund Innovation Endeavors, Marker LLC, and Disruptive, Verizon Ventures' investment will support Beamr's contribution to improved network performance and video quality. This new funding enables Beamr to accelerate development of solutions that will feature the company's highly regarded and patented perceptual quality measure technology.

As continuously improving display technologies boost consumers' expectations of video quality, and with the rise of 4k, HDR, VR and 360 video formats, Beamr's H.264 and H.265/HEVC video optimization technology and encoders are finding their place in critical video workflows such as OTT streaming services, cable and satellite systems, and managed IP networks. Through the application of Beamr Optimization, large network operators are seeing the tangible effects of reducing video traffic and storage costs by 20% or more.

"Beamr's vision has always been to merge standards-based encoding technologies with the benefits of our perceptual quality measure, so the industry can meet the heightened consumer expectations for video quality while staying within network constraints," commented Sharon Carmel, CEO and Founder of Beamr. "Our approach to bitrate reduction has attracted an industry-leading customer base where network capacities and media storage requirements are under pressure, but where exceptional video quality must be maintained."

Building on the acquisition of Vanguard Video earlier this year, Beamr's industry leading video optimization solution, Beamr Video, has combined two highly regarded HEVC and H.264 software encoders that are in use by dozens of leading media & entertainment companies, broadcasters, streaming video distributors, and OEMs. The products are available as software running on all major platforms and operating systems, and may be deployed on most cloud services including Microsoft Azure and AWS.

"The competitive nature of consumer video services today is forcing everyone to improve and we believe Beamr's perceptually driven optimization technology delivers benefits to the network and ultimately, the bottom line," said David Famolari, Director at Verizon Ventures. "Beamr significantly addresses the pain and costs of storing and delivering high bandwidth video content over increasingly congested networks, with no loss in visual quality. As more HD and ultra-HD content becomes available, Beamr's technology can be critical to delivering superior end-user quality of experience."

About Beamr

Beamr is the leading provider of encoding, and optimization solutions for the world's top MSOs, OTT streaming service providers, Hollywood studios, web publishers, and social content publishing platforms. Founded in 2009 by a team of leading imaging experts, Beamr's suite of high-performance H.264 and H.265/HEVC video processing solutions are fully scalable for use in on-premise and cloud implementations.

Beamr's flagship product, Beamr Video, represents the industry's first content adaptive perceptual quality measure driven optimizer that significantly reduces the bitrate of video streams and files without sacrificing quality. Beamr's encoder product line includes broadcast quality H.265/HEVC and H.264 codec SDK's for x86 and ARM platforms, while supporting popular operating systems like Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Beamr is headquartered in Tel Aviv with offices in Palo Alto and St. Petersburg, Russia. For more information, visit www.beamr.com or follow us on Twitter @BeamrVideo and Facebook @BeamrVideo.

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SOURCE Beamr