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HLS — HTTP Live Streaming — is the dominant protocol for delivering video over the web: the source video is transcoded into multiple quality renditions, split into small segments, and served over standard HTTP, letting each viewer's player switch quality mid-stream to match their bandwidth. HLS transcoding is the processing step that produces those renditions and segments from a master file.
A transcoding pipeline takes one master and renders a ladder of versions — for example 1080p, 720p, 480p, 360p — each chopped into short segments listed in a manifest. The player starts at a sensible quality, measures real throughput, and moves up or down the ladder segment by segment. The result: no buffering wheel on weak connections, full quality on strong ones, from a single stored master rather than duplicated files per quality.
When streaming lives outside the DAM, every published video is an export — copied to a separate video host, losing its permissions, rights metadata, and audit trail at the door. Built-in HLS transcoding and delivery (backed by a CDN) means the governed master is the streaming source: access control applies to playback, rights expiry can pull a stream, analytics tie views back to the asset, and portals and channels stream directly from the library. External CDNs can still be layered where geography or contracts require.
ioMoVo transcodes and streams HLS natively from the governed library over its built-in CDN — permission-aware playback, rights-controlled availability, per-asset analytics — with the option to layer any external CDN. See the ioMoVo video delivery page.
No — despite the name, HLS serves both live and on-demand video; it is the default for both on the modern web.
A plain MP4 downloads at one fixed quality; HLS adapts quality continuously to the viewer's connection, which is why it dominates at any real scale.