Design Video Streaming

Design Video Streaming

Step 1 of 11

egress100 Gb/s

Twenty thousand viewers at 5 Mb/s is 100 Gb/s of egress. That decides the shape.

The Idea

Start a two-hour video anywhere in under two seconds and keep it playing. Assume 20 000 concurrent viewers at 5 Mb/s: about 100 Gb/s of egress, which decides most of the architecture on its own.

Real-World Example

A cinema does not print a reel per viewer. It shows one copy in a room near you, and the projectionist picks a print that suits the screen. The edge location is that room.

The Tradeoff

Transcoding every upload into several renditions costs storage and a lot of CPU once, and is the only thing that lets a phone step down instead of buffering. Live is where it bites: a longer segment is more efficient to serve and puts you further behind reality.

Your turn

Put the steps in the right order.

1. 1The player switches rendition when measured bandwidth changes↑↓
2. 2Cut each rendition into short segments and write a manifest↑↓
3. 3The player reads the manifest and pulls segments from the nearest edge↑↓
4. 4Transcode the upload into several bitrate renditions↑↓

Check order

Mini quiz

1 / 3

Several bitrate renditions are produced so that:

• AStorage is cheaper
• BA player on a weak signal drops quality instead of buffering
• CThe CDN can be skipped
• DSubtitles line up