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There’s a pretty decent possibility that you’ve streamed something if you’ve spent any time online.
Streaming is one of the most common uses for the internet’s most well-known apps, whether it be through YouTube, Spotify, Netflix, or a hundred other ones.
However, considering how commonplace streaming is, it’s simple to take it for granted. For instance: What is streaming, exactly?
Any media material, whether live or recorded, that is sent over the internet to computers and mobile devices and played back in real-time is referred to as streaming.
Common types of streaming material include podcasts, webcasts, motion pictures, television shows, and music videos.
Media items like as music, video, and other sorts are planned and transferred in consecutive data packets so they can be streamed instantly.
A suitable device, access to a streaming service or app, and a fast, dependable high-speed internet connection are all you need to stream.
Note: We’ll use a video streaming service as our example.
This post will take a deep look at the streaming service’s system design and key factors to take into account while developing video streaming applications.
System Requirement
Among the most popular video streaming services in the world are YouTube and Netflix. To improve the user experience, their architecture includes a number of elements.
Such a service includes popular movies, invoicing, AI-based recommendation systems, and watch later functionality, but we will concentrate on the essential elements.
Core Qualities
We’ve included the following capabilities in our concept for a video streaming service:
- Creators of content can post videos.
- Viewers can use many devices to watch videos (mobile, TV, etc.).
- On videos, users can remark, like, or dislike.
- The titles of videos can be used to search for them.
- To show these statistics to users, the system can store views, likes, and dislikes.
System objectives
- There shouldn’t be any buffering so that viewers can watch videos in real-time.
- Storage for video should be dependable. You shouldn’t lose the videos you’ve uploaded.
- With an increase in users, the system ought to be scalable.
- Low latency and high availability should be features of the system. In this situation, consistency is not as important because it is okay for a user to wait some time before seeing a freshly submitted movie.
A single server cannot handle the volume of data since the system must manage strong traffic on a regular basis. A group of servers will be used to service the system.
There shouldn’t be any noticeable speed impacts for clients even if one server crashes.
High-Level Architecture
A video streaming program can accept one of three different sorts of requests:
- Upload (write)
- Search (read)
- View (read)
Since read queries (search and view) will often be several times more frequent than write requests (upload), each of them is handled by a separate cluster of servers.
Because the program is read-intensive, you will need to set up more servers to handle read requests than uploads.
Each request made by a client is routed to the proper microservice by the load balancer when it is received.
Upload Service
The upload service, which processes the video, uploads it to Open Connect servers and makes it accessible to all users, fulfills an upload request.
Search Service
The load balancer sends the search request to the search microservice, which then sends it to Netflix’s Elastic search. The client receives the Elastic search’s answer.
Elastic search, an incredibly scalable full-text open-source search engine, is used by Netflix to search through millions of videos.
Elastic search is used by Netflix to analyze customer service operations.
View Service
The majority of view requests will not be sent to the load balancer or Netflix’s servers. Instead, users will connect to local ISPs and be fed straight from the nearest Open Connect server.
However, if the requested video is not accessible, it will be sent to the load balancer and the view microservice.
The video is then searched in the metadata database, retrieved from the path specified in the metadata, and transmitted to the client.
Of course, this technique includes latency, which is why practically all view requests are provided via Open Connect.
Upload videos
YouTube’s main purpose is to upload a movie or video. A video streaming service must overcome a number of obstacles before making a video accessible to its consumers.
Keeping in Pieces
Each submitted video will be divided up into numerous smaller files rather than being kept as a single huge file.
This is essential since content producers are able to submit huge videos. A single large file might take a while to process or stream.
The viewer won’t have to download the complete video in order to play it if it is saved and made available to them in pieces.
In order to ensure that there is little latency between chunks and that the user has a smooth viewing experience, the client will first request the first chunk from the server and then request the following chunk while that chunk is playing.
Processing Queue
Each video has numerous chunks, and Netflix will utilize several simultaneous workers to analyze them, thus a processing queue is required. By adding them to the queue, this is made simpler.
The jobs will be collected by the workers (or encoders, which we will cover next), encoded into various formats, and then stored in the distributed file storage.
Video Encoding
It’s crucial to convert and save the video chunks in several formats so that viewers can access them using the technology and internet connection that works best for them.
The video can be seen on a laptop, phone, TV, or other gadgets by viewers. The optimum formats for various devices differ from one another.
In a similar vein, various viewers could utilize various bandwidths to access the internet.
Some viewers could be able to stream high-resolution films with ease depending on the speed of their internet connection or bandwidth, whilst those with a lesser bandwidth will be able to stream low-quality videos a great deal more readily.
Open Connect
When you use your browser to request Netflix.com, your ISP (Internet Service Provider) is really asked to establish a connection between your computer and the Netflix server.
Your ISP contacts the Netflix IP address on your behalf and returns the result to you. The audience in a remote nation like Tokyo will experience significant delays in transmitting and receiving signals due to the concentration of these servers in the US.
With videos, delays are much more of a concern since a lot of data must be transmitted to the viewer, and if it is, the streaming will be delayed and the user experience will suffer.
Netflix utilizes a clever technique to fix the issue. It’s known as Open Connect (OC). Open Connect is the CDN that Netflix uses (Content Delivery Network).
In order to cache online information and deliver it rapidly to consumers by reducing the physical distance between the user and the material, CDN is a network of spread servers and associated data centers.
Load Balancing
A single application server is unable to handle the volume of requests (including uploading, searching, and viewing requests) that arrive every second.
There must be a load balancer in place to effectively distribute the workload across the numerous servers as there are several servers involved.
Netflix employs constant hashing to distribute loads among servers because it can handle server failures and accommodate the installation of additional servers with ease.
Since the popularity of each video varies, the actual servers that host these films could experience an unequal load. Using dynamic HTTP redirections, which allow a busy server to divert a new request to an open server, we can fix this problem.
Considerations When Developing A Video Streaming Application
Find and Develop Your Niche
With so many different sorts of material available, from entertainment to education to fitness, it is critical to building a differentiator with a specialized specialty. You can create a platform for documentaries or independent films.
The Application’s Monetization
Disrupting traditional monetization patterns can result in innovation and growth. Plans should always be tailored to the target audience.
Because the incumbents have already monopolized the market, you can try monetizing free memberships with adverts or product placement.
Along with this, if you want to construct a global streaming service platform, you must consider the multi-currency needs.
Better Experience
The performance of the program should be enhanced for edge circumstances like slow internet or users with restricted access.
Streaming videos
Not only does Netflix broadcast content, but it also uses user-engineering techniques and personalized suggestions to keep users hooked on the service.
Plan to establish a streaming service similar to Netflix with an emphasis on data analytics and user customization.
Managing the App’s many roles
In the Netflix app, user view is simply one of several user roles. Planning is required for a variety of users and their access, including the administrator, video owner, partners, moderators, etc.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this is how video streaming services like Netflix, YouTube, and others onboard videos, maintain track of them and show them to millions of consumers.
Although each of these applications may have a few additional features that set them apart, the fundamental functionality is based on the same algorithms.
I did my best to give you a general overview of the streaming service system architecture, but there is a lot more going on in the background.
I genuinely hope you will find this knowledge valuable and make use of it.
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