We have come a long way from the days when hosting a video was simply putting a file on a shared drive and letting people download it. First, with desktop players, we were able to play the video directly from a shared drive. This was a step forward but still painful since the initial players had to download the entire file before starting to play, hence costly and slow. The next generation of players was embedded within your HTML pages and was able to cache and start the video with some delay without having to wait for the full download. This somewhat improved the video experience but was not as helpful if you wanted to consume the content by jumping around the video. The shortcomings of these approaches were only magnified as the popularity of mobile devices exploded, leading to further challenges in maintaining a steady internet connectivity speed.
Today, the best practices of serving high-quality VOD have substantially evolved. You experience these best practices when consuming videos on the largest service providers like YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, etc. What is not obvious to the consumer is the amount of computational work and process flow that goes on behind the scenes in preparing an uploaded video file for that smooth viewing experience. These providers are addressing the consumer’s insatiable desire for flawless playback experience and ease of navigating/jumping within videos, on any device, and in most connectivity situations. As the cost of adopting these best practices becomes more affordable, more and more service providers will adopt them over time, yet many are not there yet.
As you evaluate the best solutions for your VOD needs, consider the following best practices and whether they are adopted by your service provider:
1. Transcoding
Having a single high-quality video file does not translate into the best consumption experience: depending on the situation, it could translate into wasted bandwidth for those on desktop/notebooks with high internet connectivity and poor to unusable experience for mobile users and those with slower internet speeds. The best practice is to transcode the original file, generating multiple versions of it, each with its optimized streaming segmentations, bitrates, bit depths, and framing policies, targeting differing internet connectivity situations. This process is usually performed as part of the video upload process, before making the VOD available for viewing.
2. Adaptive Bitrate Streaming
Once you have adaptive bitrate versions of the video, your player and the server need to communicate with each other to leverage the most suitable content. Over the last few years, the best practice communication protocols between the client players and the host servers have evolved into streaming models that work over HTTP across wide distributed networks. These protocols are designed specifically to take advantage of “adaptive bitrate” optimized server content, hence referred to as “adaptive bitrate streaming”.
Adaptive bitrate streaming protocols are superior to delivering a static video file at a single bitrate. As depicted in the image above, the video stream can be switched midstream to be as good or bad as the client’s available network speed. It continuously adapts to any changes to the client’s network and CPU situations. To see the advantage of this approach, compare this to the buffering or interruption in playback that would happen when the client’s network either did not support the quality of the native video, or the network load kept on changing based on changes to the mobile signal strength or others’ activities on the same network.
There are several implementations of adaptive bitrate streaming. If compatibility across diverse devices is important to you, then MPEG-DASH and Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) are the two most widely adopted implementations available across most devices and OSs.
3. Timeline Thumbnails
The ability to locate with ease the portions of interest within a lengthy video is a high-value need by video consumers, especially in the B2B space. One feature that is very helpful in this regard is the ability to move the mouse along the video timeline and see the frame thumbnail images of that spot in the video. The smoothness of the frame updates as you traverse the mouse over the timeline is critical in making this capability useful and attractive to users.
4. Use of Content Delivery Network (CDN)
If you have a large and global audience, using CDN for video delivery will go a long way in removing latency and delivering a smooth experience for all users, regardless of physical location.
At engagez.com, we take pride in our implementation of these video best practices. Our customers use Engagez to host live, simu-live (simulated live), and on-demand events. Most live events also transition to on-demand after their completion and stay open for some time for further audience engagement. During setup, when you upload videos, whether, for on-demand or simu-live, we apply these best practices and ensure the smoothest possible user experience for your attendees.
