Motivations and challenges behind scaling Netflix Playback Services.

1. Scaling Playback Services
Suudhan Rangarajan
Senior Software Engineer, Playback Features
@suudhan

3. Playback Lifecycle
DECIDE
AUTHORIZE
COLLECT & LEARN

4. Decide
MANIFEST
(Tracks and URLs)

5. Authorize
LICENSE
❏ Content usage / resolution
policies
❏ Plan / device limits
enforcement
❏ DRM / License generation

6. Collect & Learn
Bookmarks & Hours
Watched
Streaming Errors and
Metrics
Quality Of Experience
metrics
4

7. Lets look at Play Decisions
DECIDE
MANIFEST
AUTHORIZE
COLLECT &
LEARN
LICENSE
SESSION

8. Huge number of Streams
Resolutions - 720p, 1080p, 4K etc
Codecs - H.264,HEVC etc
Bitrates - 230, 780, 3000 etc
Channels - Stereo, Surround Sound
Languages - English, French etc
Types - Subtitles, Closed Captions,
Forced Narratives
Languages - English, French etc

9. Streams to Tracks
- H.264 Main Profile
- English 5.1 Audio
- No Subtitle
- HEVC Dash Profile
- French 2.0 Audio
- English CC
- HDR Dash Profile
- Spanish AAC Audio
- English Forced Narrative

10. Decide & Filter
MANIFEST
SERVICE

11. Many Many Dimensions
PLAYBACK
MANIFEST
COUNTRY
USER
PREFERENCES
TITLE
METADATA
DEVICE
NETWORK

12. Big Opportunity
Rich playback
experiences
Tremendous increase in scale
Customer
growth

13. Challenge: Efficient Scaling
Targeting sub-linear growth
# of Requests
Cloud Costs

14. Predictable Viewing Patterns
Key Insight

15. Key Insight
CONTENT RANK
PLAY
REQUESTS

16. Also..
Manifest Request for
one title
PLAY
REQUESTS
TIME

17. Current: Completely Real-time
Real-time manifest
generation

18. With Caching
Real-time manifest
generation
80% Cached
20% Real-time

19. Challenges
How do we determine the
optimal combination of
attributes to cache on?

20. Challenges
Cache Considerations:
● When to populate?
● When to bust?
● How to scale for
cache-miss or failures?

21. Potential Win
10x increase in requests
with only 4x increase in
costs

22. Optimize computation
Can we re-imagine our service
processing to dramatically
increase throughput?

23. Anatomy of a Playback Manifest Request
Metadata
Access
27%
36%
Tracks
Generation
16%
Streams
Filtering
21%
Serialization

24. Potential Win
10x increase in requests
with just 2x increase in
service costs

25. Two-pronged Strategy to Scaling
Cache
Manifests
Re-architect
code to reduce
processing time

26. Scaling Problems Across Services
Decide Authorize Collect & Learn
Playback
Features
Playback
Access
Playback Data
Systems

27. Thanks!
@suudhan
Come Talk to Us!

28. Image Attribution
All Images used are under creative commons or public domain license:
● Video icon - http://simpleicon.com/wp-content/uploads/video-camera-1.png
● Speaker icon -
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Speaker_Icon.svg/1024px-Speaker_Icon.svg.png
● Subtitle icon - https://thenounproject.com/term/subtitles/78795/
● Uptrend image - https://pixabay.com/en/chart-line-line-chart-diagram-trend-148256/
● Funnel image - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Funnel_Mech.svg
● Business Intelligence image -
https://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2015/04/14/23/17/it-business-722950_960_720.png
● Key icon - https://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2014/04/03/10/55/key-311738_960_720.png
● Person icon- https://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2015/12/22/04/00/photo-1103596_960_720.png
● Mobile icon-
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Mobile_phone_font_awesome.svg/1024px-Mobile_p
hone_font_awesome.svg.png
● Globe image -
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Simple_Globe.svg/1024px-Simple_Globe.svg.png
● Devices icon-
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Simple_Globe.svg/1024px-Simple_Globe.svg.png
● wifi icon - https://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2016/01/03/11/32/wireless-signal-1119306_960_720.png
● cell tower - https://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2012/04/13/00/23/tower-31235_960_720.png