The document discusses scaling playback services for streaming media. It describes the playback lifecycle as involving deciding what content to serve based on manifests, authorizing access through licenses, and collecting usage data to learn. It then details challenges around efficiently scaling to support a huge number of streams across resolutions, codecs, bitrates and languages while controlling costs. The solution proposed involves caching optimized manifests based on content popularity and rearchitecting services to reduce processing time.

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