Video Streaming (YouTube/Netflix)

A video platform like YouTube or Netflix must ingest huge uploads, transcode them into many formats, and stream them smoothly to millions of concurrent viewers on every kind of network. Almost all of the cost and difficulty lies in the media pipeline and content delivery, not in the metadata.

Clarify requirements

Functional

• Creators upload videos (up to several GB); viewers watch on web, mobile, TV.
• Adaptive streaming that adjusts quality to bandwidth.
• Video metadata, thumbnails, view counts; basic search and recommendations as integrations.
• Resume playback position.
• Out of scope: live streaming (mention differences), comments, monetization.

Non-functional

• 500M DAU, 1M uploads/day (UGC model) or a smaller curated catalogue (Netflix model).
• Playback start < 2 s; rebuffering rare.
• Uploads durable once acknowledged; processing may take minutes.
• Highly available playback; global audience.
• Cost efficiency: storage and egress dominate the bill.