Interview Questions/System Design/Design a Video Streaming Platform
AdvancedSystem-Design
45 min

Design a Video Streaming Platform

MediaCDNTranscodingSecurity
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Interview Question

Design a video streaming platform supporting uploads, transcoding, adaptive bitrate streaming (ABR), DRM, and global delivery.

Key Points to Cover
  • Ingest and storage pipeline; chunking and checkpoints
  • Transcoding farm: HLS/DASH ABR ladders; queue design
  • CDN distribution, origin shield, tokenized URLs
  • Player telemetry, QoE metrics, A/B for ladders
  • DRM/license servers; watermarking and anti-abuse
Evaluation Rubric
Robust ingest/transcode pipeline25% weight
Efficient global delivery and caching25% weight
QoE metrics and adaptive tuning25% weight
DRM and content protection25% weight
Hints
  • 💡Consider pre-transcode vs just-in-time transcoding trade-offs.
Potential Follow-up Questions
  • How to handle live streaming?
  • How to reduce startup latency?
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