According to the findings of a recent survey, live streaming video accounts for over two-thirds of all internet traffic and is expected to jump to 82% by 2020. Well, that’s a lot of video! Have you ever wondered what does it take to make a live streaming possible? What is the science behind live streaming?
In this blog, we will share some technical tit-bits that make live streaming possible.
- Key Frames and Video Compression
The next time you livestream an event, remember that just like static image files, the video and audio data in streaming media files are also compressed using compression algorithms. The compression process reduces the number of bytes in each frame thereby decreasing the bandwidth requirement to live stream a video.
So, video files are basically a number of still images called frames that are combined one after another into a single file. Each frame is showcased at some certain number of frames per second to create the illusion of movement.
2. Frame Rate
Another factor that comes into play while live streaming a video is frame rate. If there is substantial change between frames, then the size of each frame is larger and more data must be transferred for each frame. So, in case of higher frame rates, bandwidth requirements are higher.
3. Bandwidth Spikes and Buffering
Remember the small circular arrow that keeps going round and round in your player to fetch the video? That’s called buffering. Buffering is primarily implemented to avoid network congestion.
How does buffering work?
Well, buffering works by storing a portion of the video locally and playing the video by retrieving data from the local buffer. So before the player starts playing a video, it downloads some segment of the video (usually 10 seconds long) and stores it locally. It plays the video by retrieving frames from this local buffer while continually downloading more to keep the buffer full.
4. Multi-bitrate Streaming
As a streaming service provider, you cater to a lot of viewers. While some viewers will prefer to stream in the best streaming quality, some might prefer to stream in low resolution in order to save data.
Here comes multi-bitrate streaming. Multi-bitrate or adaptive bitrate streaming requires you to set up your coding software to encode various versions of your live stream so that viewers can watch your video in any quality.
Muvi’s adaptive bitrate video platform automatically serves each category of viewers with internet connection specific streaming quality.
So, the next time you live stream , just remember that there are a lot of processes going about in the back end to make your live streaming event a big hit!
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