At the end of each 4-second segment, the Player can switch to a different video file if necessary. These are short snippets of video, often set to 4 seconds long (although they can be longer or shorter). When a video file is encoded to adaptive format, it is broken up into segments. Segments are really at the heart of adaptive streaming. How does this magic happen? This is achieved with the use of segments. This means that as a user’s internet connection changes, the adaptive stream will switch back and forth between video qualities. These settings and decisions about which video is best for each specific user can be changed from second to second. The next concept to understand is “adaption”. The power of adaptive bitrate streaming is that it “adapts” The term “bitrate” is often used to describe the speed of the internet connection, which is why adaptive streaming is also called adaptive bitrate streaming. A fast internet connection has a higher bitrate than a slow internet connection.īitrate is literally the rate at which bits of data travel to the users’ machine. In the diagram above you can see that the priority is to avoid buffering, rather than maintaining quality.Ī user is happier to watch a few minutes of lower quality video if their internet speed slows down than to sit and watch a spinning icon until the stream catches up. Most videos play at 24 frames per second, so the internet connection needs to download at least 24 frames every second to avoid buffering.Īdaptive streaming solves this by “adapting” to the speed of the user’s internet connection.įor example, if a small video can be downloaded faster than a large video, and a user has a slow internet connection, an adaptive video stream will switch to smaller video file sizes to keep the video playing. As you can see, you can stream a specific video file to fit specific screen sizes, ensuring that the viewer always receives the best video for their needs.īuffering happens when a user is unable to download a video file fast enough to keep the video playing. This diagram simply shows how that works. How adaptive bitrate streaming worksĪdaptive bitrate streaming solves each of the two main problems with progressive streaming: Quality and buffering.Īdaptive streaming allows the video provider to create a different video for each of the screen sizes (or devices) that they wish to target. This is very common, especially on mobile devices, where the connection can vary greatly depending on the user’s location. If the user has a low-quality internet connection, and cannot download the video stream fast enough, the video will need to pause, wait for more data, and then start again. It will be stretched and you will see pixelation. A video that is only 1280 x 720 will never play at correct quality levels on a screen that is 1920 x 1080px. There are two major problems with progressive streaming. In the diagram, the example video file is 1280 pixels x 720 pixels, and that same file will simply be squashed or stretched to fit the various screen sizes that it plays on. The main takeaway from this diagram is that the video file is the same, regardless of the device it is played on. This diagram shows the journey of a progressive video from your server to your visitor. The progressive video can be stretched and squashed to fit different screen sizes, but regardless of the device playing it, the video file will always be the same. mp4 but can be in many different formats. What is progressive video streaming?Ī progressive video stream is one single video file being streamed over the internet. It s NOT to be confused with progressive streaming. Adaptive bitrate streaming (also known as adaptive streaming) is a technology designed to deliver video in the most efficient way possible and in the highest usable quality for each specific user and device.
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