[Q] Can you add examples of how to get best VOD experiance

[Chokoabigail]

Please add configuration examples of how YouTube packages videos (good default settings for a great watching experience).

[joeyparrish]

YouTube doesn't use this project. YouTube has proprietary, internal encoding tools that are not available to the public.

The default settings in Shaka Streamer are intended for a good VOD experience (bitrates, resolutions, etc). If you have specific issues with those defaults, please let us know and we can advise you further.

Does this answer your question?

[Chokoabigail]

Thanks, I appreciate this!

I don't have a specific issue, the thing is, YouTube has a great transmission quality and I think maybe part of that is because of superior packaging settings and not just the encoding (I notice a better watching experience even though their servers have a higher latency, so it's not about the delivering infrastructure necessarily), they do use proprietary, internal encoding tools, but I thought maybe there is something to do as well in the packaging settings.

For example, on the same video, YouTube will send much fewer requests than the default packaged video in Shaka-streamer (Not sure if this is supposed to have a better performance just because of this, the underlying network request will probably be the same in the TCP/QUICK level, the only different is if the extra files add more metadata, in this case, the clients need to download more data to handle the same video, another different will be if the total file size is smaller due to a better encoder in which case there is nothing for us to do since they have their proprietary tools)

[joeyparrish]

You can adjust the bitrate settings, as well as the segment size, in Shaka Packager. If you're looking to match the frequency and size of requests made by YouTube, that could help. And since all of that is just config files, you can easily share your solution in YAML once you have something you're satisfied with.

YouTube's infrastructure goes well beyond encoding, as they have their own player and CDN, as well. In some cases, I believe they even use a proprietary streaming protocol in place of DASH & HLS. All of those layers are developed in concert and co-optimized, so it can be hard to compete with if you're using off-the-shelf components.

I would bet money that FFmpeg or parts of it are in the mix somewhere at YouTube, so there's no reason you shouldn't be able to achieve the same quality per bit with enough research. But I would also bet that some really bright people at YouTube have been tuning those things for years, and with the benefit of mountains of QoE feedback from their user base.

[github-actions]

@Chokoabigail Does this answer all your questions? If so, would you please close the issue?

[Chokoabigail]

Thanks for the elaborate response, I will do internal research on this and update you if something comes up, encoding configuration sometimes feels more art than science

[joeyparrish]

Yeah, it really is. I'll ask shaka-bot not to close this issue so you have time to research and make recommendations or PRs.