The Spinner Is the Only Thing Viewers Never Forgive

Every title is encoded as a set of renditions, and the player moves between them as the connection changes. A viewer on a train gets a softer picture rather than a stopped one, and never has to think about why.

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The Spinner Is the Only Thing Viewers Never Forgive

People Forgive a Soft Picture. They Do Not Forgive Buffering.

Ask a viewer what quality they were watching at and most of them have no idea. Ask them whether it stopped and they will tell you exactly how many times. That asymmetry is the entire argument for adaptive bitrate streaming, and it is worth stating plainly because operators consistently optimise for the wrong one of those two things. Serving the highest quality a connection can theoretically manage produces a stream that stalls the moment anything changes, and a stall costs you more goodwill than an hour at 480p ever will. Adaptive delivery means the player is always choosing the best rendition it can sustain right now, not the best one available, and revising that choice continuously as conditions move.


HLS and MPEG-DASH adaptive streaming icon
Standard formats, not ours

Delivery uses the same adaptive formats every device already understands, which is why a stream plays on a browser, a phone and a television without three different implementations behind it.

Vodlix Adaptive Bitrate Streaming
Chosen per segment

The decision is remade continuously as the stream plays rather than once at the start, so a connection that recovers gets a better picture back without anybody reloading anything.

Vodlix Quality Limiter
Overridable by the viewer

Automatic is right for almost everybody and wrong for the person on a metered connection who would rather choose. The quality control in the player lets them pin it.

abr-player.png

Automatic, With a Manual Override

Most viewers should never touch this, and a minority genuinely need to. Somebody on a capped mobile plan may prefer to watch at a lower rendition all evening rather than let the player use their allowance on a picture they cannot see the benefit of on a phone. Somebody on a large television with good bandwidth may want to pin the top rendition rather than let the player be cautious during the first few seconds. Both are reasonable, and both are one control in the player settings alongside playback speed and subtitles. Leaving it on automatic is the default because that is correct for the overwhelming majority, and offering the override costs nothing. The rest of what that panel does is covered under the video player.


It Can Only Choose From What You Made

Adaptive delivery is often discussed as though it were something the player does on its own, and it is not. The player can only select among the renditions that exist, which means the quality of the experience is decided earlier, when you chose your encoding ladder. A ladder with 1080p and nothing below it gives the player no way to help somebody on a weak connection, and the result is exactly the stalling that adaptive streaming is supposed to prevent. This is why operators serving markets with uneven connectivity usually gain more from adding lower rungs than higher ones. The rungs themselves are chosen under video encoding settings, and produced when a file is ingested through video uploading and transcoding.


The Other Half Is Distance

Choosing the right rendition helps nothing if every segment travels halfway around the world to reach the viewer. Adaptive streaming and edge delivery solve two halves of the same problem, one by reducing what has to be sent and the other by shortening how far it goes, and a service that gets one right and the other wrong still feels slow. Segments are served from the global CDN so the connection the player is measuring is a short one. On live channels the same mechanism applies with less room for error, because there is no buffer to fall back on, which is covered under live streaming. What viewers actually received, as opposed to what you made available, shows up in reports and analytics.


Frequently Asked Questions

Have questions about taking advantage of this limited-time offer? Check out the FAQ for answers.

What is adaptive bitrate streaming?
It means a title is encoded at several qualities and the player picks whichever one the current connection can sustain, changing its mind as conditions change. The viewer sees the picture soften and recover rather than seeing playback stop.
Does the viewer have to do anything?
No, it is automatic by default and that is correct for almost everybody. There is a quality control in the player for the minority who want to pin a rendition, typically people on metered connections or people who would rather force the top quality.
Why does my stream still buffer for some viewers?
Usually because the encoding ladder has no rung low enough to help them. The player can only choose among renditions that exist, so a ladder that starts at 1080p leaves it nothing to fall back to. Adding lower rungs fixes more buffering complaints than anything else.
Which formats are used?
Standard adaptive streaming formats that devices already understand, which is what allows one stream to play in a browser, on a phone and on a television without separate implementations for each. It also means the behaviour is predictable rather than proprietary.
How often does the quality change?
The decision is remade continuously as the stream plays rather than once at the start. That is why a connection that improves halfway through gets a better picture back automatically, without the viewer reloading anything or noticing that a decision was made.
Does this work for live channels too?
Yes, and it matters more there, because a live stream has far less buffer to absorb a problem. The same mechanism applies, with less margin for error, which is one reason live delivery is more sensitive to a thin encoding ladder than on demand is.
Is adaptive streaming enough on its own?
No. It reduces how much has to be sent, and a content delivery network reduces how far it travels. Getting one right and the other wrong still produces a service that feels slow, so the two are worth treating as halves of the same problem.
Can I see what quality viewers actually received?
Yes, through reports and analytics. That is worth checking, because the gap between the quality you made available and the quality people actually got is often where the real experience of your service lives, particularly outside your main market.