#linear stream

[paullorenz]

Paul Lorenz

Linear Stream, solo retrospective

Closes tomorrow...thanks to all who visited and supported. More to come...always!

[oddnetworks-blog]

Linear Stream Stitching

by Blain Smith

Previously, we wrote a Medium post about HLS that explained who made it and how it was used to deliver high quality video over the internet. In this post we are going to dig deeper into the technology behind HLS itself, and show you how we are using it to provide you with a 24-hour linear stream of pre-recorded videos.

What do we mean by “linear stream”?

Think about your typical TV channel (if you still pay for cable). You pick a channel to watch, and you leave it there, and shows, movies, commercials seamlessly switch from one to the other without you having to do anything. On a typical on-demand TV channel or app, in our example, you have to manually browse a catalog of topics, categories, genres, etc. to find the next video to watch. This can be a very disruptive experience when all you want to do is veg out on the couch and watch TV.

With our linear stream stitching we provide our apps with a typical TV channel like experience called the “linear stream”. All you need to do is fire up your favorite Odd Networks powered app and watch the linear stream.

As a video publisher you can drag in multiple HLS video urls into the stream scheduler to fill out the 24-hour day or leave blank slots for our recommendation engine to fill in the gaps. After you are happy with your schedule of videos, you can then publish the newly stitched together linear stream, and put in with your apps or website! We don’t even have to re-encode anything.

How do we accomplish this voodoo magic we are speaking of?

Since HLS files are just plain text we can dynamically read links you provide for us, and we create a brand new one based on a schedule and algorithm. We even ensure the correct streams are provided to mobile and desktop viewers, depending on what stream qualities and bitrates their browsers and devices support.

Essentially we do the following behind the scenes:

Parse each main HLS url you provide as the scheduled content.

For each manifest file we parse the bitrate it specifies; so, we make sure we match the quality of the final stream.

Once we get all the video segments from each of the HLS urls, we dynamically stitch together a brand new HLS endless playlist with all the new segments from each of the original urls.

Once generated, you then have an endless looping linear stream of pre-recorded video that has been stitched together dynamically.

So if you are one of the many that has a lot of HLS video content in their possession, and you don’t have a live broadcast, we can help fill that need for a linear stream. If you don’t currently have videos available as HLS, not to worry, we can also help transcode your current video formats into HLS; so, you can take advantage of this solution.

Find Blain on Twitter, GitHub, or his website.