From the course: Live Video Streaming: Essential Skills

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What is encoding and why does it matter?

What is encoding and why does it matter?

From the course: Live Video Streaming: Essential Skills

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What is encoding and why does it matter?

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- In the previous section, I provided a simple overview of the process behind live streaming, where I touched on encoding. As I mentioned earlier, encoding is the conversion of your audio and video signal to a format that's optimal for internet delivery. So why is encoding important? There are several factors that make this conversion mission critical. For one, when viewing live content, the end user's device and connection quality plays a major role. Both need to be able to process the stream with minimal stream delays, buffering, and drop outs. Otherwise, you'll lose them. Since most viewers are operating with different devices and connectivity speeds, you need to be prepared on your hardware and CDN side to provide your stream at variable bit rates. For example, if you're pushing a 720p feed, your encoder or CDN must be able to provide multiple qualities of the stream to account for device processing power and their connections. This is where encoding comes in. A viewer on a fiber…

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