Start by clarifying requirements and scale (e.g., daily uploads, video sizes, global audience) to set the stage. Then walk through the full lifecycle: upload, processing, storage tiers, metadata, and delivery, highlighting trade-offs and optimizations at each stage. Conclude with a summary of key decisions and how they meet the requirements.
Pro tip: Emphasize the importance of a content delivery network (CDN) and adaptive bitrate streaming for global low-latency delivery, and discuss how to handle hot vs. cold storage to optimize cost and performance.
Ask about expected upload volume, video sizes, geographic distribution, latency requirements, and budget constraints to tailor the design.
Outline how videos are uploaded (e.g., resumable uploads, chunking), validated, and queued for processing, ensuring reliability and scalability.
Describe transcoding into multiple formats/resolutions, generating thumbnails, and extracting metadata, using distributed workers for parallelism.
Select storage solutions for raw videos, transcoded outputs, and metadata (e.g., object storage, CDN, databases), and define schemas for efficient retrieval.
Explain how videos are served via CDN with adaptive bitrate streaming, caching strategies, and how to handle popular vs. long-tail content.
AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.