ACVoD

Client

This is our internal project.

Project goal

Our company has vast expertise in building video streaming and over-the-top (OTT) software. With the rising demand for products of this kind, our IT experts saw the opportunity to launch our own platform.

After performing market research, we decided to create a video-on-demand (VoD) application that would let users watch live-stream and subscription-based content. What’s more, our team aimed to provide support for all operating systems (web, mobile) and popular TV devices (LG, Samsung, etc.).

This task, however, required a lot of time and resources. In this regard, cutting time to market without quality loss was a priority. Additionally, we wanted to find a solution that would enable our developers to deliver VoD apps for our clients much faster.

Solution

Since this was our internal project, we needed to prepare software requirements from scratch. To explore market demand and formulate a list of features, our business analyst started by analyzing competitors and identifying the audience’s preferences.

At the end of this stage, we determined key functionality, estimated the work scope, and outlined a solution roadmap, this way reducing extra work. Our goal was to make a video-on-demand application that would allow customers to watch live-stream and subscription-based content on TVs, web, and mobile devices.

In 2 weeks, our team delivered a dynamic, clickable prototype visualizing product structure. Keeping pace with the latest trends, we created a beautiful user interface (UI) / experience (UX) design, ensuring high usability and smooth navigation.

By following Agile best practices (Scrum project management with daily sprints, pair programming, etc.), our software engineers managed to implement new features every 1–2 weeks.

The challenges we solved:

• Video streaming app development for all popular TV devices (Samsung, LG, etc.) and operating systems (web, mobile) would require a lot of time and resources. Meanwhile, we strove to significantly improve TTM not for our product only but for all future VoD projects of our clients, too.

We created our own AC TVBase Framework that allows software engineers to build cross-platform web apps supporting all famous Smart TV platforms and STBs 2x–3x faster.

• Since a video streaming platform would potentially serve millions of users, it was crucial to achieve high availability, scalability, and performance.

Our software engineers created VoD app modules (authorization, subscription, personal account, TV shows and movies, video player, content search, settings, etc.) as a set of microservices. As those services are loosely coupled and maintained independently, customers can continue using the product even when something fails.

Thanks to a microservices architecture, we also enabled elastic scaling and reduced infrastructure costs. Employing Redis, our team managed to improve content load speed.

• A VoD application had to provide video playback without delays, including the case of unstable Internet.

Our software developers began by dividing video content into numerous files, called chunks. By moving those files to the server instead of storing them on user devices, we were able to prevent potential video delays.

Furthermore, our team worked out two algorithms: the first one to calculate a video delay and the second one to rewind it with a latency increase over a certain interval.

To make the video continue playing during an unstable Internet, we built the logic, in which the playback quality in the settings (auto, 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, HD, etc.) automatically switched to the lower level.

• It was critical to deliver a consistent, seamless user experience across TVs, PCs, and tablets. For example, the task was to enable viewers to continue watching the same program where they left off on a different device, whether it was a TV, tablet, laptop, or smartphone.

Our IT experts outlined common scenarios of using a video streaming app, including those when a customer could watch a movie in the same place he or she ended up on another device.

Then, our team analyzed the target audience’s needs to discover whether it was reasonable to cache media content. After the research, we decided to cache the most popular videos, making movies loading from RAM. As a result, our developers improved the content load speed.

• A video-on-demand app had to provide personalized content recommendations to increase customer loyalty.

Our software developers elaborated on specific algorithms that analyze user behavior (watch history, movies in a watch later list, etc.) and then make tailored content recommendations.

In order to achieve the smooth, error-free product operation, our quality assurance (QA) engineer employed various types of testing. For instance, by performing manual testing, we verified VoD software compliance with a technical specification. With integration testing, our QA professional tested the interaction between different parts of the platform.

Throughout the project, we used daily 3P (progress, plans, and problems) statuses. Additionally, we had a demo, retro, and sprint planning every 2 weeks, with task management and time tracking in Jira.

Key features

Our software development team created a video-on-demand application that involves the following features:

1. Sign up/in via email + password, Facebook, or Google
2. A catalog of movies, TV shows, and TV channels
3. Different subscription plans
4. Advanced video player (playback, end video screen, multi-language subtitles, multi-language audio tracks, video quality, and volume setting)
5. Watch history
6. Watch later list
7. Personalized content recommendations
8. Content search (keyword-based, auto-suggest)