, a newly launched user-generated music platform, gives DJs the ability to stream and more personally interact with listeners. The platform was created as a full service solution for DJs to host licensed streaming and to use innovative features such as tipping, paid entry, and private streams to monetize their work. In turn, 

 gives music lovers on-demand, access-anywhere streams of their favorite DJs.

PlayDJ launched in April 2020 and experienced an immediate exponential growth in users. They acquired thousands of users in a matter of weeks, which brought with it complex scaling challenges.

 was reliant on existing cost-prohibitive streaming platforms to fulfill the increase in user demand. These streaming and transcoding companies’ unsustainable pricing structures and time-consuming integration processes became a serious barrier for growth. Faced with unsustainable costs, PlayDJ was forced to shut down their service for several weeks and rethink how to build an economically viable video centric creator platform.

To scale and match increasing demand, they needed a partner that would be able to help them implement the service quickly, provide infinite scalability and reliability, and offer a pricing model that would significantly reduce costs. The cost savings could then be re-invested into their business to support innovation and drive growth.

Their solution - use Livepeer.com as their transcoding provider. Livepeer, a forward-thinking video transcoding solution, takes advantage of decentralization to offer clients a service that is 10x more affordable than existing offerings. PlayDJ.tv was able to integrate Livepeer.com into their infrastructure within days to avoid expensive hardware investments and achieve what they were not able to do with traditional transcoding platforms - a 10x reduction in transcoding costs, seamless scalability given a growing user base, and easy API integration.

Had PlayDJ.tv continued to use more expensive traditional transcoding providers, it is likely that they would have not been able to offer their DJ’s a compelling service including free and low cost options.  This would have restricted their product offerings, minimized their user base, and stunted their growth as a company.

 is today able to provide high-quality and reliable streaming services to viewers and content creators at a price point that will allow them to scale without compromising on quality or user experience.

Imagine working with a client who is paying you to help them broadcast a concert online to an audience of thousands of viewers around the world. Some of your viewers are watching on their phones, some are watching on their laptop, some are in areas with a bad internet connection. You start seeing a lot of users drop off the live stream complaining that they have to wait several minutes to watch the first couple of seconds of the event, at which point the video stops to buffer again ... and again ... and again. Viewers are complaining that your video is practically unwatchable. The result - your client loses a significant number of viewers, they lose virtual event ticket and advertising income, and you lose their trust. They end up not working with you again. Others in the music industry hear about your company’s streaming performance and decide to not engage your services either.

Had the live stream been transcoded into several different qualities and formats, the viewing experience would have been a seamless one. This example illustrates the critical need for all live video companies to understand and make use of video transcoding.

## What is video transcoding?

Video transcoding or encoding, is a process that ensures that viewers can stream content without buffering at the highest possible quality. It is a process to convert a video from one format to another better-compressed format. The outcome of video transcoding is multiple versions of the same video in different sizes (resolutions) and qualities (bitrates, frame rates), each of which is optimized for viewers with different internet speeds and devices. This ensures that your video is, as we call it, "internet-ready" and viewable by anyone in the world regardless of location, viewing device and circumstances.

![](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/dp4k3mpw/production/8cb89759cb54bb3512954a50bd4cf18d67f54486-4608x3072.jpg?h=500&fit=max)

## Why is video transcoding important?

Simply put, video transcoding will allow your content to reach more end users. Online public video content is viewed by users around the world with a range of devices like cellphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers, to name a few. Said devices support a range of different video formats, and in turn, are incompatible with a different set of formats.

Video transcoding helps ensure that viewers with devices that do not support certain formats, have reduced capacity, or are incompatible with obsolete file types, are able to access the video files. 

It also ensures that both those with access to fast, high-bandwidth internet connections and those with low-bandwidth, slow connections can have a seamless watching experience. Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data transmitted over an internet connection in a given amount of time. Without video transcoding, many in rural or remote areas around the world with low-bandwidth internet connections would have difficulty watching  large, high-quality videos streamed or uploaded online. People in various situations, like those driving a car on a cell connection, or in an office building sharing bandwidth with their coworkers, or even those connected to a high-quality wifi router that's behind a thick wall, would all also have degraded internet connections and would benefit from transcoded video. Like the initial streaming company client example, all these individuals would see their stream “buffer” often. In other words, they’d see the infamous spinning wheel icon linger on their screen for far too long, indicating that their video was loading.

In the end, it is preferable to stream or view a video with lower quality or size than to have to wait a long time or never be able to view one of higher quality.
![](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/dp4k3mpw/production/0ab5835eba9bb44db4e762b89e8c87c1ecdade7a-693x523.png?h=500&fit=max)

## How can I control the quality and size of my videos through transcoding?

Three of the most important factors that affect the resulting quality and performance of video streams are frame rate, video resolution, and bitrate settings.

Frame rate or frames per second (fps) is the frequency at which images or frames appear in one second of your video. The higher the frame rate, the better quality of your video, the larger the file size you have to transmit over the internet to your users (hence the need for a faster internet connection), and the higher amount of storage you need to store the video. The movie and gaming industries typically use 24 fps and 30 fps respectively, while high definition or HD video use 60 fps, the maximum fps that most monitors and TV’s can display.

Video resolutions, the second important factor in controlling video quality and size, are measured in pixels (p) or single "points" or squares in a picture. Some of the most common video resolutions are:

- **720p**: 1280x720
- **480p**: 854x480
- **360p**: 640x360
- **240p**: 426x240

These numbers represent the number of horizontal lines a video has from top to bottom. The first resolution on the list, for example, is made up of 720 lines stacked on top of each other and 1280 lines from left to right. For comparison, the third resolution on the list is made up of half of that, meaning, it is half as sharp as the first resolution and should be viewed on a smaller screen to achieve the same perceived video quality.

Finally, video bitrate is the number of bits, the smallest unit of data in a computer that can be processed in a specific amount of time. A higher bitrate will generally mean a higher video quality and larger file size, though the quality will depend on what "codec" or decoding/encoding algorithm is used in the video transcoding process. Newer codecs have gotten much better at keeping bitrates low, and therefore making videos smaller and easier to transfer over the internet, while maintaining higher video quality. To get a better idea of what bitrates are typical, HD Blu-ray video hovers around 20 megabits per second (mbps), web video is typically about 2 mbps, and phone videos are typically less than 1 mbps.

Together, video bitrate, resolution, and frame rate all contribute to how good your video will look and how much bandwidth it'll consume while being streaming online.

## How can I transcode my video?

Originally, video transcoding software was supposed to be purchased and installed in one’s machine before being used. However, the cloud and distributed computing networks have changed the world of video transcoding.

Though anyone could transcode video locally on their machines using open source software like ffmpeg, the process is a computationally intensive one. This means that depending on the number and length of video streams to be transcoded, desired number of formats to transcode the video in, and desired platforms to send video to, more powerful hardware and processing capacity will be needed than you might have available.

## How can Livepeer help?

Luckily, juggling the many decisions involved in transcoding video can be simplified by using transcoding providers like Livepeer.

Livepeer provides live video transcoding services in an affordable, scalable, secure, and reliable fashion. Our network of transcoders, massively distributed throughout the world, can provide reliable transcoding for companies looking to stream live video over the internet. Given our distributed nature, we are able to offer prices over 10x cheaper than comparable public cloud transcoding providers.

Livepeer is currently looking for potential partners to test our platform. Get in touch at hello@livepeer.com or by joining our [Discord server] (https://discord.gg/mEQz5A) - we'd love to hear more about what you're building and see how we could be of help.

For instructions on how to try Livepeer for free, get an [API key](http://www.livepeer.com/register) and check out our [documentation] (https://livepeer.com/docs).

Imagine working with a client who is paying you to help them broadcast a concert online to an audience of thousands of viewers around the world. Some of your viewers are watching on their phones, some are watching on their laptop, some are in areas with a bad internet connection. You start seeing a lot of users drop off the live stream complaining that they have to wait several minutes to watch the first couple of seconds of the event, at which point the video stops to buffer again ... and again ... and again. Viewers are complaining that your video is practically unwatchable. The result - your client loses a significant number of viewers, they lose virtual event ticket and advertising income, and you lose their trust. They end up not working with you again. Others in the music industry hear about your company’s streaming performance and decide to not engage your services either.

Had the live stream been transcoded into several different qualities and formats, the viewing experience would have been a seamless one. This example illustrates the critical need for all live video companies to understand and make use of video transcoding.

Video transcoding or encoding, is a process that ensures that viewers can stream content without buffering at the highest possible quality. It is a process to convert a video from one format to another better-compressed format. The outcome of video transcoding is multiple versions of the same video in different sizes (resolutions) and qualities (bitrates, frame rates), each of which is optimized for viewers with different internet speeds and devices. This ensures that your video is, as we call it, "internet-ready" and viewable by anyone in the world regardless of location, viewing device and circumstances.

Simply put, video transcoding will allow your content to reach more end users. Online public video content is viewed by users around the world with a range of devices like cellphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers, to name a few. Said devices support a range of different video formats, and in turn, are incompatible with a different set of formats.

Video transcoding helps ensure that viewers with devices that do not support certain formats, have reduced capacity, or are incompatible with obsolete file types, are able to access the video files.

It also ensures that both those with access to fast, high-bandwidth internet connections and those with low-bandwidth, slow connections can have a seamless watching experience. Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data transmitted over an internet connection in a given amount of time. Without video transcoding, many in rural or remote areas around the world with low-bandwidth internet connections would have difficulty watching large, high-quality videos streamed or uploaded online. People in various situations, like those driving a car on a cell connection, or in an office building sharing bandwidth with their coworkers, or even those connected to a high-quality wifi router that's behind a thick wall, would all also have degraded internet connections and would benefit from transcoded video. Like the initial streaming company client example, all these individuals would see their stream “buffer” often. In other words, they’d see the infamous spinning wheel icon linger on their screen for far too long, indicating that their video was loading.

In the end, it is preferable to stream or view a video with lower quality or size than to have to wait a long time or never be able to view one of higher quality.

How can I control the quality and size of my videos through transcoding?

Three of the most important factors that affect the resulting quality and performance of video streams are frame rate, video resolution, and bitrate settings.

Frame rate or frames per second (fps) is the frequency at which images or frames appear in one second of your video. The higher the frame rate, the better quality of your video, the larger the file size you have to transmit over the internet to your users (hence the need for a faster internet connection), and the higher amount of storage you need to store the video. The movie and gaming industries typically use 24 fps and 30 fps respectively, while high definition or HD video use 60 fps, the maximum fps that most monitors and TV’s can display.

Video resolutions, the second important factor in controlling video quality and size, are measured in pixels (p) or single "points" or squares in a picture. Some of the most common video resolutions are:

These numbers represent the number of horizontal lines a video has from top to bottom. The first resolution on the list, for example, is made up of 720 lines stacked on top of each other and 1280 lines from left to right. For comparison, the third resolution on the list is made up of half of that, meaning, it is half as sharp as the first resolution and should be viewed on a smaller screen to achieve the same perceived video quality.

Finally, video bitrate is the number of bits, the smallest unit of data in a computer that can be processed in a specific amount of time. A higher bitrate will generally mean a higher video quality and larger file size, though the quality will depend on what "codec" or decoding/encoding algorithm is used in the video transcoding process. Newer codecs have gotten much better at keeping bitrates low, and therefore making videos smaller and easier to transfer over the internet, while maintaining higher video quality. To get a better idea of what bitrates are typical, HD Blu-ray video hovers around 20 megabits per second (mbps), web video is typically about 2 mbps, and phone videos are typically less than 1 mbps.

Together, video bitrate, resolution, and frame rate all contribute to how good your video will look and how much bandwidth it'll consume while being streaming online.

Originally, video transcoding software was supposed to be purchased and installed in one’s machine before being used. However, the cloud and distributed computing networks have changed the world of video transcoding.

Though anyone could transcode video locally on their machines using open source software like ffmpeg, the process is a computationally intensive one. This means that depending on the number and length of video streams to be transcoded, desired number of formats to transcode the video in, and desired platforms to send video to, more powerful hardware and processing capacity will be needed than you might have available.

Luckily, juggling the many decisions involved in transcoding video can be simplified by using transcoding providers like Livepeer.

Livepeer provides live video transcoding services in an affordable, scalable, secure, and reliable fashion. Our network of transcoders, massively distributed throughout the world, can provide reliable transcoding for companies looking to stream live video over the internet. Given our distributed nature, we are able to offer prices over 10x cheaper than comparable public cloud transcoding providers.

Livepeer is currently looking for potential partners to test our platform. Get in touch at hello@livepeer.com or by joining our 

 - we'd love to hear more about what you're building and see how we could be of help.

For instructions on how to try Livepeer for free, get an 

Video Transcoding - What is it, why is it important, and how can I do it?

If you’ve been looking to integrate a video player with Livepeer.com, you’ve come to the right place. This is the first of a series of posts that will guide you in integrating Livepeer.com with a video player of your choosing. On this post, we’ll be using THEOPlayer to stream using Livepeer.com.

 and click on the “Get Started” button in the “Web Browsers” section. You’ll be redirected to a login page. Click on the “Connect with Github”, “Connect with Google”, or click the “Sign up now” button at the bottom and follow the prompts to create an account.              

Once you’ve created an account and are logged in:

select “SDKs” on the left-hand side of the page

name your SDK what you’d like, click next

scroll to the bottom of the screen, click next

Congratulations! You’ve published your first THEOPlayer SDK.

Step 2: Integrating into your application

The SDK page you created above should look something like the screenshot below. Red squares have been added to hide two important fields unique to every SDK created - the “Key” and “Library Location” fields, both of which will be used to integrate THEOPlayer into your web app.

Click on “How to embed my THEOPlayer HTML5 SDK” tab at the bottom, then the “Step-By-Step” section to take a look at web app integration code unique to you.

Feel free to follow these “Step-By-Step” THEOPlayer instructions to continue integrating, especially if you’ve customized your player during the setup process, and skip to step 3 in this guide once you do so. Otherwise, for a more detailed THEOPlayer setup, continue reading here.

Let’s start by creating an HTML file that looks like this:

Add the following code inside the <body> tags in your HTML sheet. Replace {YOURKEY} with your unique THEOPlayer Key from your SDK home page. This will reference the THEOPlayer library and make it available on your homepage.

To add the THEOplayer UI, you need to reference the THEOplayer CSS file. Add the following Link tags inside the <body> tags of your HTML file, below the script tags we just added. These Link tags are used to add a CSS file to a web page.

Next we’ll create a video element and add it to our page. To start playing a video in your player, you’ll need a video manifest. Paste the following example inside your <body> tags. We're using an HLS sample URL here.

Once all this has been added, your complete HTML file should look like this:

Step 3: Integrate a Livepeer.com source into your THEOPlayer video player

Login to your livepeer.com account, go to your Livepeer.com Dashboard, and select a stream you’d like to integrate into your application. If you haven’t created a Livepeer stream yet and/or have not yet streamed a video into Livepeer.com, follow 

 to do so. Your stream page should look something like this:

Copy the “RTMP ingest URL” from your stream page. Using OBS, stream a video into Livepeer.com (see step 5 in 

 for detailed instructions on how to do so).​ 

Copy the “Playback URL” from your stream page. Paste into the player.source section of the HTML sheet we made in step 2 in this tutorial. You should be replacing the "https://cdn.theoplayer.com/video/elephants-dream/playlist-single-audio.m3u8" URL from our example with the Livepeer.com Playback URL.

Load up your page, and watch your video come to life!

What did you think of this tutorial? Give us any feedback on how it can be improved and send over any questions you might have by emailing us at

. We’d love to help you stream using Livepeer.com!

PlayDJ, bringing DJ’s into people's homes during lockdown

Articles you may be interested in

Video Transcoding - What is it, why is it important, and how can I do it?

How to Integrate Livepeer.com into a Web App using THEOPlayer

Ready to get started?