Live video infrastructure

Live video infrastructure is the entire technical base for live broadcasts at scale: ingest of streams from broadcasters (RTMP/SRT), real-time transcoding into several qualities, low-latency delivery (LL-HLS/WebRTC) via CDN, handling a peak simultaneous audience, redundancy, monitoring, recording. It differs from a single broadcast integration (1115) by its focus on scale and reliability. Honestly about 'designed for peak, not average', this is key: live gives sharp peaks — tens of thousands of viewers connect at once to the start of a large broadcast. The infrastructure must withstand the PEAK, not the average load, otherwise at the most important moment the broadcast 'goes down' for some viewers. This means capacity headroom and costs for the peak — not cheap, but otherwise large-scale live does not work. We honestly design for peak load. Honestly about latency: in live there is always latency between the event and the viewer (from seconds to tens). Low-latency technologies reduce it but do not bring it to zero. The lower the latency, the more expensive and complex the infrastructure — a trade-off we honestly tune for needs (interactivity vs scale). Honestly about growing traffic costs: live delivery at scale is a lot of traffic, and costs grow with the number of viewers and broadcast length. Popular broadcasts = big CDN/traffic bills. This must be honestly built into the budget. Honestly about reliability and redundancy: a failure in a recording can be fixed, a failure in a live broadcast is seen by all at once and is reputationally painful. So redundancy (backup paths), monitoring, load testing are needed — this is part of the honest cost of large-scale live. Honestly about 'not turn it on and broadcast to millions': building infrastructure that reliably holds a mass audience in real time is serious engineering and investment, not 'press a button'. Anyone promising 'millions of viewers out of the box cheaply' is being disingenuous. Honestly about quality on the viewer's side: it depends on the broadcaster's network (poor internet there will spoil the broadcast for all) and each viewer's network; adaptive bitrate mitigates, but a perfect picture on poor networks cannot be guaranteed. Honestly about the effect: it gives reliable scalable live infrastructure for a peak audience with redundancy, but it is expensive, with built-in latency and growing traffic costs. Honestly about access: real broadcast scale and a peak budget are needed. An important boundary: this is live infrastructure (scale); broadcast integration (point) — 1115; CDN/transcoding/bitrate — 1119/1120/1121; live commerce — 1128. The base price starts from 180,000 ₽ (depends on scale and latency/reliability requirements).

• Reliable broadcasts to a large simultaneous audience are needed.
• Broadcasts 'go down' on peaks — infrastructure cannot hold the load.
• An expectation of 'broadcasting to millions out of the box cheaply' (it is not so).
• Peak load, latency, redundancy and traffic cost growth are not accounted for.

• Building live infrastructure (stream ingest, real-time transcoding, delivery)
• Designing for a peak simultaneous audience (capacity headroom)
• Low-latency delivery with a latency↔scale trade-off setup
• Redundancy, monitoring, load testing, broadcast recording
• An estimate of growing traffic costs for volumes
• Honest boundaries (designed for peak = cost; latency is inevitable; a failure during the broadcast is seen by all; not 'millions out of the box'; quality depends on networks)
• Documentation and handover
• Review with you

• Reliable scalable infrastructure for live broadcasts
• Resilience to a peak simultaneous audience with redundancy
• An honest assessment of latency, costs and limits
• Honest boundaries (expensive for peak; latency not to zero; costs grow with traffic; quality depends on networks)

• We assess scale, peak audience and latency/reliability requirements
• We build infrastructure with redundancy, test under peak load
• We honestly set boundaries (peak, latency, costs) and hand over to you

• Can I broadcast to millions of viewers out of the box and cheaply?

  No, honestly: building infrastructure that reliably holds a mass audience in real time is serious engineering and investment, not 'press a button'. Capacity headroom for the peak, redundancy, low-latency delivery, a big traffic budget are needed. Anyone promising 'millions out of the box cheaply' is being disingenuous. We honestly design for real scale and soberly state the cost rather than sell cheap mass live.

• Why is infrastructure sized for the peak, not the average load?

  Because live gives sharp peaks, honestly: tens of thousands of viewers connect at once to the start of a large broadcast. If sized for the average load, at the most important moment the broadcast 'goes down' for some viewers. So infrastructure and costs are designed for the PEAK — capacity headroom and money, but otherwise large-scale live does not work reliably. We honestly build the peak into the project and budget.

• Will the broadcast quality be perfect for all viewers?

  Not guaranteed, honestly: quality depends on the broadcaster's network (poor internet there will spoil the broadcast for all) and each viewer's network. Plus latency in live is inevitable (not to zero). Adaptive bitrate mitigates network problems (lowers quality instead of buffering), and redundancy reduces failure risk, but a perfect picture on poor networks cannot be ensured. We honestly state these dependencies and build as robustly as possible.