video-streamingvideo-playervod

How Google Drive, Dropbox and etc can stream any uploaded video file format in your browser


I have a theoretical question on how cloud services or VOD services are streaming their video files.

For example you can upload almost any video format in Google Drive and DropBox and then through their web app you can play it. How you can do that if the html5 video tag supports just mp4, ogg and webM and there is no plugin installed or flash enabled on my browser?And what about youtube? How does streaming works? You can upload almost any type of video format. Do they transcode it on upload or it stays with the original file format?

For learning purpuses I'm creating a web app using a cloud service API but I'm not able to play all video types from my cloud because of the browser video tag limitation. Can you help me with any information on how they do it and what can I do in my web app to be able to play more video formats.


Solution

  • They convert the video, server side, into a format that can be played by browsers. Its expensive, and very complicated. Large companies like Dropbox hire dozens of employees to build that system. Small companies outsource it to places like mux or competitors. (Full disclosure, I make video encoding software for mux)