System designMediumsd-g261

Subject Adaptive bitrateLevel Mid–Senior~40 minCommon in Distributed systems interviewsIndustries Technology, Software development

Question

Design the packaging/origin layer that takes encoded renditions and serves both HLS and DASH to a fragmented device ecosystem (iOS wants HLS, many TVs/Android want DASH, some need different segment durations), without storing N duplicate copies of the media per protocol. Storage and origin egress are major costs, and a new device family with its own quirks shows up regularly. Design how you store the media and generate the manifests, and how you minimize duplicated bytes.

What a strong answer looks like

Clarify scale and constraints first. Propose a clean component breakdown, then go deep on the hard parts — data model, bottlenecks, consistency, failure modes — and name the trade-offs you are making.

Learn the concepts

Narrate your design

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Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.