Encode quality control gate
Design the automated encode quality-control (QC) gate that sits between the transcoding farm and publishing, catching bad encodes before viewers see them across millions of encodes/day. Failures to catch include: silent corruption (green frames, macroblocking), audio/video drift, missing or truncated renditions, wrong aspect ratio/letterboxing, loudness out of spec, and a rendition that's perceptually worse than a lower rung. The gate must be automated (humans can't watch every encode) but escalate genuinely ambiguous cases.
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.
Clarify4:30 left
Estimate4:30 planned
Design13:30 planned
Deep dive10:30 planned
Failure7:00 planned
Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.
Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.