Design YouTube
HardSystem design · Media Streaming · Google
Design YouTube: a user-generated video platform. Creators upload videos (resumable, ~500 hours/minute), viewers search and watch with adaptive bitrate playback through a CDN, and the system stores metadata, comments, likes and view counts. Focus on the user-generated long tail: demand-driven encoding, reactive caching, tiered storage, view counters and moderation. Studio-quality licensed catalogues (Netflix) and the encoder internals (Transcoding Pipeline) are separate problems.
Requirements
- Handle resumable uploads and asynchronous transcoding
- Serve adaptive bitrate playback through CDN
- Store video metadata, comments, likes, and view counts
- Discuss processing queues, storage, cache, recommendations, and abuse moderation