How Does My Desi.Net Stream Pakistani Dramas?

As I thought more about mydesi.net I realized it can be thought of as a few checkpoints in a pipeline to serve content: ingest, prepare and serve. I have already talked about the ingest stage which gets the episodes online. As episodes are ingested, metadata such as episode number, season and runtime for episodes is validated as well as captions which can be uploaded by the provider or generated and then cleaned up. This metadata is then used to create the UI to browse episodes such as lists of episodes with thumbnails and tags for search to find favorites.

Then there is the prepare stage of processing, which involves transcode the video into a variety of resolutions and different video and audio codecs. Audio tracks are also processed separately in order to correctly support different language versions of a track. In addition to that a number of manifests are created (for adaptive streaming), as well as watermarks and even DRM (digital rights management) keys, should the content be premium. And, finally, all of the closed captions are converted into WebVTT format files and have their start and end times for each caption note, synced up to the corresponding point in the episode.

Finally, there’s the serving. This is all about scale. There’s a CDN for global edge serving. Load balancing on the origin servers to make sure none of them get too much traffic. The HTML5 player or app does the playback (HLS or DASH), switches bitrates on the fly, and reconnects after a loss of connection. My phone can now download episodes for offline watching of encrypted files. It has resume points for episodes. I’m happy with how this all works together for my afternoon drama-fixes. The various licensing deals, and all the little details in the UI for the episodes (like skip buttons and bookmarks) all get wrapped up in this “pipeline” of work to make a nice and easy-to-browse playlist of episodes.

From my perspective as a viewer my mydesi.net dramas play smoothly. I can simply open mydesi.net and select any drama to start playing immediately. Episodes are stored in cloud storage and are pre-rendered at different quality levels to allow for smooth streaming using adaptive chunks. The video player reads a manifest and starts playing short chunks of media (usually in the order of seconds) using HLS or DASH. The quality automatically changes as necessary to ensure smooth buffering that rarely exceeds a few seconds.

Many practical features are also integrated. The platform where I view mydesi films loads up the subtitles as separate .vtt files. It inserts ads or asks for a subscription token to view premium content. The most popular dramas and TV serials are cached on CDNs all around the world to make them stream faster. If a site allows for the download of dramas and TV serials to be viewed offline, the files are not only encrypted but also tied to the viewer’s account. The website also integrates various types of recommendation as well as a watch history. This allows me to be suggested other dramas and TV serials to watch, and I also see which I have already watched. The many technical features that support my late-night viewing sessions of drama and TV serials are mostly transparent.

Mydesi.net is effectively a tiny TV network that has grown into a relatively modern streaming company. From my perspective, I would view this in terms of the content and then how that content is delivered to users. On the content front, pretty much all of the episodes are licensed or uploaded by the rights holders to the various Pakistani TV shows (including newer serials such as episodes of Humsafar) that are offered. These master copies are then stored as objects in cloud-based storage systems. Each of those objects is then transcoded into a number of different sizes/bitrates in order to allow for playback on a variety of different devices (e.g. phone, laptop, TV).

The delivery side of pretty cool too. The shows are likely to be distributed using an adaptive streaming protocol like HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) or DASH. This allows the player to choose the correct bit-rate for the user’s current connection – meaning smooth playback, even when the user is on the move and Wi-Fi is fluctuating. Cached episodes of popular shows on edge CDNs near users worldwide can reduce latency. Server-side ad insertion or even client-side ads can also be supported by the service, along with basic tracking of what’s been watched by users. Subtitles are typically distributed as WebVTT or SRT files to be overlaid by the player, and users can download offline versions of episodes which are wrapped up in DRM (Digital Rights Management) using encrypted chunks to satisfy the rights-holders.

I don’t really care about the technology behind pretty much all of it. All I care about is the technology behind pretty much all of it being pretty good and a lot of other stuff that my NOT get to watch TV dramas from Pakistan.