Well, the point isn't that. My topic in this post is "How are the YouTube videos played in a client's computer when he/she tries to access it?".
Let me get to the matter now.
You might think that when you press the 'PLAY' button, YouTube just grabs the video from its server and plays it for you. TRUE! but this used to happen 10 years ago. At those times, YouTube would simply download the entire video file and play it for the client. But now, things have changed, Technology has improved, Computer intelligence has leveled up. Now videos are being played based on a whole new level of logic. YouTube calls it 'SliceBread'. As explained by the YouTube engineers, it is a metaphor for playing the video as smaller parts and load the next part when the current part is being played.The size and resolution of the next part of video will depend on the available network. This method is named as 'Adaptive bitrate' by YouTube.
To be more specific, When you play a video, YouTube analyses your situation (your network's situation), something like 'is your network good?','Whats your screen size?', 'How much have you played already?' etc. So if you have a High speed network and a high resolution screen, YouTube may play a 1080p piece of video for you. While playing the video, you may start downloading another file(assume). Now the bandwidth is constrained. So YouTube will provide the next piece of video with a lower resolution, say 480p (to reduce the possibility of buffering). If your bandwidth is still lower, then the video would buffer for a short time and then it would continue the playback.
This is one way of playback optimisation. There is another way of speeding up Video playback from YouTube which it calls 'Content distribution network'.
Some temporary hard drives are stored with most popular played videos of YouTube(most viewed ones). These hard drive racks are arranged in the lower level of the architecture and Google's central servers are placed at the top. When you search for any video, YouTube first searches these temporary hard drives whether they have that video or not. If they don't, then YouTube will continue the query to the way top to Google servers. Then You get the video(of course all these within a fraction of second). This way, frequently played videos are accessed faster.
Some temporary hard drives are stored with most popular played videos of YouTube(most viewed ones). These hard drive racks are arranged in the lower level of the architecture and Google's central servers are placed at the top. When you search for any video, YouTube first searches these temporary hard drives whether they have that video or not. If they don't, then YouTube will continue the query to the way top to Google servers. Then You get the video(of course all these within a fraction of second). This way, frequently played videos are accessed faster.
This way, YouTube rocks the Video websites category and is still expanding its reach to the people. Hats off to YouTube which allows users to play all kind of videos absolutely free.
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