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Since ads are personalised, this would produce a new stream per view which would come with a computational overhead. The stream would have to be rendered on the

Since ads are personalised, this would produce a new stream per view which would come with a computational overhead. The stream would have to be rendered on the spot and not in advance, which puts further pressure on compute resources during peak times. That would decrease margins, maybe so much it isn't feasible at all.

shiroiuma 3y ago
(Disclaimer: I don't know that much about video codecs or editing.) I'm surprised they don't just break the video at key frames and insert the ads that way. From my little use of open-source video editing tools, it seems like this is pretty low-CPU to do, and if (like YouTube) you don't care about a good user experience and are happy to just insert ads at seemingly-random places instead of between natural breaks in the program (as with TV shows), it should work.
- ggeorgovassilis 3y ago
  You are probably right, eg Losslesscut in Linux does exactly that: no transcoding, no overlays nor any editing other than cutting and moving around sequences from the same video. Editing and exporting such videos is blazingly fast. Adding a bit technical context (for readers) to your comment on inserting ads at "random places": many codecs use the concept of an initial frame [1] which would place technical restrictions on where the ad could be inserted. If Youtube believes that ad timing is too important, they might not accept technical restrictions on the timing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_types https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_type...
  - yurishimo 3y ago
    Creators can mark specific sections in the video where they want an ad to play. I assume this dynamism also plays a contributing role.
    - ptspts 3y ago
      YouTube reencodes uploaded videos, so YouTube controls where the keyframes are at playback time.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  > and if (like YouTube) you don't care about a good user experience Other than ads, which is the business model and keeps the content flowing... does YouTube not care about UX? I generally find the UX pretty good. I can always watch a video near-instantly, on nearly every device I own, search is astonishingly good even when my Apple TV mis-hears my searches, and it's one of the biggest video streaming sites in the world. As a user I think the UX overall is pretty great. Sure there are things I'd tweak, but I can see reasons for them.
  - benj111 3y ago
    Removing downvotes? Randomly rewarding the latest 'feature' so you get a load of shorts of videos you've already seen, random votes for things, etc.
    - danpalmer 3y ago
      I've never used the voting. It's a quality signal and they are notoriously difficult to get right. Netflix infamously switched from stars to like/dislike and everyone hated it, and yet it provides better signal and recommendations become better and therefore you get better content surfaced that you'll enjoy more. I'd guess a similar thing happened with YouTube. Zooming out there's typically an ecosystem benefit, because otherwise why would they do it. That ecosystem benefit isn't always about money, if no one watched videos there would be no business. In fact a business that is often much better than a business with no users that isn't, so user happiness and experience tends to be prioritised highly in products/companies like this.
      - benj111 3y ago
        A video with 1000 upvotes and 1 downvotes tells me something A video with 1000 upvotes and 2000 downvotes tells me something. A video with 1000 upvotes doesn't tell me anything. I can still downvote, I just don't get told the downvote total. If they decided the system was broken and decided to replace it, I could understand. But they haven't changed the system, they've just removed the utility it did have.
      - 3y ago
Almondsetat 3y ago
You can chain MP4 containers without re-rendering anything. It's extremely quick and computationally inexpensive. Of course at such a scale it might still cost a lot in the absolute sense, but I'm pretty sure it would be balanced by the increased revenue
- ggeorgovassilis 3y ago
  I understand Youtube uses a variety of codecs and encoding parameters to serve videos to a multitude of platforms and clients. Maybe there are restrictions on some clients that force Youtube to pick a codec for them which makes ad embedding unprofitable. Circumventing embedded videos would then be as trivial as faking a particular client signature.
gogurt2000 3y ago
They could certainly prepare a stream for every video with inline ads that's used as a fall back when personalised ads won't load. Certainly showing a non-targeted ad is better than showing no ad, right? If you make the generic ads worse than personalized ads (show more, show them more frequently, or just get the most annoying ads) you'll actually get people opting into personalized ads as the lesser of 2 evils.

shiroiuma 3y ago

(Disclaimer: I don't know that much about video codecs or editing.) I'm surprised they don't just break the video at key frames and insert the ads that way. From my little use of open-source video editing tools, it seems like this is pretty low-CPU to do, and if (like YouTube) you don't care about a good user experience and are happy to just insert ads at seemingly-random places instead of between natural breaks in the program (as with TV shows), it should work.

ggeorgovassilis 3y ago
You are probably right, eg Losslesscut in Linux does exactly that: no transcoding, no overlays nor any editing other than cutting and moving around sequences from the same video. Editing and exporting such videos is blazingly fast. Adding a bit technical context (for readers) to your comment on inserting ads at "random places": many codecs use the concept of an initial frame [1] which would place technical restrictions on where the ad could be inserted. If Youtube believes that ad timing is too important, they might not accept technical restrictions on the timing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_types https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_type...
- yurishimo 3y ago
  Creators can mark specific sections in the video where they want an ad to play. I assume this dynamism also plays a contributing role.
  - ptspts 3y ago
    YouTube reencodes uploaded videos, so YouTube controls where the keyframes are at playback time.
danpalmer 3y ago
> and if (like YouTube) you don't care about a good user experience Other than ads, which is the business model and keeps the content flowing... does YouTube not care about UX? I generally find the UX pretty good. I can always watch a video near-instantly, on nearly every device I own, search is astonishingly good even when my Apple TV mis-hears my searches, and it's one of the biggest video streaming sites in the world. As a user I think the UX overall is pretty great. Sure there are things I'd tweak, but I can see reasons for them.
- benj111 3y ago
  Removing downvotes? Randomly rewarding the latest 'feature' so you get a load of shorts of videos you've already seen, random votes for things, etc.
  - danpalmer 3y ago
    I've never used the voting. It's a quality signal and they are notoriously difficult to get right. Netflix infamously switched from stars to like/dislike and everyone hated it, and yet it provides better signal and recommendations become better and therefore you get better content surfaced that you'll enjoy more. I'd guess a similar thing happened with YouTube. Zooming out there's typically an ecosystem benefit, because otherwise why would they do it. That ecosystem benefit isn't always about money, if no one watched videos there would be no business. In fact a business that is often much better than a business with no users that isn't, so user happiness and experience tends to be prioritised highly in products/companies like this.
    - benj111 3y ago
      A video with 1000 upvotes and 1 downvotes tells me something A video with 1000 upvotes and 2000 downvotes tells me something. A video with 1000 upvotes doesn't tell me anything. I can still downvote, I just don't get told the downvote total. If they decided the system was broken and decided to replace it, I could understand. But they haven't changed the system, they've just removed the utility it did have.
    - 3y ago

Almondsetat 3y ago

You can chain MP4 containers without re-rendering anything. It's extremely quick and computationally inexpensive. Of course at such a scale it might still cost a lot in the absolute sense, but I'm pretty sure it would be balanced by the increased revenue

ggeorgovassilis 3y ago
I understand Youtube uses a variety of codecs and encoding parameters to serve videos to a multitude of platforms and clients. Maybe there are restrictions on some clients that force Youtube to pick a codec for them which makes ad embedding unprofitable. Circumventing embedded videos would then be as trivial as faking a particular client signature.

gogurt2000 3y ago

They could certainly prepare a stream for every video with inline ads that's used as a fall back when personalised ads won't load. Certainly showing a non-targeted ad is better than showing no ad, right? If you make the generic ads worse than personalized ads (show more, show them more frequently, or just get the most annoying ads) you'll actually get people opting into personalized ads as the lesser of 2 evils.