OTT Service: How to Build a Reliable Streaming Infrastructure

Streaming services are rapidly gaining popularity, offering viewers convenient access to diverse video content. This trend is characteristic of both the global market and Russia. Services that provide content delivery "over the top" of traditional delivery channels like satellite or cable TV are called OTT (Over-the-Top) services.

Creating your own OTT service opens significant opportunities for media companies, internet providers, and other market players. It allows them to interact directly with the audience, offer unique content, flexibly monetize services, and strengthen their brand. Additionally, OTT service owners gain complete control over the content delivery process and user data.

However, building a reliable and scalable infrastructure for an OTT service is a complex task requiring a deep understanding of technologies and architectural solutions. In this article, we'll explore in detail the key elements of an OTT platform, steps for its creation, and the role of video servers such as Flussonic Media Server in implementing effective and secure streaming.

Contents

• Key Elements of an OTT Service
• Steps to Create Your Own OTT Platform
• Choosing a Platform for Creating an OTT Service
• Infrastructure
• Technologies and Tools Needed for Creating an OTT Service
• Monetization Issues
• Integration of Flussonic Media Server into an OTT Service
• Conclusion

Key Elements of an OTT Service

For the successful operation of an OTT platform, it's necessary to ensure the coordinated work of several key elements:

Content OTT services can offer various types of content, including:

• Video on Demand (VOD): movies, series, shows, and other pre-recorded content available for viewing at any time.
• Live broadcasts (live streaming): real-time video transmission, such as sports events, news, or concerts.
• TV channels: traditional television channels available via the internet.

Video Platform The foundation of an OTT service is the video platform, which provides storage, processing, and delivery of content. It must support various video formats, adaptive streaming, content protection, and scaling for a growing audience. The platform also provides tools for content management, analytics, and monetization.

User Devices OTT services must provide access to content on a wide range of devices, including:

• Smart TVs and TV set-top boxes;
• Mobile devices (smartphones, tablets);
• Personal computers and laptops. For each type of device, it's necessary to develop appropriate applications or web interfaces adapted to the screen features and control system.

User Interface (UI/UX) The convenience and attractiveness of the user interface play a key role in the success of an OTT platform. The main elements of effective UI/UX design include:

• Intuitive navigation and content search.
• Personalized recommendations based on user preferences.
• Adaptive design for different devices.
• Fast loading and smooth video playback. A well-thought-out interface increases audience engagement and allows the OTT service to stand out among competitors. A skillful combination of these elements—content, video platform, device support, and UI/UX design—allows for building an attractive and competitive OTT service capable of effectively delivering video content to users.

Steps to Create Your Own OTT Platform

Creating your own OTT service is a complex process requiring careful elaboration of each stage. The first step is content preparation and licensing. To form an attractive library, it's necessary to acquire rights to popular movies, series, and shows, as well as consider creating exclusive content. It's important to ensure that materials comply with legislative requirements and age restrictions.

Choosing a video platform is a key stage in building an OTT service. It's necessary to analyze available solutions according to the following criteria:

• Scalability and adaptability to a growing audience.
• Security and protection of content from unauthorized access.
• Functionality and support for various formats and streaming protocols.
• Compatibility with the company's existing infrastructure and IT systems.

To ensure quality content delivery, it's necessary to build an efficient architecture. This includes organizing a content delivery network (CDN), configuring server infrastructure for processing requests and managing data flows, as well as implementing monitoring and alert systems for timely detection and resolution of problems.

Monetization is an integral part of a successful OTT service. Key steps in setting up a monetization system include:

1. Choosing monetization models: subscription (SVOD), purchase or rental of content (TVOD), advertising (AVOD), or hybrid options.
2. Integrating payment gateways and subscription management systems for transaction processing.
3. Developing flexible tariff plans and service packages for various audience segments.
4. The ease of using an OTT service largely depends on the quality of user applications and interface. When developing them, it's necessary to consider the features of each platform (smart TV, mobile devices, browsers), ensure an intuitive design, and optimize performance.
5. To make informed decisions about platform development, it's necessary to implement analytics and a content management system (CMS). This will allow collecting and analyzing data on user behavior, optimizing the service, simplifying the processes of publishing and updating materials, as well as providing personalized recommendations.

Choosing a Platform for Creating an OTT Service

Choosing the right platform is one of the key factors for OTT service success. When evaluating available solutions, several important criteria must be considered.

1. Scalability is the platform's ability to adapt to audience and load growth without compromising performance. It's achieved through efficient resource utilization, load balancing, and horizontal scaling capabilities. The platform should be ready for an increase in the number of simultaneous viewers, content volume, and data processing complexity.
2. Security is another critically important aspect. An OTT platform must provide reliable protection of content from unauthorized access, copying, and distribution. This is achieved through the use of encryption technologies, digital rights management (DRM), tokenization, and watermarks. Additionally, the platform must comply with industry security standards and ensure user data confidentiality.
3. Support for various formats and streaming protocols is a mandatory requirement for a modern OTT platform. It must be able to work with popular video formats (HLS, MPEG-DASH) and provide adaptive bitrate to optimize broadcasting quality for the available network bandwidth. Additionally, the platform must support various devices and operating systems, guaranteeing seamless content playback.
4. Platform compatibility with existing IT infrastructure and integration with external systems and services also play an important role. The OTT solution should easily integrate into the company's current ecosystem and interact with billing, CRM, analytics, and advertising platforms. This will optimize operational processes, increase monetization efficiency, and improve the user experience.

When choosing an OTT platform, it's also worth paying attention to the vendor's reputation, quality of technical support, availability of detailed documentation, and ease of administration. Careful analysis of available solutions and pilot testing will help select a platform that optimally meets business requirements and can ensure the long-term success of the OTT service.

Infrastructure

A reliable and efficient infrastructure is the foundation of any successful OTT service. It ensures the platform's uninterrupted operation, quality content delivery, and excellent user experience.

One of the key infrastructure components is the video storage and processing system. An OTT service must be ready to work with huge volumes of content, including high-resolution video and various metadata. This requires ensuring sufficient storage capacity, disk subsystem performance, and computing power for video encoding and transcoding.

Many OTT providers use cloud solutions such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform to scale infrastructure and optimize costs. Cloud services offer flexible resource management capabilities, automatic scaling, and global geographic coverage. At the same time, some companies prefer to use local data centers for greater control over infrastructure and ensuring compliance with specific security and privacy requirements.

Another critical aspect is content delivery to end users. Modern viewers expect fast loading and high-quality video regardless of location and device type. For this, OTT services use content delivery networks (CDN), which cache video on servers located as close as possible to users. This reduces latency, increases loading speed, and efficiently distributes the load.

A key role in OTT infrastructure is played by support for adaptive bitrate and various streaming protocols. Adaptive streaming, implemented in technologies such as Apple HLS and MPEG-DASH, allows dynamically adjusting video quality to the available network bandwidth. This guarantees an optimal user experience even with an unstable internet connection. Additionally, the infrastructure must support a wide range of devices and software platforms—from smart TVs and gaming consoles to mobile applications and web players.

A carefully designed and optimized infrastructure is the key to stable operation and long-term success of an OTT service. Proper use of cloud technologies, content delivery networks, and advanced streaming protocols in combination with a reliable media server such as Flussonic will provide viewers with the highest quality content and unforgettable viewing experiences.

Technologies and Tools Needed for Creating an OTT Service

Creating an OTT platform requires using a whole complex of technologies and tools. The right choice and proper application of these components largely determine the service's quality, performance, and competitiveness.

1. Codecs. The basis of any video stream is codecs—programs responsible for compressing and decoding video data. The two most common encoding standards are H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC). H.264 provides a good balance between picture quality and file size, so it's still widely used in OTT. The newer H.265 allows achieving even better compression while maintaining high detail but requires more computational resources for encoding and decoding.
2. Protocols. Special protocols are used to deliver the video stream from the server to user devices. The most popular ones are RTMP, HLS, and MPEG-DASH. RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) is often used to transmit video from an encoder to a server. HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) and MPEG-DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) are adaptive streaming protocols that allow smoothly adjusting video quality to the available network bandwidth. Their support is necessary to ensure seamless playback on various devices.
3. Protection. Protecting content from unauthorized access and copying is a critically important aspect for any OTT service. For this, digital rights management (DRM) systems are used. Technologies such as Microsoft PlayReady, Google Widevine, and Apple FairPlay encrypt media files and control access to them based on licenses. Implementing a reliable DRM solution allows protecting intellectual property and preventing illegal content distribution.
4. CMS. Another important component of OTT infrastructure is the content management system (CMS). It allows centrally storing, organizing, and publishing media files, metadata, and other related resources. The CMS provides a convenient interface for content administrators and allows automating many routine tasks. Closely related to it, the media asset management system (MAM) is responsible for storing master copies, versioning, and managing the life cycle of media files. Integration of powerful CMS and MAM tools significantly simplifies working with large volumes of content.

Table: Comparison of popular video codecs

Monetization Issues

Monetization is a key factor in the success of any OTT project. A correctly chosen monetization model allows not only covering operational expenses but also ensuring stable profit growth. OTT providers have several proven revenue strategies at their disposal.

One of the most popular models is subscription (SVOD — Subscription Video on Demand). Users pay a fixed amount per month or year, receiving unlimited access to the entire content library. This approach provides predictable and regular income, increases audience loyalty, and simplifies the forecasting process. The success of the subscription model largely depends on content quality, update frequency, and a well-thought-out pricing policy.

An alternative to subscription is the purchase or rental of individual content units (TVOD — Transactional Video on Demand). Viewers pay for a specific movie, series, or episode they want to watch. TVOD works well for new or exclusive content, such as recent film releases or original shows. Key success factors include an attractive catalog, payment convenience, and optimal pricing.

Advertising (AVOD - Advertising Video on Demand) is another common way of monetization, especially for services with a large audience. Revenue is generated by displaying advertisements before, after, or during content viewing. The advertising model allows offering viewers free access to videos, which contributes to audience growth. However, it's important to find a balance between the amount of advertising and viewing convenience to avoid irritating users.

Many OTT services use a hybrid approach, combining several monetization models. For example, they offer a basic subscription with advertising and a premium ad-free plan or combine subscription with the ability to purchase individual content units. The flexibility and adaptability of the monetization strategy allow reaching various audience segments and maximizing revenue.

Implementing the chosen monetization model requires close integration with billing systems and payment gateways. The platform must ensure secure transaction processing, subscription management, and detailed report generation. Automating billing processes and subscription renewals helps minimize operational costs and improve the user experience.

Integration of Flussonic Media Server into an OTT Service

Flussonic Media Server is a powerful and flexible tool that provides extensive capabilities for creating and managing OTT platforms. Its integration allows significantly simplifying and optimizing video delivery processes, ensuring high service quality and convenience for end users.

One of the key advantages of Flussonic is live broadcast support. The media server ensures stable reception of video streams via RTMP, RTSP, and WebRTC protocols, performs real-time transcoding, and delivers them to viewers via HLS, MPEG-DASH, and WebRTC protocols. This allows the OTT service to offer high-quality live streams with minimal delay and adaptation to various devices and network conditions.

Flussonic also excels at delivering video on demand (VoD). It supports various media file formats, transcodes them into the required quality profiles, and packages them into adaptive HLS and MPEG-DASH formats. Thanks to the built-in video archive management system, Flussonic simplifies storage, cataloging, and content publication. And advanced caching and distribution mechanisms allow efficient video delivery even under high loads.

Content security is another strength of Flussonic. The media server provides video stream encryption and supports integration with leading DRM systems such as Microsoft PlayReady, Google Widevine, and Apple FairPlay. This allows reliably protecting content from unauthorized access and copying while maintaining the convenience of legal viewing for subscribers.

Flussonic's scalable architecture allows flexible adaptation to the growing needs of an OTT service. The media server supports clustering and distributed video processing, ensuring high availability and fault tolerance. And the possibilities for fine-tuning and optimization for specific tasks help achieve maximum performance and efficient resource utilization.

Flussonic also offers flexible tools for implementing various OTT service monetization models. It supports integration with popular billing systems and payment providers, allowing setting up payment acceptance for subscriptions, content purchase, and rental. The media server provides the ability to flexibly configure tariff plans, promotions, and discounts. Additionally, Flussonic provides tools for managing advertising display and integration with advertising networks, allowing effective implementation of the advertising monetization model.

Using Flussonic significantly reduces the time and costs of launching an OTT platform. Instead of developing proprietary tools and integrating disparate components, the provider receives a ready-made comprehensive solution that covers all key aspects of video delivery and monetization. And flexible configuration capabilities and a rich API make it easy to integrate Flussonic with external systems and services such as CMS, billing, and analytics.

Furthermore, the Flussonic team provides qualified technical support and consultations on the implementation and use of the media server. This helps resolve issues faster, optimize settings for specific business tasks, and ensure uninterrupted operation of the OTT service.

Thus, the integration of Flussonic Media Server opens up wide opportunities for OTT providers to create modern, competitive, and economically efficient video services, offering a holistic solution for content delivery and flexible monetization. The powerful and multifunctional Flussonic platform, combined with a well-thought-out architecture and quality support, allows successfully solving the most ambitious tasks and providing the audience with an attractive user experience on any device.

Conclusion

Launching your own OTT service is an exciting opportunity for media companies, opening new horizons in video content distribution and audience interaction. However, creating a successful OTT platform requires careful elaboration of many aspects—from content selection and monetization model to building a reliable technological infrastructure.

The key to success is choosing the right tools and partners who will help bring your service vision to life. Flussonic Media Server is a proven solution that offers the rich functionality, flexibility, and performance necessary for the efficient operation of a modern OTT platform. Thanks to support for various streaming protocols, advanced content protection mechanisms, and scaling capabilities, Flussonic allows creating a technologically perfect video service that meets the high expectations of modern viewers.

But even the most advanced technologies are just part of the success equation. It's equally important to develop a deep understanding of your audience, experiment with new formats, and constantly improve the user experience. Only a combination of technological excellence and a customer-oriented approach will allow you to create a unique and in-demand OTT service that can stand out from competitors and win viewer loyalty.