alt Hacker NewsFor people in within the industry or the tech side of it, Netflix’s engineering blog has always been fascinating and extremely useful because of the insane amount of stuff in this space they have solved or reworked. They have put more into tech side of modern-day TV/film than anybody else, and it's not even close. In a technical/workflow sense, working on a Netflix show is unlike working on any other. I have my issues with Netflix in other respects, but with respect to technology and workflow, they are awesome.
If you’re unable to appreciate a behind-the-scenes look at their engineering because the technology isn't for you or available to you, that's totally valid! But it's a you're not interested thing, not a Netflix is boasting about something that doesn't matter thing. Only a few thousand teams in the world need most of what they do over there, but that doesn't mean they aren't massive technical achievements. Most of them are. The scale, complexity, and cadence of modern production has given rise to some of the biggest technical challenges I’ve ever seen. And for anyone close to that world, this kind of content is of great interest — if not genuinely valuable.
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I didn't say it wasn't interesting, but I'll take the bait: the article is light on details and misleading.
Light on details: the article is almost 3000 words, filled with vague and low-effort content: a lot more "We're so big and global!" and not nearly so much "Here's the problem we faced because we're so big and global, and here's how we solved it."
Misleading: they use the word "democratizes" twice: "we have crafted a scalable solution that ... democratizes access to advanced production tools across the globe" and "we’ve taken a bold step forward in enabling a suite of tools inside Netflix Content Hub that democratizes technology: the Media Production Suite" -- do you really get to say "democratizes" when you're describing an in-house system?
Netflix get away with it because they own the result at the end of the process. If you were to suggest these workflows to other studios they'd balk at the idea of having the raw stuff being uploaded to the cloud etc. If they tried selling this as a solution do we think people outside Netflix would buy and use it?
One of the people I worked with that is now at Netflix on this stuff was so violently opposed to not owning his own in office render farm and drive array it verged on ridiculous.
> They have put more into tech side of modern-day TV/film than anybody else, and it's not even close
I feel Disney is up there too they just don't blog about it
Netflix is case of "nothing succeeds like success". We have at work a lot of Netflix libraries, frameworks etc which are in deprecated / half-assed state waiting to be replaced for years. It all works for Netflix because they can spend ton of money , resources and people and make even dubious shit work.
I think it will remain fine for Netflix in any case keep or replace. But companies who keep using Netflix OSS, or architecture ideas only because Netflix is so cool are going to have worse outcomes. Case in point is Micro services revolution which is almost invented and promoted by Netflix.
They have put more into tech side of modern-day TV/film than anybody else
This is objectively not true. Netflix has put almost no tech into the basic tooling of modern day TV/film (i.e., the cameras or audio equipment) or the software used to produce the content, or even the tech used to create the sets, makeup, CGI, or any of the other actual work that goes into producing the content.
The only place where Netflix has put in more work is on the non-linear distribution side.
Netfix is way behind the big dogs in the live streaming space. Peacock...the smallest major streaming service... livestreamed dozens of Olympic sports simultaneously at HD and 4K resolutions to over a hundred million simultaneous viewers without issue. Netflix couldn't handle half of that traffic for a single boxing match without crashing or degrading the streams to CRT-era resolution. The biggest player in the live streaming space is Disney Streaming (fka BAMTech before its acquisition) which was created to create the technology to stream MLB games and now currently provides the technology for ESPN streaming, NHL, MLB, Blaze Media, and Hulu's live streams.
The difference is that Netflix's competitors don't brag about their technology.