-->
Save your FREE seat for Streaming Media Connect this August. Register Now!

What's the Best Chunk Size for Low-Latency Live Streaming?

The best chunk size for low-latency streaming is dependent on a number of factors based on different use cases, and there is often a need for compromise and tradeoffs. Nadine Krefetz, Consultant, Reality Software, Contributing Editor, Streaming Media, asks three industry experts what their chunk size preferences are for the particular needs of their platforms.

“We have somewhere like four to six seconds right now,” says Pankaj Chaudhari, Architect - Video Delivery, Disney Streaming. “There are many different tradeoffs to consider here. And though if the chunk size of the segment size is too low, obviously you are trying to get to a lower hand waving latency, glass-to-glass latency. The tradeoff is that now you have many connections, many requests are being sent to the protocol, the workflow becomes a little bit chatty, there are many numbers of requests per second that are coming in. But then at the same time, you are inserting a lot of keyframes in the segments. Every segment starts with a keyframe. And so the smaller the segment size, the more keyframes there will be over the course of the playback. And that may not be efficient from a cost point of view because there are more numbers of bits being delivered.”

Chaudhari also notes that Disney does not really have a use case for low latency. “Which is where WebRTC is not in use for us,” he says. “[So] four to six [seconds] kind of finds the nice, sweet spot wherein we have a balance of a good number of bytes being added to the payload, to the segments from a coding point of view, but also achieve reasonable latency.”

Krefetz says to Jonas Ribeiro, Digital Products, Platform and AdTech Manager, Globo, “You've got a lot of different things that you're supporting. Why don't you give us a little bit of background on that?”

“The live streaming size is six or seven seconds,” Ribeiro says. “We have a battle here because I do the TV broadcast and also do the live streaming. I believe that it is easier to delay the broadcast to be the same time as the live streaming, but this is not possible. For soccer games, we have a product that we call Premiere.” He says that this is a more expensive product due to higher technical requirements. It delivers in two-second chunk sizes to reduce latency. “It's just to give a better experience to these subscribers and it works well,” he says. “But it's not the same when you're seeing the broadcast and the live streaming, and I believe that is going to be a quite challenge, because it's a tradeoff.”

Imran Maskatia, VP of Product Development, Evoca TV, talks about the chunk size requirements for Evoca. “We use two-second segment sizes,” he says. “The reason we do so is for quicker channel change because as a TV service, we find a lot of people flipping channels, and the ability to start more quickly when you do that is kind of important for our customers.” He also mentions that he recently read a study out in South Korea. “They did a whole bunch of experimentation and looked empirically at everything from like a quarter second to five, ten seconds. And supposedly…they said that the optimal segment size tradeoff both for bandwidth, for fast channel change, etc., was somewhere around 0.9 seconds.”

“And that’s in the ATSC 3.0 environment?” Krefetz asks.

“That’s in the ATSC 3.0 context, right, for channel change,” Maskatia says. “So obviously there's a particular scope and use case in mind there, but it's a tradeoff.”

Learn more about chunk size and low-latency streaming at Streaming Media West 2022.

Watch full-session videos from Streaming Media Connect 2022.

Streaming Covers
Free
for qualified subscribers
Subscribe Now Current Issue Past Issues
Related Articles

CDN77's Juraj Kacaba Talks Low-Latency Streaming and the Edge

CDN77's Juraj Kacaba sits down with Tim Siglin to discuss low-latency streaming and the edge in this interview from Streaming Media East 2023.

Vindral CEO Daniel Alinder Talks Latency, Sync, 8K, and Vindral

Tim Siglin of Help Me Stream Research Foundation sits down with Daniel Alinder of Vindral to discuss latency, sync, 8K, and Vindral in this Streaming Media East 2023 interview.

Know Your Tech for Low-Latency Streaming

videoRx's Robert Reinhardt guides viewers through the key enabling technologies of low-latency streaming, including server ingest and client delivery protocols like WebRTC, NDI, RTMP, and HLS in this presentation from Streaming Media West 2022.

How to Monitor Many Live Event Streams at Once

How do you meet the challenges of monitoring stream performance and quality for dozens or thousands of live streams at once? Experts from Paramount, Dolby, TAG Video Systems, and Nomad Technologies discuss multistream monitoring tech and strategies in this panel from Streaming Media West 2022.

Latency vs. Quality for Live Streaming at Scale

How much streaming reliability and quality are worth trading for ultra-low latency, and when is one at a premium over the others? Amagi's Brian Ring, Dolby,io's David Hassoun, Nomad Technologies' Adam Miller, Paramount's Corey Smith, and Norsk CMO Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen discuss in this panel from Streaming Media West 2022.

How to Localize Live Event Streams

What are the most dynamic approaches for localizing live event streams? Dan Turow of Evertz and Marisa Elizondo of fuboTV talk about the ways their organizations are working to best integrate local and user-preference-based content and experiences into live event streams.

Low-Latency Streaming for Interactive Video

Interactive streaming is the future for high-quality ultra-low latency applications that will unlock unique and unprecedented experiences for users

Will Live Linear Streaming Replace Traditional Broadcast TV?

Digital-first unicast streaming platforms give viewers more flexibility over traditional linear broadcasting while lessening the unpredictable complications of live scheduled programming like sporting events, says Jean Macher of Harmonic

How Latency Hinders Hybrid and Cloud Production

CNN+ Live Operations Manager Ben Ratner discusses how even "ultra-low latency" complicates hybrid (cloud and on-prem) workflows in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2022.

SVC and Low-Latency Video Conferencing

Andy Howard and Tim Siglin discuss the importance of low latency in video conferencing and how popular video conferencing tools like Zoom, Teams, and WebEx use scalable video encoding to guarantee access and lower latency in this clip from their panel at Streaming Media Connect 2022.

What ATSC 3.0 Means for Multicast, Mobile, and UHD

ATEME VP Technology Sassan Pejhan explains how ATSC 3.0 opens up new opportunities for apps providing personalization and customization, and enables spectrum-saving HD and UHD delivery to mobile, among other benefits in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2021.

Why ATSC 3.0 Matters

Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) President Madeleine Noland explains how ATSC 3.0 came about, what a quantum leap it represents over ATSC 1.0, and how it's designed both to reflect the emergence of 4K, HDR, and other essential elements of current-day OTA and OTT, but how the IP-based standard is built with the elasticity to accommodate new developments as well.

Companies and Suppliers Mentioned