System Design Walkthrough: Short-Video Upload, Processing, and Delivery
Context
You recently built a system that lets users upload short videos, processes them into adaptive-bitrate streams, performs safety/moderation, and serves them at scale via a CDN. Present a high-level architecture and explain how it meets product and operational requirements.
Deliverables
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High-level architecture diagram (ASCII/block diagram is fine).
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Walkthrough of:
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Components and data stores
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Key APIs and data flows (sync vs. async; protocols)
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Scaling strategy and capacity planning
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Fault tolerance, backpressure, idempotency, retries
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Observability (logging, metrics, tracing)
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Security (authN/authZ, secrets, PII)
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Major trade-offs and cost considerations
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Concrete improvements you would make next
Be prepared for deep dives into specific components (e.g., upload resumability, transcoder autoscaling, or moderation latency).