Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Netflix’s Media Production Suite

netflixtechblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 154 posts

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#121

Post by gamblor956 »

dkh wrote: post #73
gcanyon wrote: post #33

I read through that whole article thinking, - I wonder what the UI looks like compared to tools I use now - I wonder if there will be a free tier, since my video needs are modest It never occurred to me until I reached the end that this wasn't a "enjoy this tool we made" post, but instead a "look how awesome we are" post. :-/

For 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 issue…

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.

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#122

Post by gamblor956 »

fidotron wrote: post #98
dkh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 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 issue…

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 owni…

The major studios use cloud services all the time. For example, Paramount uses AWS. Disney has its own internal cloud system but also uses a combination of external clouds like AWS.

The resistance to cloud services is based on preventing leaks, not opposition to technology.

And in specific response to your comment: Netflix's "technology" is just a content management system. They're just reinventing a wheel that many of their competitors already use and bragging about something that Disney, Paramount, etc., did over a decade ago when they began embracing digital-first production.

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#123

Post by dkh »

cush wrote: post #115
dkh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 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 issue…

> 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

All of the players in this echelon have contributed massively, and all of them have pretty wild workflows and impressive solutions to technical problems. If we were measuring technical achievement across the broader history of filmed entertainment, there’s a strong case to be made for Disney as the most influential. But when it comes to how content is produced and distributed today, Netflix has definitely invested the most into tackling modern challenges and continues to do so, and these efforts feed directly into the meticulous, end-to-end workflow that’s applied across every production.

There are plenty of people who have worked on Netflix and non-Netflix shows and would would argue that Netflix's workflow and high standards are difficult if you're not used to it yet, or more stringent than they'd like, but very few would deny the end results or technical superiority

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#124

Post by pests »

whatevertrevor wrote: post #69
pests wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never been able to second screen, I just can't focus on my PC while listening to something. It's literally white noise to me. I do understand people do this though. When I do watch media seriously, I pay attention and keep off my devices.

Yeah my attention during second screening is split such that I'm now doing two things _terribly_ instead of one thing well. I've decided to only have music or something equally non intrusive in the background instead of second screening a show/video/podcast.

I use music too but it can't have too many vocals. I will start to pay attention and get distracted. Similar to how I can't fall asleep with a TV on, I'm still going to listen to it.

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#125

Post by dkh »

youngNed wrote: post #118
cush wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I find it weird that people don't think of the BBC as a tech company, from their work on microphones way back in the day, to launching iPlayer (before youtube, and launching on christmas day iirc) to regular live streaming of huge events in 4k (something netflix has struggled with). But yet they are never recognised for their engineering.

They've done a lot of great stuff and I've always followed their engineering-related tools and content as well! In particular they made some major contributions to media archival and analysis tools, and, yes of course, to web players. Unfortunately they haven't put as much focus on a lot of it in recent years, at least not in the tools they've opened sourced and topics they used to write about a lot

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#126

Post by mrguyorama »

alwinaugustin wrote: post #71

I can see this evolving into something like AWS — a platform that offers high-end production tools to anyone willing to pay. That would democratize access to cutting-edge tech, effectively solving the tooling problem. But it still wouldn’t address the real bottleneck: compelling storytelling.

Netflix doesn't make "stories" or "films" or "art" or anything that impressive.

They make "content", and the distinction is super important.

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#127

Post by dkh »

gamblor956 wrote: post #121
dkh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 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 issue…

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 ha…

I should’ve been more specific—I was referring to the modern-day workflow for producing a scripted series, which is what the article was about. In that context, Netflix has the most technically sophisticated workflow and tooling to optimize production of that kind of content, from the perspective of creatives working on those sorts of shows. Certainly they have major blind spots in a lot of user-facing stuff that they only recently started to care about, with live content being a huge one.

I've been a big fan of peaock! The Olympics coverage was massively impressive. Like much of what Peacock does, their success wasn't just about comprehensively covering it (which they did do) but also with how cleverly they packaged it, and all sorts of cool features it had that nobody else does/did, like the "Gold Zone" Red Zone-esque whip-around coverage, the constantly-updating highlights and key moments, etc. My impression of Peacock from the beginning was very good because their design and interface pretty much blows everyone else's away, and then I continued to be impressed after discovering a lot of these "cleverness" features, like when I noticed while watching soccer matches that the key moments/highlights were tagged and timestamped for easy access in real-time as they were occurring. I just wish they had a better catalog of shows to go along with. It is worth noting that while they are the smallest streamer, they do have one of the largest budgets and are probably the least burdened by existential risk because they've got Comcast behind them

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#128

Post by dkh »

tuna74 wrote: post #112
dkh wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collateral was not the first fully digitally shot feature film. In fact, Collateral was not even fully digital. (The first major , all-digital, HD feature film was Attack of the Clones , but there were other fully-digital feature films before that, just not as major, and/or not always HD. Robert Rodriguez' Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2001) was fully digital.) But you are right that Collateral did do something very ne…

"But you are right that Collateral did do something very new/unusual at the time, and that was shooting scenes in higher frame-rates than 24, and mixing multiple frame rates in a film. (This might not sound like much, but until this time, pretty much every film was 24fps for the previous eighty years and it had a very specific look that everyone's eyes/brains were conditioned for, unbeknownst to them.)" Why was certa…

Correct, theaters at the time could not really been project anything other than 24fps. So there were 2 parts to the shooting style, and one of them is what you describe, shooting at the higher frame rate used in order to have it play back slower when conformed to 24. But they did this in a pretty unusual way. During the action sequences, they would ramp up frame rate from 24 to 30 and back down. They would do adjust during the shot, so the action scenes had these subtle but constantly-occurring increases and decreases in speed that looked very interesting and had not been done before.

The other major part was the shutter speed. They of course could not actually shoot/project 48/60fps, but they a shot a lot scenes at the high shutter speeds one typically uses when shooting those frame rates, a lot of it had that "ultratrealistic" look that people had weren't used to in films, resembling more the look of video, TV soap operas in 60i, etc.

I feel slightly absurd even writing about this considering how little of this really applies today, and how inconsequential changing the shutter speed on a camera is now. "I hit the '+ shutter' button a couple of times, revolutionary!" But it's crazy how conditioned everyone was to these looks at the time due to how little variety there was. I taught this film class where I would demonstrate to everyone, with nearly 100% success, that they all were influenced by and conditioned for these frame rates, even if they didn't know what a frame rate was. We'd shoot a scene with multiple cameras side-by-side shooting at different frames rates, play it back to the class later, and ask which one looked "more like a movie" to them. Invariably, even if they couldn't explain why, everyone always picked the 24p version

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#129

Post by dangoor »

okdood64 wrote: post #109
fidotron wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 owni…

> they'd balk at the idea of having the raw stuff being uploaded to the cloud Why?

Perhaps over fears of their shows getting leaked early. Apple apparently has people using Remote Desktop for severance: https://tedium.co/2025/03/29/severance-apple-remote-editing-...

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#130

Post by dkh »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #107
diab0lic wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until a few years ago most projects at Netflix were done with a handful of engineers ( <= 6 ). A dozen people working on something would have been considered very large. Four dozen would have been considered a company wide effort.

isn't the TCO for those engineers also something like 400k each? not talking Principle Big-Dick Super-Staff Engineer, but like mid-level. Netflix was famous for that, too -- no RSUs, just straight cash, and we'll fire you if we think you can't deliver. 100s of devs would essentially be their entire, company-wide, operating budget; it's gotta be like 10-15 people tops on these things.

Netflix is still pretty cash-heavy on average, though with a lot more compensation going towards stock options in recent years. They let the employee choose the ratio. They pay extremely well, but this comes along with very high hiring standards and a very difficult culture.

The culture was and still is as you have described, with massively high pressure, "radical candor" taken to arguably very unhealthy levels, and with no hesitation in firing you. This is a major reason why, despite the fact that I am a video engineer with a film background who lives walking distance to 2 of their campuses and has a great amount of respect for their technical achievements, I never apply there.

Post reply on HN