What is VOD? A Comprehensive Guide to Video on Demand

In today's digital age, video on demand (VOD) has become a cornerstone of media consumption. But why has it gained such popularity, and what exactly is VOD? Whether you're a casual viewer or a media enthusiast, understanding VOD is key to keeping up with the fast-changing world of digital entertainment. This comprehensive guide will delve into the world of video on demand.

What does VOD Meaning?

VOD or VODs, short for "Video on Demand", is a video service model. It allows users to choose and watch video content at any time according to their needs, without the need to follow a predetermined schedule or channel to watch.

In a VOD or VODs service, video content is stored on a server and transmitted to the user over the Internet or other networks. Users can use a variety of devices (such as TVS, computers, smartphones, etc.) to connect to the VOD platform, browse and select the videos they want to watch. Users can pause, continue, rewind or fast forward the video at any time to watch it according to their preferences and schedule.

VOD or VODs services offer a wide range of video content, including movies, TV series, documentaries, sporting events, music videos, and more. Users can choose what they want to watch based on their interests and preferences, and there are often multiple language and subtitle options to choose from.

The emergence of VOD allows users to enjoy video content more flexibly, and is no longer limited by the traditional TV programming schedule. It has become one of the important ways to consume modern entertainment and is widely used in many streaming platforms and video services.

What is VOD Streaming?

VOD streaming media uses streaming media technology to realize real-time transmission and playback of video content. Streaming media is a technology that transmits audio and video data in segments, allowing users to stream buffering while downloading and playing. This technology allows users to watch a video without waiting for the entire video file to download.

VOD streaming works by breaking video content into small chunks of data (usually a few seconds in length) that are then transmitted over the network to the user's device. After receiving the data block, the user device streams the buffer and plays it back in real time. This allows users to start watching the video at the same time it loads, without having to wait for the entire video to download completely.

The advantage of VOD streaming is that users can choose and watch video content according to their own preferences and schedule, without being limited to a specific time and place. Users can pause, continue, rewind or fast forward the video at any time to better fit their viewing habits and schedule.

The development of streaming media technology and the popularity of broadband Internet make VOD streaming media become one of the important ways of modern entertainment consumption. Many streaming platforms and video services offer VOD streaming services that enable users to easily watch various types of video content.

If you don't know what streaming media, here is where you can learn more about streaming media.

What is The Difference Between Live Video and VOD?

Live video and VOD (Video on Demand) are two different video service models, and they have the following differences:

• Real-time: Live video is the real-time transmission and playback of the happening content, and the audience can watch the event that is happening in real time. VOD is pre-recorded video content that users can choose and watch at any time according to their needs.
• Interactive: Live video is usually interactive, and viewers can interact with anchors or other viewers in real time through bullet screens, comments, likes, etc. VOD is pre-recorded content, and viewers can't interact with the content in real time.
• How to watch: Live streaming requires viewers to instantly connect to the live stream source while the live stream is in progress to watch what is happening. VOD can be selected and watched at any time according to the needs of the audience, regardless of time and place.
• Video content: Live video is usually a live event, performance, competition, etc., that viewers can watch in real time. VOD provides pre-recorded video content, including movies, TV series, documentaries, etc.
• Storage and bandwidth requirements: Live video requires real-time transmission and processing of video data, which requires high storage and bandwidth. VOD is pre-recorded video that can be processed and stored in advance, with relatively low storage and bandwidth requirements.

To sum up, live video and VOD are two different video service models. Live video is real-time and interactive, suitable for watching events that are happening. VOD has the flexibility and convenience to select and watch pre-recorded video content at any time according to individual needs.

Why VOD is Essential for Businesses?

In today's competitive market, VOD (Video on Demand) has become an indispensable tool for businesses. VOD can help businesses grow in the following ways:

• Branding and marketing: Businesses can use VOD platforms to showcase and promote their brands, products and services. By producing and publishing engaging video content, businesses can reach a larger target audience and increase brand awareness and exposure.
• Product demonstration and education: VOD can be used to demonstrate the functionality, features, and usage of a product. Businesses can create product demo videos or educational videos to provide potential and existing customers with detailed information and guidance about the product, thereby increasing their knowledge and trust in the product.
• Training and education: Companies can use VOD platforms to provide training and education content, including employee training, skills training, industry knowledge sharing, and more. By providing high-quality training videos, companies can upgrade the capabilities and knowledge of their employees, thereby improving overall business performance.
• Customer Support and Service: VOD can be used to provide video content for customer support and service. Companies can create videos that answer frequently asked questions, demonstrate how to use products, and provide troubleshooting guides to help customers solve problems and provide a better service experience.

By leveraging the advantages and capabilities of VOD, companies can expand brand influence, enhance product awareness, increase sales opportunities, improve customer satisfaction, and so on, thereby contributing to business growth.

How to Choose the Right Video on Demand Platform?

When choosing the right Video on Demand platform, you should consider whether it has the following key features:

• Automatic transcoding: This creates multiple files of the same video, each with a different size, resolution, and bit rate to make the content viewable on the widest possible range of devices.
• Video hosting: This simplifies the uploading, storage, management, organization, and distribution of VOD content.
• Adaptive streaming: It adjusts video quality based on device capacity and network conditions to provide viewers with seamless playback.
• CDN: This reduces the load on the original server and ensures that VOD content reaches viewers around the world faster and more safely.
• Privacy and security: This protects VOD content from unauthorized access and download with features such as AES encryption, DRM, signing tokens, and geographic and domain restrictions.
• Data analytics: This helps businesses measure video performance and make informed business decisions based on the data.
• API and SDK access: This allows customization and integration of external applications and technologies. If you want to make your own app to connect to streaming platforms, this is what you need.

Why Choose EdgeOne VOD Service?

EdgeOne VOD provides one-stop VPaaS (Video Platform as a Service) solutions for audio/video capture, upload, storage, automated transcoding, and accelerated playback, as well as media asset management. It enables you to deliver high-quality video in a quick and flexible way, so you can focus on your business, select services as needed, and respond to market changes with agility.

Product Architecture

The product architecture of EdgeOne VOD is shown in the diagram below:

Product Advantage

EdgeOne VOD has the following product advantages:

1. Storage

VOD supports redundant storage across architectures and devices, remote site disaster recovery, and isolated storage.

Media files can be deleted automatically when they expire, saving storage space and reducing storage costs.

2. Transcoding

VOD has more than 12,000 distributed transcoding clusters, which can support up to 2,000 concurrent transcoding tasks.

You can add watermarks to videos as needed and set different transcoding formats to adapt to different scenarios.

To meet the personalized transcoding needs of VOD for customers from various industries, such as improving face recognition accuracy, reducing bitrates, and optimizing image quality, EdgeOne VOD has launched the scenario transcoding feature. Users can apply more suitable transcoding templates according to their different transcoding needs without configuring transcoding parameters, thereby improving video effects and reducing video storage and distribution costs.

Click here to experience the effect of scenario transcoding template online for free.

3. Media AI

Powered by Tencent Cloud’s advanced AI technologies and rich experience in content management, VOD offers media AI capabilities including content moderation, content analysis, and content recognition, helping you minimize manual work.

• Content moderation: VOD leverages AI technologies to detect pornographic and other non-compliant content in images, speech, and text. It can detect various types of sensitive information with different levels of strictness to meet your and your customers’ needs, helping you protect your brand image and avoid potential legal risks.
• Content analysis: Intelligent categorization, labeling, and thumbnail generation.
• Content recognition: Face recognition, speech recognition (subtitle generation), OCR, opening and closing segment recognition.

4. Just-In-Time Transcoding

Just-In-Time Transcoding function refers to the real-time generation of transcoding content according to user requests, and the instant transcoding file cache to the on-demand CDN. The processing time of real-time transcoding is much less than that of offline processing, and it is almost completed synchronously during distribution, which realizes the effect of instant broadcast and instant transfer. And real-time transcoding media files do not occupy storage space, can effectively save storage costs.

Instant transcoding has the characteristics of extremely short time, low storage cost and simple configuration operation. Suitable for UGC short video, long video, broadcast OTT and other video scenes.

Click here, you can free online experience Just-In-Time  transcoding, simple operation can be online preview Just-In-Time  transcoding effect.

Conclusion

VOD is a video service model that allows users to choose and watch video content at any time according to their needs, without having to watch it on a pre-set schedule or channel. VOD streaming is a technology that transmits audio and video data in segments, allowing users to stream buffering while downloading and playing. The technology allows users to watch videos without waiting for the entire video file to download. Live video and Video on Demand (VOD) are two different video service modes, the difference is that the real-time video, interactivity, video source, video content, storage and bandwidth are different. 

When choosing a VOD streaming platform, consider factors such as automatic transcoding, video hosting, adaptive streaming, CDN, privacy and security, data analytics, and API and SDK access to meet the needs of uploading, storing, managing, distributing, and securing VOD content, as well as providing a quality viewing experience and business decision support.

Here we recommend you to use EdgeOne VOD platform for video media storage, transcoding, distribution and playback. Click here to start free trial or contact us for more information.