MUMBAI: When it comes to streaming short-form content, Zee5 isn’t just playing catch-up—it’s rewiring the race. In a move that’s part brainy, part ballsy, the OTT giant has unveiled its own in-house transcoder, a custom-built beast optimised for vertical videos that trims costs, speeds up start times, and delivers slick playback to boot.
India’s homegrown streaming powerhouse has ditched its third-party transcoding setup and built a bespoke system optimised for the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The result? A 20 per cent reduction in video start times, 10-15 per cent smaller file sizes, and a staggering 92 per cent drop in transcoding costs. Translation: viewers get smoother video, Zee5 gets cheaper bills, and the engineers probably got cake.
"At Zee5, we are constantly innovating to create superior viewing experiences while optimising operational efficiencies. We have taken a giant leap in delivering high-quality vertical content at scale with the in-house transcoder. This solution enables faster load times, reduced buffering, and seamless playback, ensuring our users get the best experience every time they press play. Additionally, the massive cost savings allow us to reinvest in creating even more compelling content for our audience,” said ZEEL SVP Suneel Khare.
With vertical video consumption exploding thanks to reels, shorts, and scroll-happy viewers, Zee5’s message-driven architecture is built for the now. It processes content at lightning pace, cutting down publishing delays to virtually zero. Since launch, the transcoder has reported zero bugs, zero playback issues, and possibly zero sleep for the dev team.
"Building a cloud-native transcoding solution in-house was a strategic move to future-proof our content delivery infrastructure. This innovation empowers us with complete control over video processing, ensuring better efficiency, scalability, and a higher degree of customisation. More importantly, it strengthens our ability to deliver high-quality content with unmatched cost efficiency, setting new benchmarks in the industry,” added Zee5 principal architect Rahul Banerjee.
The new tech not only supports Zee5’s current content ecosystem, but also tees up for future expansions in video encoding and format diversification. In an age where buffering equals boredom, and bloat equals bounce rates, Zee5’s in-house power play might just be the smoothest stream of all.
