Abstract:

The global surge in demand for real-time video content has exposed the limitations of conventional streaming systems, which often struggle to maintain a consistent and high-quality viewing experience across diverse and fluctuating network conditions. The core challenge lies in designing a system that can dynamically adapt to variable bandwidth and latency while serving a massive concurrent user base. This paper introduces VividStream, a novel real-time video streaming architecture engineered to overcome these hurdles. The system is founded on a containerized microservices framework that cleanly separates the processes of video ingestion, processing, and distribution into independent, scalable components. Its primary innovations include a context-aware adaptive bitrate algorithm that synthesizes real-time network throughput with client buffer status for superior decision-making, a multi-codec encoding ladder that optimizes bandwidth utilization across different device profiles, and an intelligent edge delivery network that minimizes latency through geolocation based routing. Empirical performance evaluations confirm the system's capability to sustain end-to-end latency figures below two seconds for live content, achieve exceptional service reliability of 99.95 percent, and reduce viewer-side rebuffering incidents by over ninety percent when benchmarked against traditional adaptive streaming methodologies. This research provides a comprehensive and practical model for constructing future-generation streaming platforms that prioritize user experience at a global scale.