As 4K and even 8K ultra-high-definition video become mainstream, the server performance demands faced by film and television websites are rising at an unprecedented rate. From basic bandwidth to storage architecture, from encoding and decoding efficiency to concurrent user support, traditional server architectures can no longer meet these rapidly growing technical demands. With the trend towards high-definition streaming, how should film and television websites rationally allocate server resources to build a robust and efficient content delivery platform?
Technical Load Characteristics of 4K/8K Video
Before planning a server architecture, it is crucial to understand the system resource consumption of 4K and 8K video. 4K video has a resolution of 3840x2160, while 8K reaches 7680x4320. At the same encoding efficiency, their raw bitrates can reach hundreds of megabytes or even higher. One hour of uncompressed 8K content can reach hundreds of GB in size, and even with H.265 compression, the bitrate is between 50 and 100 Mbps. This means that to support 10,000 users simultaneously watching 8K live broadcasts, the backend requires at least:
100Mbps * 10,000 = 1Tbps of bandwidth.
This shows that streaming servers have evolved from simple content hosting platforms to technological foundations requiring extremely high network, storage, and processing capabilities.
Bandwidth Configuration: The Core of the Core
Bandwidth remains the most critical bottleneck resource in streaming services. When deploying servers, film and television sites must consider bandwidth scalability from the outset. Basic bandwidth recommendations: For small and medium-sized film and television sites (with 10,000 daily active users), at least 500Mbps shared bandwidth is recommended. For dedicated bandwidth deployments in overseas nodes (such as Hong Kong and Japan), CN2 GIA or BGP multi-line dedicated bandwidth starting at 10Gbps is recommended. The bandwidth elasticity mechanism uses on-demand bandwidth billing to avoid resource waste or insufficient emergency response caused by static pre-sets. Furthermore, in high-concurrency scenarios, cache servers (Edge Nodes) should be placed as close as possible to user edges to reduce bandwidth pressure on the origin server.
Building a High-Performance Storage Architecture
Film and TV sites require massive storage capacity, but not all content needs to be read in real time. Therefore, a tiered storage mechanism is crucial: Hot data, such as newly released film and TV resources, should be deployed on NVMe SSD arrays to improve concurrent read efficiency. Cold data, such as historical episodes or less frequently accessed content, can be transferred to SATA hard disk arrays or object storage. A high-speed caching system, built using Nginx + FastDFS combined with Redis, significantly improves the instant loading experience. Consider the file system choice; XFS and ZFS are more suitable for high concurrency, large file sharding, and RAID control.
Content Delivery Network (CDN) and Load Balancing Strategies
To ensure high-speed access for users across regions, CDN deployment has become a must-have for film and TV website architectures. Current high-security CDNs, combined with video transmission optimization algorithms, can support stable output even under high concurrency. Common solutions include deploying origin servers with international CDN nodes for global coverage; deploying overseas film and TV sites in Hong Kong or Singapore nodes, combined with optimized CDN for edge caching. Load balancing can use Nginx or HAProxy to distribute front-end load, and health checks can automatically failover to failed nodes to improve availability.
upstream video_backend {
server 192.168.1.10 max_fails=3 fail_timeout=30s;
server 192.168.1.11 max_fails=3 fail_timeout=30s;
}Transcoding and Compression Strategy Optimization
Even with ample bandwidth, native 4K/8K streams are still difficult to adapt to all devices. Therefore, adopting ABR (Advanced Bitrate Transcoding) technology has become the mainstream approach. FFmpeg deploys GPU-accelerated nodes for real-time transcoding; HLS + MPEG-DASH dynamically switches bitrates based on user devices; and cache optimization pre-transcodes and caches files of different bitrates to reduce real-time computing pressure. Configurable transcoding clusters enable integrated video upload, transcoding, and distribution.
Security Mechanisms and Copyright Protection
High-definition video has extremely high commercial value, making anti-hotlinking, anti-piracy, and anti-scraping measures essential: set up a referer whitelist and anti-hotlink signature verification; deploy a WAF (Web Application Firewall) to prevent malicious API calls; and use DRM (Digital Rights Management) to encrypt content and prevent unauthorized access.
location /video/ {
valid_referers none blocked *.mydomain.com;
if ($invalid_referer) {
return 403;
}
}Server Foundation for the Next-Generation Video Experience
With the increasing quality and explosive growth of video content consumption, film and television websites are no longer simply facing the pressure of web page requests; they are constantly challenged by throughput limits. Proper server configuration not only affects the user viewing experience but is also fundamental to a website's ability to maintain its position in a competitive market. In 2025, at the dawn of the 4K/8K era, it's time to embrace the next wave of streaming media with a video distribution system truly designed for high concurrency, low latency, and high traffic.
