When you create a product and invest your time and resources into it, wouldn’t you want to know what people think of it? Of course you want to know how people are using it and if it’s been effective, so you can improve the product over time. The same goes for video streaming. When you invest your time and resources into creating a quality video stream, your immediate next step is to track the live streaming metrics, on where viewers dropped off or interest peaked.

On-demand video streaming has exploded all across the globe. Media content providers such as Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, and Hotstar have witnessed a huge growth spike over the past few years. Everyone is cord cutting, or moving away from cable TV and replacing it with on-demand video streaming subscriptions. With this increasing demand, consistent high performance and quality become a topic of concern. We’ve all encountered that one moment where the video goes dark during a pivotal scene or the video starts getting jumpy or reminiscent of Max Headroom, circa 1984. None of these on-demand platforms want their consumers to have a bad experience. In this article we share five video streaming metrics not a lot of people realize that have an impact on the stream performance for consumers.

1. Bit Rate & Play Rate

With bit rate, you understand the quality of the video a consumer is experiencing. It’s one of the most important metrics to measure the performance of video streaming. If a video has a higher than average bit rate, it typically means a higher resolution (quality) image. This means bit rate helps identify the number of bits of a video that can be transmitted over a certain period of time. An HDTV typically transmits between a bit rate of 8–15 Mbps, while for Netflix it’s 6 Mbps.

This also has a direct impact on the play rate of a particular video that helps further estimate the percentage of visitors who clicked on a particular video and began playing it. A merge of both the bit rate and play rate helps you understand how well a particular type of content is doing in a particular location, and what could be the success rate in the future. All videos do not have equal play rate. The videos which are appealing to a larger audience will of course have a higher play rate when compared to the rest.

2. Filling In The Buffer

The time one spends buffering when a video begins is really important. This helps you understand the duration of time a user waits before a certain video actually starts to play. Odds are if a user stares at the buffer rotating icon for a moment longer than usual, they will abandon watching the video before it even starts.

3. Post-Buffer Lag Length

Once the buffer is filled, the video will automatically begin to play. At this stage if the streaming is smooth, which also takes into account the right balance between download rate and bit rate, the viewer can watch the video. However, this might not always be the case. At times the buffering gets extended and the playback stops. The time you spend while the video buffers until it begins to play is together known as lag length. This metric helps you understand the users experience when they begin watching a video. The lag length should not be much longer than the buffer fill time, but if it does happen, that means the video streaming quality is extremely bad and needs a performance check.

4. Play Length Of Video

This is the total amount of data consumed by the viewer, which includes every second, minute and hour of the video streaming. This metric is equally important in understanding and planning out the infrastructure and capacity intake for streaming. With play length, you can make a rough estimate of the overall demand for the streamed data. These data volumes become quite useful to understand if the quality of content needs work.

5. Lag Ratio Of Video

Waiting time is technically called lag ratio, which is measured by calculating the overall waiting time in the video over the time spent watching the video. The lag ratio is never zero because the initial buffer fill that comes before the video plays remains, even if there is never a single buffer through the video. However, every effort should be made to keep the lag ratio as low as possible. Consider when you last watched a video, how many times did you wait through the buffer period? Three minutes of buffer time leads to 2.5 percent lag ratio.

These five metrics help improve the quality of the video so the conversion rate can be boosted in the long run. Consumers want the kind of video streaming service which is consistent, high quality, and easy to access, with less buffering. A geographically scattered viewership will have its direct impact on the performance of the video streaming, which is why an up-to-date load testing platform is required for streaming video. The infrastructure of the video streaming needs to be designed so consumers get to watch the videos they want, on whatever device they want, and at the highest quality they expect.