HEVC Cloud Transcoding Is the Key to Reliable Live Streaming

Live video streaming is hard to get right. Between inconsistent network conditions and the pressure to deliver a flawless viewer experience every time, broadcasters face an uphill battle — and many stumble. Fortunately, there’s a powerful tool that helps deliver professional-grade live content, even on slower or non reliable connections. It’s called HEVC cloud transcoding — and surprisingly, some live streaming providers don’t use it.

Table of Contents

The Weight Your Stream Has to Carry
The Solution is in the Cloud
How HEVC Cloud Transcoding Translates to Your Viewers
Why Don't Some Providers Use HEVC Cloud Transcoding?

The Weight Your Stream Has to Carry

Imagine, for some wild reason, you’re tasked with moving a pile of sandbags across a football field. The bags come in different weights — 100, 75, 50, and 25 pounds — and you have to carry each bag across the field every minute, for 60 minutes, in front of a crowd of a few hundred people.

This metaphor demonstrates what your network is doing during a typical live stream. But instead of sandbags, it’s carrying your stream in different resolutions — 1080p, 720p, 480p, and 240p — all at once. Just like the sandbags, each resolution puts a different strain on your upload speed. It’s a heavy, relentless lift, and your network has to keep pace the entire time.

If it can’t keep up, viewers will notice — and they won’t stick around for long.

The Solution is in the Cloud

Simply put, cloud transcoding is the process of converting a single, high-quality video stream into multiple resolutions — in the cloud. Instead of asking your network to upload several different versions of your stream (1080p, 720p, 480p, 240p), you only need to send one high-quality stream — typically 1080p — to the cloud. From there, your cloud servers handle the rest, creating additional resolution options for viewers without taxing your local network.

Next, HEVC (also known as H.265) is a tremendously important part of cloud transcoding because it dramatically improves performance and efficiency over its predecessor, AVC (H.264). It can reduce file sizes by up to 50% without sacrificing video quality — which means significantly less bandwidth is required to broadcast. When combined with the power of cloud transcoding, this advanced compression technology makes it possible to deliver high-quality video, even over lower-capacity networks.

Back to our earlier metaphor: with HEVC cloud transcoding, you only carry just one sandbag across the field. When you get to the other side, the rest magically appear. That means instead of carrying four bags weighing a combined 250 pounds every minute, you're just moving a single 100-pound bag — and letting the cloud do the majority of the heavy lifting.

In other words, HEVC cloud transcoding makes streaming a whole lot easier, your stream much more reliable.

How HEVC Cloud Transcoding Translates to Your Viewers

It’s worth pausing for a moment to state that breaking your broadcast into multiple quality levels is an absolute must for those watching your stream. This is of the utmost importance because not all of your viewers will be able to watch at your max resolution available based on limitations from their personal network or device. So providing them with multiple adaptive options to give them the best possible stream quality without buffering is essential, and it’s something that they’ve come to subconsciously expect based on years of adaptive viewing from other streaming and video platforms.

In other words, HEVC cloud transcoding makes adaptive bitrate streaming much more possible, and your viewers ultimately a whole lot happier, which is what matters most. Isn’t it?

Why Don't Some Providers Use HEVC Cloud Transcoding?

The answer is simple: HEVC cloud transcoding is technically complex and one of the most expensive parts of delivering live video. Many streaming providers skip it to save on costs or avoid the engineering challenges required to support it at scale.

At BoxCast, HEVC cloud transcoding has been a non-negotiable from day one. We know streaming is hard — but we also know that the right technology makes high-quality, reliable broadcasts far more achievable.

We care deeply about your broadcasts and your audience. That’s why we build tools that give you the best shot at delivering your message clearly, beautifully, and efficiently — no matter what your network throws at you.

Yes, live video streaming is hard. But with BoxCast and HEVC cloud transcoding, it doesn’t have to be.