Optimizing Video Playback Startup Experience on iQIYI Mobile App

Project Background : The iQIYI mobile app serves billions of video playback requests daily. Playback speed and experience are critical for user retention, especially as higher audio‑video quality increases resource consumption. The playback chain involves network conditions, CDN, P2P, device performance, and content resolution, making startup optimization a key challenge.

Playback Process : A complete startup consists of three stages – UI creation, data download, and decoding/rendering. The diagram below illustrates the full playback flow.

Optimization Practices :

Preloading : Trigger partial video data download before playback when network conditions allow, reducing perceived network latency.

Pre‑rendering (Pre‑decode) : After preloading, decode frames in advance and cache them, shortening decoding time.

Pre‑creation : Create player instances in advance (multiple instances) so that the next video can start instantly, achieving near‑zero startup time in vertical full‑screen scenarios.

Initialization Simplification : Early start of playback initialization thread, migrate configuration data to MMKV, use a lightweight ffmpeg library, and avoid loading unused APIs. This reduces initialization latency by about 1.5 seconds.

Network Latency Optimization : Pre‑resolve DNS for common domains, cache IPs, employ multi‑source scheduling, connection selection based on speed, cost, and real‑time feedback, and use a closed‑loop CDN selection system.

Decoding Startup Strategy : Device‑aware codec selection (e.g., HEVC), moov atom placement, low‑buffer startup with separate start‑buffer and stall‑buffer levels, and adaptive bitrate based on network conditions.

Summary & Outlook : By addressing user‑perceived pain points across UI creation, data download, and decoding, iQIYI has achieved a playback startup experience that outperforms competitors. Future work includes reducing independent audio‑track request latency, smarter downloading, further data reduction, and collaborating with hardware vendors to prioritize network links.