Solving the Short-Form Video Problem

How modern media workflows enable cost-optimized, high-quality short-form video experiences.

Publishers, media companies, and app developers have accepted that short-form video content is the best way to maximize engagement and reach. Hubspot found that short-form video content was widely reported as having the highest ROI in its 2025 State of Marketing report, and nearly 80% of US consumers prefer to watch video content on their smartphones, according to SproutSocial. However, organizations may not be as eager to hand over traffic, engagement, and data to third-party social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts.

Each of these platforms has its own strategy for serving ads, restricting access, and collecting viewer engagement data. Organizations that want more control over how they share short-form content will face major limitations in these areas. On the other hand, developing a custom solution can be complicated, expensive, and resource-intensive.

The Challenges with Delivering Short-Form Video

Video content providers face a critical decision about where they share their short-form video content: go with established social media platforms and forgo control over the branding, data, and advertising, or build their own experience they can control, which can be complicated and expensive. 

Challenges like unpredictable viewing patterns and the need for consistent performance across a wide range of devices can lead to higher data, bandwidth, and energy consumption. Traditional open source players can have a clunky mobile experience and may not scale well. Overall, this results in higher costs and a worse viewer experience. 

TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have solved these challenges by and large, but in exchange, these platforms maintain full control over the branding, content delivery, advertising, and data. But with an intelligent media workflow solution, even the leanest media processing team can overcome these hurdles.

   

Reduce Memory Consumption with Optimized Architecture.

Traditional players may not be built with efficient bandwidth and memory use in mind. Typically, these players will preload video content, even if it isn’t used at all, burning bandwidth and eating into CDN budgets. Plus, when too many videos load at once, the player uses more memory, and the user experience suffers as a result. 

How Spins reduces wasteful memory and bandwidth usage.

Spins is a solution for short-form vertical video creation in Wowza Video. Built for memory efficiency, it employs lazy DOM loading, HLS instance recycling, and optimized viewport management to ensure smooth playback at scale and conserve memory.

• Lazy DOM Loading
  • Create video elements only when needed
  • Intelligent placeholders maintain scroll performance while conserving memory
• HLS Instance Recycling
  • Reuse player components instead of creating new instances for each video
  • Intelligently pool HLS instances to reduce memory overhead
• Optimized Viewport Management
  • Only devote resources to videos in or near the viewport
  • Automatically release memory for off-screen content

Cut Costs with Intelligent Loading and Buffering.

As mentioned earlier, pre-loaded video content takes up valuable bandwidth resources, whether the content is watched or not. Not only does this impact the user experience with slow loading times and buffering issues, but it also drives up the media provider’s server bill. At scale, this can be debilitating for media organizations with leaner budgets, whether they are prolific video producers or just because they “went viral” once or twice.

How Spins ensures high-quality playback while optimizing costs.

Instead of pre-loading content that never gets seen, driving up bandwidth use (and costs) significantly, Spins in Wowza Video uses tailored profiles and intelligent buffering to only load content if it’s being viewed. By efficiently using bandwidth and loading media dynamically, viewers get the best experience while you get a lower bill.

• Adaptive Preloading
  • Dynamically adjust buffering based on user engagement metrics
  • Ensure smooth playback while minimizing waste
• Smart Segment Loading
  • Buffer content users are statistically likely to consume
  • Cut bandwidth use by up to 40% 

Integrate and streamline workflows with enterprise systems.

Social media platforms are built for broad discoverability and community engagement. But they don’t always prioritize compliance, accessibility, or flexibility for content providers. Enterprise-level media producers and distributors need more advanced capabilities, like fine-tuned branding control, deep analytics integrations, and accessibility workflows. Whether the goal is to promote and sell subscription products/services, maintain your corporate image, or take advantage of enterprise workflows and automation, media professionals are better off with a custom solution for short-form video.

How Spins enables enterprise integrations with flexibility in mind.

Spins is built on Wowza Video’s robust enterprise infrastructure. Users have access to features like built-in captioning and subtitle workflows for compliance, event listeners for analytics integrations, and a flexible API to power your unique streaming needs.

• Instant Compliance
  • Built-in subtitle workflows
  • Meet accessibility requirements
• Flexible Integrations
  • Export data easily with event listeners
  • Build further integrations with flexible APIs
• CDN Efficiency
  • Maintain high-quality user experience
  • Optimize costs with intelligent buffering

Finally, a short-form video production solution that prioritizes costs, flexibility, and quality.

Media organizations, video engineering teams, developers, and system architects need to prioritize their short-form video content delivery, with a focus on efficiently using bandwidth, reducing costs, and delivering the best possible viewer experience across all devices. Wowza Video is a full-featured platform that scales with their needs. By prioritizing reliability, scalability, security, and capability, Wowza delivers unparalleled experiences for VOD, Live, or both. Now, with Spins, this includes reaching viewers on mobile phones, anywhere in the world. Spins delivers professional short-form video capabilities while actively reducing bandwidth costs and memory consumption. This results in improved viewer engagement and operational efficiency. The mobile-optimized interface enhances the user experience while smart buffering and lazy loading guarantee optimal resource usage. Pay only for content that viewers consume, minimize waste and bottlenecks, and deliver smooth performance even on resource-constrained devices or networks. See Spins in action here.

Ready to optimize your short-form video workflow? 

Try Wowza Video and Spins today https://www.wowza.com/video 

For technical documentation and more information on Spins, visit our Developer’s page https://developer.wowza.com/docs/wowza-flowplayer/player/spins/