Cameras miss moments; fans don’t. We wanted every decisive peek, every clutch revive, and every chaotic final ring in Apex Legends to be watchable from any team’s perspective - live, synchronized, and affordable. That meant rethinking how we transcode and distribute dozens of POV streams at once without drowning in startup lag or compute spend.
We walk through how Scalstrm integrated NETINT VPUs at a low level to pack up to 20 live channels onto a single card, slashing both costs and boot times for event-based streaming. Instead of relying on generic wrappers, they tapped direct APIs to tune buffer behavior, rate control, and ABR ladders for fast-motion gameplay.
Partnering in the Akamai Cloud lets them spin up encoders only when needed, bring them online in seconds, and tear them down post-show—no idle fleets, no waste. For VOD, just-in-time transcoding stores a single high-bitrate master and generates renditions only when requested, keeping catalogs lean while preserving quality.
Znipe Esports takes the spotlight with a multi-POV esports product that delivers 20+ synchronized streams plus the main event feed. To keep every angle aligned, they apply AI and image analysis to lock onto in-game clocks, then validate with operators for frame-accurate sync across teams. Telemetry from damage and kill events fuels real-time overlays and instant highlights, so fans can jump to the best moments or follow their favorite squad without missing context.
The payoff is dramatic: 25% lower transcoding cost, 70% faster startup, and a 75% reduction in high-quality transcoding cost—exactly where esports audiences are most demanding.
We also share a war story: going live in 30 minutes only to find GPU capacity swallowed by AI training. VPUs gave us a dedicated path for video, restoring predictability when it mattered most.
If you care about multi-view control, synchronized angles, and high frame-rate streams that don’t blow up your budget, this breakdown shows how to get there.
Listen now: https://netint.biz/podcast
Download the presentation: https://info.netint.com/hubfs/downloads/VPUs-on-Akamai-cloud.pdf
Test drive NETINT VPUs on Akamai Cloud and get $500 credit: https://netint.biz/akamai_500
Episode highlights:
• Scalstrm’s origins in packaging, origin, and analytics for operators and broadcasters
• Why low-level VPU APIs beat generic wrappers for live density and efficiency
• Instant provisioning for event-based transcoding on cloud partners
• Just-in-time transcoding for VOD to cut storage and compute
• Znipe’s multi-POV product for Apex Legends with 20+ team feeds
• AI and image processing for frame-accurate sync on in-game clocks
• Ingesting telemetry to render stats and auto-generate highlights
• Cost wins: 25% lower normal transcoding, 70% faster startup, 75% lower high-quality costs
• Avoiding GPU shortages by shifting to VPUs for predictable capacity
• Higher resolutions and frame rates that match esports viewer expectations.
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