Ten layers, one product. Why we built FastPix.
The story of one ticket, one Q2 deadline, eight services to wire up, one 3 a.m. page, and the moment we realized we were no longer building a product.
Most video infrastructure stories start the same way: a product team gets a ticket. "Add video upload to the app. We need it for Q2." It sounds like a sprint of work. Then the engineer opens the first signup, and the calendar starts to bend.
This is the story of that ticket. Told as it actually unfolds.
By month three, the engineer wasn't building a product anymore. They were operating a stack.
The 10 layers you would wire up - and why you need each
By panel 5, the engineer was running ten product layers. Here is what each one does, why you need it, and what FastPix gives you instead.
| Product layer | Why you need it | What FastPix gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Encoding | Raw uploads will not play on every device or connection - you have to transcode to adaptive renditions. | VOD per-title encoding across Standard, Pro, Premium tiers |
| Live ingest + LL-HLS | To take a camera or encoder feed and deliver it live, low-latency, at scale. | Live Streaming LL-HLS, RTMPS + SRT ingest, simulcast |
| Storage + delivery | Video is huge and global - it needs durable storage and a CDN so playback is fast everywhere. | Per-session routing across multiple CDNs, failover under 1.5s |
| Player | You need a cross-platform player that handles HLS, adaptive bitrate, and captions on every device. | Video Player (open source) web + iOS + Android + RN + Flutter |
| Analytics + QoE | You cannot fix what you cannot see - buffering, startup time, and errors per view. | Video Data 56-dimension per-session QoE with drill-down |
| DRM | Premium or paid content needs encryption and licensing to stop piracy. | Widevine + FairPlay + PlayReady, in Premium VOD |
| Transcription + captions | Accessibility, reach, and search all start with turning speech into text. | In-Video AI auto-generated subtitles + transcripts, auto-tagging |
| Search inside video | Viewers and teams need to find the exact moment, not scrub hours of footage. | AI Search across your uploaded library (Beta) |
| 24/7 playout | To run a linear channel - looped or scheduled - without broadcast hardware. | Cloud Playout per-channel scheduled + looped streaming |
| AI workflows | To automate multi-step video jobs (clip, summarize, notify) instead of gluing scripts together. | Agents (Notes + Clipping, more on the roadmap) |
Why FastPix - FAQ
Why does FastPix replace 10 products and not just 1 or 2?
Most teams shipping video into a non-video product end up running 6 to 10 separate services: encoding, live ingest, storage, CDN, player, analytics, DRM, transcription, search, scheduling. Each one has its own billing model, dashboard, and on-call. FastPix collapses the entire stack into one HTTP surface so the team can stay in the product, not in a dozen service consoles.
Isn't this just a wrapper over cloud media primitives?
No. Cloud primitives are low-level building blocks you still have to wire together, run, and keep alive. FastPix is an API and a runtime on top of multi-CDN delivery, with its own player, analytics, and AI surface, plus migration tools to move an existing stack over.
How does per-minute pricing work across this many SKUs?
Every SKU - VOD encoding, live streaming, storage, delivery, Player tracking, AI features, Cloud Playout channels - has a published per-minute or per-event rate on the pricing page. There's no platform fee, no seat fee, no min-commit. You pay only for minutes processed, streamed, or analyzed.
Who is FastPix actually for?
Product developers shipping video into apps where video isn't the product. SaaS teams adding async video. Microdrama OTT. Online learning. Microlearning. Live sports. Creator platforms. Connected fitness. Generative AI video apps. The common thread: small engineering teams who don't want to operate a video stack.
Ship video without operating the stack.
Try FastPix free. No credit card. 10 videos plus 100K streaming minutes plus AI samples to evaluate.