Rather than simply programming a new set of tiles into Disney Plus, the integration of entire Hulu platform into the app, which transitioned on Wednesday from beta status to official, was described by Disney technologists as a massive lift involving not only moving more than 100,000 creative assets, but also recasting their metadata so that they'd fit a unified Disney digital library.
Speaking to The Verge, Disney CTO Aaron LaBerge described the challenge of assimilating a 16-year old streaming service with content and associated metadata culled from a wide array of sources.
The files included not just video, but elements like key art.
“It’s a mixture of content that we own and content from our partners,” LaBerge said.
Not only did Disney re-encode all of Hulu's video to fit with four-year-old Disney Plus, company technologists used the opportunity to create a unified content library to better support endeavors like search and recommendation, as well as advanced advertising.
"That in and of itself has been a bit of a massive lift," LaBerge said. "But when it’s all said and done, we will have one master media library for the entire company that has the same consistent metadata formats, description of content, and playback encoding, that is the highest quality it can be for the entire Walt Disney Company.
“We zoomed out and took a very long-term approach,” LaBerge added. “We’re going to be running a streaming service forever.”
