A: Hello Sumoling,
as YouTube already encoded the video in different formats. So what we do (and this is why we do not have to charge for encoding), we move the 1:1 encoded files to our servers. So what ever format you got there... it will be on your alugha channel. We also do adaptive streaming, mostly like YouTube. We just do some adjustments and optimizations like do not buffter the videos as long as YT does as it sucks when you switch resolution, on alugha we want to make sure that switch comes as fast as possible. Also we do check the max resolution your device can offer and set this as max res to the video...

So that was very technical :)