Merge Overlapping Playback Chunks | Dataford Interview Questions

Given a list of video chunks and their playback timestamps, merge overlapping chunks to determine the total unique playback duration.

Treat each chunk as a half-open interval [start, end), so its duration is end - start. The input is a list of [start, end] pairs. Return the total duration covered by the union of all intervals.

Constraints

0 <= len(chunks) <= 10^4
Each chunk contains exactly two integers, start and end
0 <= start < end <= 10^9
Intervals use half-open semantics: [start, end)
Chunks may be unsorted, overlapping, duplicated, or adjacent

Function Signature

def merge_video_chunks(chunks):

Your question is Merge Overlapping Playback Chunks. Start with the requirements in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.

Problem

Given a list of video chunks and their playback timestamps, merge overlapping chunks to determine the total unique playback duration.

Constraints

0 <= len(chunks) <= 10^4
Each chunk contains exactly two integers, start and end
0 <= start < end <= 10^9
Intervals use half-open semantics: [start, end)
Chunks may be unsorted, overlapping, duplicated, or adjacent

Function Signature

def merge_video_chunks(chunks):

Your question is Merge Overlapping Playback Chunks. Start with the requirements in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.