It's 2014. Does Dropbox still offer only 2 GB of storage?
Video Processing at Dropbox
11–20 of 29 posts
Re: Video Processing at Dropbox
#12Does it bother anyone else that dropbox is "processing" files at all? whether video or otherwise?
I was under the impression that Dropbox can't "see" your files in the sense that they wouldn't be able to tell what was inside a document or photo; it's all supposed to be encrypted. Given this new information, it appears that not only can they see what you have uploaded, they can actively process, encode, decode, etc. Not exactly what I'm looking for in an online file storage company. I realize they've never outrigh…
> I was under the impression that Dropbox can't "see" your files in the sense that they wouldn't be able to tell what was inside a document or photo; it's all supposed to be encrypted.
No, that was never true. In particular, that would break Dropbox's model for deduplication, as well as their web clients, and various other things. If you're looking for an end-to-end encrypted solution, Dropbox was never it.
Re: Video Processing at Dropbox
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was under the impression that Dropbox can't "see" your files in the sense that they wouldn't be able to tell what was inside a document or photo; it's all supposed to be encrypted. Given this new information, it appears that not only can they see what you have uploaded, they can actively process, encode, decode, etc. Not exactly what I'm looking for in an online file storage company. I realize they've never outrigh…
> I was under the impression that Dropbox can't "see" your files in the sense that they wouldn't be able to tell what was inside a document or photo; it's all supposed to be encrypted. No, that was never true. In particular, that would break Dropbox's model for deduplication, as well as their web clients, and various other things. If you're looking for an end-to-end encrypted solution, Dropbox was never it.
To expand on that, mega.co.nz does attempt to do encryption end deduplication. Each file uploaded is encrypted with it's own hash, and the hash is stored in the users encrypted account. The idea is that if two users upload the same file they will have the same hash and be deduplicated. It's not particularly secure or private in their implementation, but it can certainly be done.
Re: Video Processing at Dropbox
#14Does it bother anyone else that dropbox is "processing" files at all? whether video or otherwise?
Unless your online storage method of choice is encrypting your files on the client side before its transmitted, you should assume it's visible to the operators and anyone they grant access to.
And it's not just Dropbox that can see those files but also Amazon as Dropbox is doing the encoding of the videos on AWS.
Re: Video Processing at Dropbox
#15Interesting article. I have a few comments/questions: HLS support on Android is incredibly spotty. Do you mean in-app HLS support? The Android Chrome browser doesn't support it at all, and only a select few versions of the regular Android browser support it. Then again, there's not a great alternative. Why offer the multiple bitrates on the HLS stream at all? You know what the client's bandwidth is, why perform three…
> HLS support on Android is incredibly spotty I assume you mean spotty in Android pre-4.0? I'd worked on HLS streaming for Android recently and didn't have issues with ICS and later. But then again with Android you can't possibly test on all OS/device combinations, so would love to know if there are things I should be watching out for. > Why offer the multiple bitrates on the HLS stream at all? You know what the clie…
Even post 4.0 it isn't super reliable. Basic playback of HLS works, but we have had issue seeking, pausing for long periods of time and resuming, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if things like WebVTT(Subtitles), ID3 tags and other advances features also don't work well.
4.4 is supposed to be much better but I don't work on Android anymore, so I am not really sure.
Re: Video Processing at Dropbox
#16Does it bother anyone else that dropbox is "processing" files at all? whether video or otherwise?
I don't think Dropbox has ever claimed that they can't see your files on a technical basis. I'm sure that there are policies and auditing, but it's not secure storage. This is why I've told medical profession clients that they should absolutely NOT be using Dropbox.
If you want security, encrypt on your own or decide if you trust SpiderOak.
Re: Video Processing at Dropbox
#17Interesting. I recently implemented a very similar transcoding server[1] for StreamToMe[2]. I used node and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to parse and segment MPEG Transport Streams[3]. It's good to know I was on the right track...
[1] https://github.com/caldwell/stm.js
[2] http://zqueue.com/streamtome/index.html
[3] https://github.com/caldwell/stm.js/blob/master/mpeg2ts.js
Re: Video Processing at Dropbox
#18Does it bother anyone else that dropbox is "processing" files at all? whether video or otherwise?
Dropbox can see your files.
If you want more privacy you can try http://www.nimbusvid.com which uses mega.co.nz plays encrypted video in the browser. Content is never sent to nimbusvid.com so you can watch your videos in privacy.
Re: Video Processing at Dropbox
#19Interesting article. I have a few comments/questions: HLS support on Android is incredibly spotty. Do you mean in-app HLS support? The Android Chrome browser doesn't support it at all, and only a select few versions of the regular Android browser support it. Then again, there's not a great alternative. Why offer the multiple bitrates on the HLS stream at all? You know what the client's bandwidth is, why perform three…
As far as I know the only absolute requirement is to have at least a single 64K stream. All other bitrates come as general recommendations, but in my experience, offering a few different bitrates amount to far better, smoother playback, overall. "Warning: These requirements apply to iOS apps submitted for distribution in the App Store for use on Apple products. Non-compliant apps may be rejected or removed, at the di…
At Globo.com we use HLS as our main protocol to stream live video for both desktop and mobile.
To have HLS audio track available "for free" (without the necessity of transcode it on backend) we built a nginx module: http://github.com/globocom/nginx-audio-track-for-hls-module
It would really great to see this module being used by Dropbox also.
Re: Video Processing at Dropbox
#20It would be awesome to see the 1st and 3rd tools open sourced.
you can find something that do the 1st job here: https://github.com/danielgtaylor/qtfaststart