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Cloudflare Stream – Combines video encoding, global delivery, and player

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Cloudflare Stream – Combines video encoding, global delivery, and player

#201

Post by mixedbit »

prebrov wrote: post #155

CloudFlare is entering a very crowded space. With YouTube and Facebook owning an overwhelming majority of video hosting market, what’s left is shared between Brightcove, The Platform, Ooyala, Bitmovin, Vimeo, Vidyard, Wistia and a whole ton of smaller players and in-house solutions (ffmpeg -> _any cdn_ -> video.js). Surely, this piece of the pie is not as big as many had hoped for, but there’s definitely more than a…

I'm pondering using standard CDNs for serving bandwidth intensive payloads, but I have some doubts whether this is a right technical decision. I did not find any general purpose CDN that would explicitly encourage the use of their product for large files nor a CDN that would disclose any information how large payloads are handled by their infrastructure.

The primary use case for CDN is latency reduction for serving small files (CSS, JS, images) and such traffic has different characteristic and requires different optimizations than high-throughput traffic. I worry how long large files are going to be cached by CDN PoPs. PoPs can't certainly cache everything forever and they can be more eager to remove large files and in such case CDN will be reducing performance by adding an additional HTTP level hop to the origin server (and likely a few IP level hops). My other worry is that PoPs can deploy DoS detection heuristic that are tuned for standard web pages and a bandwidth intensive page may trigger the rules and have the traffic throttled. Such throttling is something that I've occasionally observed while testing CloudFlare with large files, but I'm not sure what was the cause, CloudFlare monitoring tools did not report anything unusual.

Re: Cloudflare Stream – Combines video encoding, global delivery, and player

#202

Post by aclelland »

prebrov wrote: post #155

CloudFlare is entering a very crowded space. With YouTube and Facebook owning an overwhelming majority of video hosting market, what’s left is shared between Brightcove, The Platform, Ooyala, Bitmovin, Vimeo, Vidyard, Wistia and a whole ton of smaller players and in-house solutions (ffmpeg -> _any cdn_ -> video.js). Surely, this piece of the pie is not as big as many had hoped for, but there’s definitely more than a…

The lossless compression example is, I think, taking about image compression.

Other CDNs charge for bandwidth so why would they offer their customers an easy to use 'optimize images' feature, it'll just lose them money. Cloudflare can offer it because making your images smaller saves them money.

This will be an interesting option for anyone who publishes videos but speed, integration complexity and pricing are going to be key.

Re: Cloudflare Stream – Combines video encoding, global delivery, and player

#203

Post by [deleted] »

eastdakota wrote: post #60
OzzyB wrote: post #54

If I wanted to create an alternative to YouTube with a conservative bent what are the chances Cloudflare will wake up one morning and shut me down? What if the content is just generally in "bad taste" and not overtly Neo-Nazi, will CF feel the need to play "Content Cop" or are they willing to abide by their role as utility?

Zero.

[deleted]

Re: Cloudflare Stream – Combines video encoding, global delivery, and player

#204

Post by SaltyBackendGuy »

lsmarigo wrote: post #134
OzzyB wrote: post #54

If I wanted to create an alternative to YouTube with a conservative bent what are the chances Cloudflare will wake up one morning and shut me down? What if the content is just generally in "bad taste" and not overtly Neo-Nazi, will CF feel the need to play "Content Cop" or are they willing to abide by their role as utility?

I know you guys took major issue with the Cloudlfare takedown of DailyStormer but try to look at the big picture. Mankind has never had a tool as powerful as the internet. The advent of the printing press played a key role in the lead up to the Salem Witch Trials. How big a role the internet played in the mess we find ourselves in today as a country, that's up to future historians to argue, but make no mistake the im…

> "Is loss of human life an acceptable cost for free speech?"

Just because one has freedom of speech does not mean one is free of consequence. So actual murderers should be punished. People believe what they choose to believe, and if it's not the DailyStormer it's some other hate mongering source (that's not exclusive to the internet).

Re: Cloudflare Stream – Combines video encoding, global delivery, and player

#205

Post by shakkhar »

vim_wannabe wrote: post #193
prebrov wrote: post #155

CloudFlare is entering a very crowded space. With YouTube and Facebook owning an overwhelming majority of video hosting market, what’s left is shared between Brightcove, The Platform, Ooyala, Bitmovin, Vimeo, Vidyard, Wistia and a whole ton of smaller players and in-house solutions (ffmpeg -> _any cdn_ -> video.js). Surely, this piece of the pie is not as big as many had hoped for, but there’s definitely more than a…

Out of interest: why is a JS player required for video? Is it just to make more browsers compatible, the video more hackable for annotations/ads, or is there something else? Edit: And a related question: would Cloudflare Stream work without the JS player using a regular video-tag?

> Edit: And a related question: would Cloudflare Stream work without the JS player using a regular video-tag?

Depends on the browser. This is the primary reason why people actually use a JS player that wraps around video tag. The other reasons are to accommodate business logic (i. e. overlay on top of the video, pre-roll, thumbnail, etc.) and better UX.

Re: Cloudflare Stream – Combines video encoding, global delivery, and player

#206

Post by vim_wannabe »

shakkhar wrote: post #205
vim_wannabe wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest: why is a JS player required for video? Is it just to make more browsers compatible, the video more hackable for annotations/ads, or is there something else? Edit: And a related question: would Cloudflare Stream work without the JS player using a regular video-tag?

> Edit: And a related question: would Cloudflare Stream work without the JS player using a regular video-tag? Depends on the browser. This is the primary reason why people actually use a JS player that wraps around video tag. The other reasons are to accommodate business logic (i. e. overlay on top of the video, pre-roll, thumbnail, etc.) and better UX.

The latter reason I get, but looking at video-tag compatibility on https://caniuse.com/#feat=video shouldn't just offering h264 as the baseline and the higher resolution formats in source-tags (https://caniuse.com/#search=source) cover almost any browser?

Re: Cloudflare Stream – Combines video encoding, global delivery, and player

#207

Post by grzm »

abtinf wrote: post #183
grzm wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The CEO literally said it was because he felt like terminating DailyStormer. Do you have a quote where the CEO says this? Your statement gives the impression that this was nothing more than a whim. As I pointed out below, according to their own statement on the matter, that's not the case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15350723

I find it bizarre that you repeatedly link to the sanitized corporate blog. The CEO has explicitly stated it was pure whim: “Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision.” https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to...

Thank you for providing a link to support what the other poster commented.

I've provided the link I have for two reasons:

* it's a link I know about that's relevant to the discussion

* it is from Cloudflare themselves, so the chance of it being a misquote (accidental or otherwise) is less likely. I don't have a knee-jerk instinct to reject official statements as issued in bad faith without other evidence.

I repeatedly linked likely for the same reason you have: I saw something I thought was misrepresentative or misinformed more than once.

I'm thankful for the link because I can use that to alter my understanding of the event. There's a quote that's sometimes attributed to Keynes "When the facts change, I change my mind."[0] That's something I endeavor to do.

[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change-mind/

I'll also admit to a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the use of a throwaway account in a contentious discussion. I can understand the use of throwaways to protect identity, but in that case the standard should be higher: they should really be bringing something substantial to the discussion, not just repeating talking points.

Thanks again for the link. That's useful.

Re: Cloudflare Stream – Combines video encoding, global delivery, and player

#208

Post by briholt »

rmc wrote: post #130
OzzyB wrote: post #54

If I wanted to create an alternative to YouTube with a conservative bent what are the chances Cloudflare will wake up one morning and shut me down? What if the content is just generally in "bad taste" and not overtly Neo-Nazi, will CF feel the need to play "Content Cop" or are they willing to abide by their role as utility?

There's a difference between Stormfront, a neo-nazi site, and "a conservative bent"

Define it. Then define it in such a way that everyone advocating this censorship will agree too. Then pledge that when people start pushing for additional censorship you'll vehemently push back.

Re: Cloudflare Stream – Combines video encoding, global delivery, and player

#209

Post by shakkhar »

vim_wannabe wrote: post #206
shakkhar wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: And a related question: would Cloudflare Stream work without the JS player using a regular video-tag? Depends on the browser. This is the primary reason why people actually use a JS player that wraps around video tag. The other reasons are to accommodate business logic (i. e. overlay on top of the video, pre-roll, thumbnail, etc.) and better UX.

The latter reason I get, but looking at video-tag compatibility on https://caniuse.com/#feat=video shouldn't just offering h264 as the baseline and the higher resolution formats in source-tags ( https://caniuse.com/#search=source ) cover almost any browser?

Yes but that is just the baseline. You want HEVC / VP9 for browsers which can play that, you want 5.1 audio for home theaters, you want adaptive streaming when the support is available, and so on. You don't want just the minimum for _all_ of your clients. You want some code that tailors the experience based on client capability. That's what the JS player handles.
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