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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

#221

Post by dzhiurgis »

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.

I do not like the player in post - it stops me using Safari's PiP feature.

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

#222

Post by madeofpalk »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #221
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.

I do not like the player in post - it stops me using Safari's PiP feature.

How does it? THere's nothing specifically incompatible between PiP and post-video overlay.

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

#223

Post by cm2187 »

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"

There is an increasing (and worrying) trend among liberals to call racist or misogynist anyone who doesn't demonstrate enthusiasm for the cause of the day. Concerns about being censored when accused of racism isn't exactly irrational paranoia.

A recent example of what appears to be a moderate, democrat voting professor experiencing it:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4546704/Professor-ca...

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

#224

Post by madeofpalk »

GeneticGenesis wrote: post #145
orf wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-cloudflare-streams/ How they deliver the video is pretty innovative: > How we accomplish this is by dynamically assigning data centers IP ranges based on which are currently being underutilized. Then videos are loaded alongside a manifest file, pointing the player to where they can locate the different chunks of the video for each bitrate. (As we described earlier, this is how adaptive…

That's not really innovative - other CDNs are already doing the fast first few segments and then slower/cheaper CDN once the buffer is built up. Hola CDN for example. https://holacdn.com/multicdn Dynamic Manifest generation has been done for years, first by Unified Streaming, now by most companies.

The innovative thing about Hola is that they're using people's computers that have their VPN software installed as PoPs.

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

#225

Post by madeofpalk »

shimon_e wrote: post #187
eastdakota wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a good sense of the pricing but want to talk with more customers during the beta period. We're sure that it will be charged on something that doesn't create a perverse incentive against innovation (like per-byte pricing). Initially the pricing will be time based (e.g., per minute viewed) and we think we may be able to create a CPM price (i.e., per view regardless of length up to some limit). Our goal is to be…

>Our goal is to be the lowest cost, highest quality, easiest solution in the market. Youtube is free. Sidenote, I am still interested in this product.

Youtube is free, but you can't white label it. NBC isn't going to build their catch up video site on Youtube

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

#226

Post by grzm »

abtinf wrote: post #185
grzm wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's clearly some undefined standard here, known only in the head of Cloudflare's CEO. Cloudflare was quite clear on the criteria they used. > The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology. https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/ You can disagree with that criteria, and you can question w…

Yes, they were extremely clear on the criteria they used: the CEOs emotional state. “Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision.“ https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to...

As I mentioned above (in another subthread), thanks for the link!

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

#227

Post by dzhiurgis »

madeofpalk wrote: post #222
dzhiurgis wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not like the player in post - it stops me using Safari's PiP feature.

How does it? THere's nothing specifically incompatible between PiP and post-video overlay.

Ok. Turns out there's a button for that. Usually (i.e. in youtube) I right click twice and get option to pip it.

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

#228

Post by prebrov »

zuck9 wrote: post #200
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…

Disclosure: OP works at Brightcove

Nah, but was until not very long ago.

Thanks, I contemplated whether I should disclose it, but given that I have currently have no stakes in the game, decided it's unnecessary.

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

#229

Post by prebrov »

vim_wannabe wrote: post #213
shakkhar wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Adaptive streaming sure, but can you not handle the different audio combinations using source-tags? And HEVC/VP9 with h264 fallback I would imagine is the primary use case they (WHATWG?) were thinking of supporting when creating the source tag.

Technically you could have a single URL that returns any manifest based on user-agent or whatever player info is available in the GET request.

But yeah, JS players make life a whole lot easier by providing a single API for customisation, handling media source extensions and a bunch of other stuff.

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