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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

#241

Post by KGIII »

oblio wrote: post #216
KGIII wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment was about them asserting there should be 100x the video content. Why should there be? It's a pretty horrible way to share information, in all but a few situations.

You're assuming that video is used primarily to share information. How Edisonian of you: http://ethw.org/Phonograph (TL;DR: Edison meant it for business but it boomed for entertainment).

That's what communication is. Even a movie is sharing information. Even a music video is sharing information. The whole Internet is sharing information. Some of it has less value than the rest, but it is still information.

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

#242

Post by ldjb »

JoeCoder_ wrote: post #61

> There's no good technical reason not to enable lossless compression Why would you want to losslessly compress audio or video? The resulting files would be huge--often too huge to steam. Lossy compression is what you want. I must be misunderstanding the article?

I interpret that as meaning the difference between using stream copy and re-encoding videos when converting between different formats.

For instance, the user might upload an H.264 video as an MP4 file. Streaming services generally won't serve the MP4 file itself, but will create an HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) version where the video is split into multiple .ts chunks along with a .m3u8 playlist.

However, such services (including YouTube) will generally re-encode the video when doing so, and the end result will have poorer quality than the original uploaded file.

This is actually unnecessary because .ts files support the H.264 codec, so the video does not need to be re-encoded. Instead the streams can be copied to retain their original quality.

If additional compression is necessary, I suppose it would be possible to apply HTTP compression using algorithms such as gzip or deflate.

Of course, this is purely speculation. It would be nice if Cloudflare clarified what they meant. But it would certainly be great if they used stream copying where possible instead of re-encoding.

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

#243

Post by rmc »

briholt wrote: post #208
rmc wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can start off with the definition in German law:

publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or downplays an act committed under the rule of National Socialism .. publicly or in a meeting disturbs the public peace in a manner that violates the dignity of the victims by approving of, glorifying, or justifying National Socialist rule of arbitrary force

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#...

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

#244

Post by chillydawg »

bogomipz wrote: post #153
chillydawg wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the CEO of cloudflare is a pretty decent authoritative source for such a statement.

The same CEO that also happens to be marketing a new product? Do you really believe that all statements made by CEOs should be accepted without question?

Obviously not, and I'm not saying that. I think believing this statement from this ceo at this time is reasonable. The research he did to come to his numbers is probably independent and you probably won't be able to find a citation as everyone on here is constantly crying for for every minor assumption.

What motivation does he have to lie about this particular number? His track record on honesty to date is good and the company is forthright in its dealings, from what I have seen. This isn't one of the google or microsoft boys trying to sell you on some shite AI in return for a high def feed from you eyes 24/7.

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

#245

Post by sbarre »

jgrahamc wrote: post #25
sbarre wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious if this means they will enable access controls on streams somehow. One of the challenges with video delivery and where sites like YouTube can't work is if your business relies on providing videos to paid or logged-in members only. Patreon creators get around this in a kludgy way by using unlisted YT videos (which can still be shared by rogue patrons) but that's not ideal. But if you want to control acces…

We already do that for other types of content. Won't be different for video.

That's great to hear! I'm not familiar with all your services so I didn't know you already did this..

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

#246

Post by sbarre »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #57
bowersbros wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is commonly solved using Amazon S3 and single-access tokens I think? Pretty hefty work involved in getting it reliable, would be nice for a "drop in" solution.

Cloudfront supports private content [1]. Its good to see video encoding/storage/delivery maturing; the more players in the space, the more options one has to choose from if a provider prefers to not host your content (whether that's because of a ToS violation, or because the company CEO just doesn't want to host your content). "Drop in" solutions give your provider a great deal of control over your fate, which is oka…

(serious question) why would Patreon build out their own video hosting system? Unless I misunderstand their business model, that's not really part of their core business.

I feel like video hosting/streaming is part of their Patron's businesses, not theirs. They just manage the subscriptions.

If I was an investor in Patreon, I would not want them spending my money building out a proprietary video hosting platform.

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

#247

Post by rmc »

cm2187 wrote: post #223
rmc wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That's the Daily Mail, a newspaper that supported Hitler during the 1930s, and today is not accepted as a source in Wikipedia due to "the Daily Mail’s reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication"¹. So you'll forgive me if I'm skeptical.

Secondly there is nothing in that article about neo-Nazism, so I don't know why you brought it up? I'm talking about neo-Nazi sites, not general racism/etc.

--- ¹ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia...

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

#248

Post by zimpenfish »

sbarre wrote: post #246
toomuchtodo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudfront supports private content [1]. Its good to see video encoding/storage/delivery maturing; the more players in the space, the more options one has to choose from if a provider prefers to not host your content (whether that's because of a ToS violation, or because the company CEO just doesn't want to host your content). "Drop in" solutions give your provider a great deal of control over your fate, which is oka…

(serious question) why would Patreon build out their own video hosting system? Unless I misunderstand their business model, that's not really part of their core business. I feel like video hosting/streaming is part of their Patron's businesses, not theirs. They just manage the subscriptions. If I was an investor in Patreon, I would not want them spending my money building out a proprietary video hosting platform.

> why would Patreon build out their own video hosting system?

Because a fair number of Patreoneers (this really needs a better name) have private videos for patrons and, if hosted by Patreon, they can do a much better job of keeping them private than, say, making the Patreoneers use YouTube with a private link and hoping no-one leaks it.

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

#249

Post by mugsie »

JakeTheAndroid wrote: post #144
mugsie wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - that's a pretty standard way of doing things, and thats how DNS servers themselves will operate (mostly) when you make an update to a recordset. Its not your cache that is the issue. People have miss behaving caches, that do not always respect TTLs, some apps can cache the DNS response (I remember a Java issue where the initial value found was cached for the lifetime of the process!).

The TTL publicly is static and doesn't matter. The resolver you hit will just point to Cloudflare NS. Why we are faster, is because we point internally, and we don't have misconfigured TTLs or caching (I mean, things happen but it's not common). So once you update the global resolvers your visitors would hit to point to CF, their cache/TTL should never matter since we dictate where our internal DNS points the request…

That is not how resolution works.

What happens is:

#1 - Application (browser, chat client, etc) gets FQDN. It checks if it has the recordset in its cache, and if the TTL is expired.

#2 - Application asks the OS for the recordset. The OS checks its cache, and TTL expiry.

#3 - OS asks the configured local DNS resolvers for the recordset. They check their cache, and TTL expiry.

#4 - These resolvers ask the configured upstream resolvers (e.g. ISP for most home users). They check their cache, and TTL expiry. (This step can repeat, depending on how networks are configured. E.G. ISPs may have DNS resolvers per city, which ask central servers)

#5 - If all of those previous steps fail (the recordset is not cached, or the TTL is expired) the last resolver in the chain will ask the root for the NS records of the zone, which will get fresh records from CloudFlare.

Remember - any of these recursive DNS servers could have an override to cache the recordset for longer than the publicly defined TTL. This is not as much of an issue anymore, but it used to be a massive one.

And this is before applications decide that they know better. - see http://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/net/pr... (networkaddress.cache.ttl section)

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

#250

Post by oblio »

KGIII wrote: post #241
oblio wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that video is used primarily to share information. How Edisonian of you: http://ethw.org/Phonograph (TL;DR: Edison meant it for business but it boomed for entertainment).

That's what communication is. Even a movie is sharing information. Even a music video is sharing information. The whole Internet is sharing information. Some of it has less value than the rest, but it is still information.

To quote again:

> It's a pretty horrible way to share information, in all but a few situations.

Those few situations are probably 80% of internet traffic :)

> That's what communication is. Even a movie is sharing information. Even a music video is sharing information. The whole Internet is sharing information. Some of it has less value than the rest, but it is still information.

Technically true, practically meaningless. If I want to see Star Wars I probably want a nice 4k video, not the ASCII 80x20 version of it.

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