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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

#71

Post by rightos »

nilved wrote: post #22
benbristow wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

They are monopolizing and centralizing the Web to the detriment of everyone. You don't need to believe me, though: the free and open Web is on a march toward death, Cloudflare is one of the nails in its coffin, and I will be happy enough to say "I told you so" once the grave is filled.

Look at how entrenched the big video players are. If anything this is creating more competition.

And better - if a service that started by using this got large enough, they could spin out on their own with no ties to the original platform.

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

#72

Post by KGIII »

eastdakota wrote: post #58
bogomipz wrote: post #49

>"Why? Simply put: the video streaming market is screwed up. While there's a lot of money spent on video, there are only really about 1,000 customers that do any meaningful level of streaming." So the statement that "the video streaming market is screwed up" is based on the fact that Cloudflare themselves only have 1K customers doing a meaningful level of streaming? You might want to talk to Akami, Amazon, Edgecast a…

No, to be clear, if you add up all the companies using all the CDNs you mention you only get to about 1,000 that are doing so at any meaningful and interesting scale. That's a shame. There should be 100x that. That's what we want to enable.

Why should there be 100x more? Video is not optimal for lots of information. It's not interactive or easy to cite and reference. It is bandwidth intense and typically has a lower information density per byte than text has.

There are plenty of places for video, but I am not so sure we need more of it. I'd say the tendency to put more content into video format is an overall negative trend.

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

#73

Post by bo1024 »

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?

If you read on for context, it sounds like they are comparing to the case where the customer simply sends some uncompressed video file, and pointing out that you might as well enable lossless compression in this case. However, CDNs (or somebody) introduce technical obstacles for this because they charge by bandwidth, so compression would hurt their profits.

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

#74

Post by dsacco »

eastdakota wrote: post #59
sbarre wrote: post #55

So, will Cloudflare have the same kind of DMCA and/or ContentID controls that YouTube has? How will they police the content they stream for their clients/partners? I know a few online businesses that don't use YouTube because they operate in a grey area in terms of fair use on videos (videogame footage) and they don't want to build their video business on YT because of their "trust the claimant over the content produ…

We will respect copyrights and our obligations under the DMCA and other laws outside the United States.

I think the commenter was specifically looking for an answer to this question, not an overall statement that you’ll comply with the law:

>So, will Cloudflare have the same kind of DMCA and/or ContentID controls that YouTube has? How will they police the content they stream for their clients/partners?

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

#75

Post by edoceo »

eastdakota wrote: post #58
bogomipz wrote: post #49

>"Why? Simply put: the video streaming market is screwed up. While there's a lot of money spent on video, there are only really about 1,000 customers that do any meaningful level of streaming." So the statement that "the video streaming market is screwed up" is based on the fact that Cloudflare themselves only have 1K customers doing a meaningful level of streaming? You might want to talk to Akami, Amazon, Edgecast a…

No, to be clear, if you add up all the companies using all the CDNs you mention you only get to about 1,000 that are doing so at any meaningful and interesting scale. That's a shame. There should be 100x that. That's what we want to enable.

Increase supply to increase demand! Never fails.

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

#76

Post by tomschlick »

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.

What about on the monetization side of things?

I know many YT firearms channels that have been basically blacklisted from monetization in recent months because YT classifies anything they do as "unsuitable for ads". It has forced a lot to double publish to https://www.full30.com/ to monetize their work.

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

#77

Post by always_good »

mugsie wrote: post #56
eugeneionesco wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost instant DNS change is something that I kinda take for granted. Surprising that's so rare...

well ... the protocol was designed not do that. DNS is "just" a globally distributed, eventually consistent, key:value store, with a ton of caching built into it. Also, while it may look instant to you, it may not be to your customers / users / other internet people.

It's instant because CloudFlare isn't changing DNS records, just where its pointers point to.

Look at it / try it.

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

#78

Post by netcraft »

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 dont think theyre saying lossy isnt useful - but that too many people arent doing _any_ compression at all. Thats the way I read it; I could be wrong.

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

#79

Post by nulagrithom »

88 wrote: post #70
eastdakota wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, to be clear, if you add up all the companies using all the CDNs you mention you only get to about 1,000 that are doing so at any meaningful and interesting scale. That's a shame. There should be 100x that. That's what we want to enable.

Is the solution to video streaming being overly centralized really to centralize everything under one CDN?

Well, currently we're centralizing it all under YouTube so...

While I'm not the biggest Cloudflare fan I definitely welcome this move.

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

#80

Post by dsacco »

bogomipz wrote: post #68
eastdakota wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, to be clear, if you add up all the companies using all the CDNs you mention you only get to about 1,000 that are doing so at any meaningful and interesting scale. That's a shame. There should be 100x that. That's what we want to enable.

Could you please provide a citation for that figure of only 1K companies doing any meaningful and interesting scale. Also what does "meaningful and interesting scale" mean? What is the criteria? This all sounds like typical Cloudfalre marketing bullshit.

To be fair, while he isn’t giving hard answers to a lot of questions in this thread, you’re being really antagonistic with that last line. I’d like more information too, but it doesn’t improve the odds he’ll answer to your satisfaction by publicly calling him out.
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