What is Cloud Transcoding?

Cloud Transcoding refers to a media file conversion architecture online or “in the cloud “. From a technical and quality perspective, there are no difference to the algorithms and codecs applied between your average on-premise transcoder or the alternative cloud transcoding solution. The differences are found in scalability and availability primarily.  

Imagine your average software running in a virtual environment including an operative system on server hosted by one the big cloud service providers. This was the original idea behind the cloud server appliance and cloud video transcoding. However, over time the cloud architecture has changed with new market requirements. Today, we need an architecture that can rapidly scale up and down depending on workload and current viewers. Today’s definition of a cloud native software would more likely be an orchestrated solution of different microservices and containers that independently addresses up and down scaling of throughput requirements, calculates traffic, measures workload, manages security and much more – all in a fully redundant environment.

Files are uploaded to watch folders or by API for processing. The transcoded output media files will be available to the next production point within the same cloud provider domain, another domain or back to on-premise storage.

In the two latter cases egress i.e. output traffic will be applied with an attached cost.

It can be difficult to compare the costs between the different cloud providers. Some charge per more CPU cycle, whereas others charge more per running instance and I/O. A unified media services platform, with cost-aware APIs, can be a huge advantage here – providing clarity and transparency on cost.

The big difference between on-premise video transcoding and Cloud transcoding lies within your business process and business model requirements. On-premise solutions will require costs for server, power, staff and location. A cloud solution will not require the same type of cost, instead the cloud–solutions will charge you for outgoing traffic (incoming traffic is free), CPU / GPU cycles, output, running instances and more.

So, at a fixed number of transcoding jobs a month you might find an on-premise solution cheaper depending on some of the associated costs.  However, the flexibility of the cloud solution will only charge you for usage. Compared to the on-premise solutions that will at times have over capacity and at other times under capacity. 

 

Example:

A VOD provides needs to add a new storage.

The Vidispine cloud-transcoding architectures presents a number of unique features normally not found in more traditional solutions. First of all, the Vidispine cloud-native transcode solution VidiCoder, and 3^rd party services including AWS Elemental MediaConvert and Bitmovin encoder are closely integrated with our VidiCore object repository and available on-demand through our media services platform VidiNet.
 

In fact, the VidiCore metadata service will conform and orchestrate all metadata and enable the media supply chain processes to b with the internal and external cloud-native media services in VidiNet including:

• VSA ( Vidispine Server Agent) - for integration with on-premise storages
• VidiEditor – our browser based proxy editing solution
• Speech to Text – cognitive service for speech recognition
• Video and image analysis – detect objects, environments, celebrates and more in your content

Metadata information to and from all of these services are conformed into our unique media developer platform. The result is a complete customizable system or ready to go solution to be integrated into any existing system or media supply chain.

And best of all – all services available through an API, and we give you a cost estimate for each job and workflow.

These are some of the many advantages building your next-generation MAM solution with Vidispine.

If you have any thoughts or question regarding our products and solutions  - Please do not hesitate to contact us for more information.