Posts for 'HD Cloud'

Encoding.com, one of the earliest companies to offer video encoding/transcoding as a service, announced yesterday that it would now be using The Rackspace Cloud as its primary cloud computing environment, a switch from Amazon's EC2. The move is significant as it is another indicator of how the still nascent video encoding as a service is evolving to fit into the overall encoding landscape. Jeff Malkin, Encoding.com's COO and Chandler Vaughn, The Rackspace Cloud's director of product development, gave me an update yesterday.

Media companies have traditionally done their encoding and transcoding in-house, using software from companies like Anystream, Telestream, Digital Rapids, Rhozet and others. As I originally wrote last April, companies like Encoding.com, mPoint and HD Cloud have begun offering alternatives that allow these processes to occur in the "cloud." The idea is that media companies can essentially rent encoding/transcoding capabilities as needed for a fee from companies who do their processes on a third party's infrastructure such as The Rackspace Cloud or Amazon's EC2. For media companies, the new encoding/transcoding service providers' primary value propositions are lower overall cost (both opex and capex), elimination of on-site responsibility for hardware and software, and flexibility.

Jeff reported that Encoding.com is now serving 400 customers, with user-generated content sites like StreetFire still a meaningful part of its business. The company has encoded 3.5 million videos to date and is now encoding 30K source videos/day. Jeff said that established companies like MTV and Brightcove are using Encoding.com's services, but noted that larger media companies are still just dipping their toe into encoding as a service. In particular Jeff said that given turnaround times, the ability to do encodes for full-length HD-quality files on a service basis is not yet practical.

This echoes what an executive at a large encoding software company told me recently - that for the biggest media companies, which have large files that need to be turned around quickly, encoding in the cloud doesn't yet make sense. Another issue is the reluctance to move source files outside the media company's firewall.

Encoding.com's move to Rackspace begins to address some of these issues. Jeff highlighted 3 primary reasons for the switch - Rackspace's CPU bursting capability, which can offer 2x the processing performance of EC2 (The Bitsource just posted a performance comparison analysis); closer proximity to customer's files, as Rackspace is the managed hosting provider for thousands of web sites; and Rackspace's customer support, which improves Encoding.com's ability to deliver on its service level guarantees.

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Three weeks ago, in "HD Cloud Launches Video Encoding Platform, Capitalizing on Cloud Computing," I detailed how the company is offering video content providers a new, "cloud-based" approach to meet their escalating transcoding needs. Today's post is about mPOINT, another new entrant in cloud-based transcoding and syndication, whose TranSend service goes a step further by also offering metadata creation and management. Chiranjeev Bordoloi, mPOINT's co-founder and CEO and Chris Cali, co-founder and CTO, gave me a rundown recently.

There are multiple drivers behind TranSend (and others in this space): an exploding array of video encoding and metadata formats, skyrocketing premium-quality content consumption and syndication, distribution to mobile devices and various business models/rules, to name just a few.

In fact, though I'm often skeptical of vendor-written white papers, mPOINT's recently released free white paper "Content Syndication in the Cloud" provides a pretty unbiased overview of the evolving video market and the resulting operational complexities. Many of its themes resonate with what I've been hearing from content executives for a while, which are genuine inhibitors to the further development of the "Syndicated Video Economy" I've written about so often. Especially for those new to cloud-based computing, the white paper is an excellent resource. There's even a handy "buyer's guide" to assist in evaluating alternatives.

As Chiranjeev and Chris explained, one of the key differentiators for TranSend is its comprehensiveness. It offers transcoding, metadata creation and management, syndication, packaging, delivery and reporting - all performed in the cloud, which generates cost-savings and simpler work flows. Another focus is on mobile video advertising, where TranSend is able to call an ad server like DART and the source file for the requested video and on-the-fly encode both into the phone's optimal file format.

Chiranjeev and Chris said they're repeatedly told by customers that simplicity, without feature sacrifices, is a key goal. And on the cost side, with a model based on GB in and GB out, plus the number of transcodes, the price usually works out to approximately $2/GB, which mPOINT believes is a fraction of non-cloud alternatives.

mPOINT is focusing on mid-tier and larger media companies that emphasize syndication, which increasingly is most everyone. Yesterday the company announced SnagFilms, the independent film aggregator backed by former AOL executives Ted Leonsis and Steve Case as an early customer. Other announcements are in the hopper. mPOINT bootstrapped itself to profitability and took a seed round in December '08 from Greycroft Partners to tap its relationships for growth. The company is also building out a growing ecosystem of partners which currently include Amazon, Aspera and IBM.

TranSend and others offer the kind of infrastructure advances that are helping lubricate the broadband video business model. I constantly hear from small-to-mid video content providers who are enticed by the surging popularity of online distribution but are often still daunted by its immature business models and operational complexity. mPOINT and others are showing that clever entrepreneurs are steadily addressing these needs.

While executives at other incumbent encoding/transcoding vendors have told me that they have not seen any customer erosion due to cloud-based alternatives, they are watching the developments closely and planning their own initiatives. For now the largest content providers, who have the deepest pockets to staff their own encoding, syndication and metadata operations may be reluctant to be early adopters of cloud-based alternatives. Their concerns span security in the cloud to insufficient proof of cloud success as yet. But with TranSend and others addressing so many critical market drivers, my sense is that this space is going to attract a lot of attention quickly and is poised to become quite hot.

What do you think? Post a comment now.

Looking over last month's posts with an eye for 2-3 themes to extract for my recap post today, I was instead struck by one overarching theme: innovation is alive and well in the broadband video space. Other sectors of the economy may have ground to a halt in the current recession, but whether it's new technologies, new service models or new approaches by traditional media companies, the pace of innovation in all things related to broadband video seems only to be accelerating.

Here are some of the examples from last month's posts:

New technologies

• SundaySky - a new approach to dynamically generate videos out of web site content
• HD Cloud - cloud-based encoding and transcoding plus 3rd party syndication
• Market7 - web-based platform for collaboratively creating and producing video
• FreeWheel - ad management/distribution company raises another $12M

New service models

• Sezmi - next-gen video service provider aiming to replace cable/satellite/telco
• TurnHere - distributed video production services for the corporate market
• Babelgum - premium-quality content destination for independent producers
• YuMe Mindshare iGRP - new measurement unit to compare on-air and online ad performance
• YouTube-Disney - short-form promotional deal

New approaches by traditional media companies

• Disney-Hulu - Exclusive 3rd party online distribution for established broadcast network
• Cable networks launching webisodes - online initiatives to attract and retain new online audiences
• New York magazine video re-launch - emphasis on curating best-of-the web videos with brand
• WWE Smashup - fan-submitted video mashup content driving awareness of on-air special

Now granted I have an eye out for broadband innovations so this list is somewhat self-serving. But remember that for every item above I was probably pitched on 2-3 others that I didn't write about due to time limitations. Some of these other items may have been picked up by other news outlets and captured in the news aggregation side of VideoNuze, while plenty of them likely received little attention.

My point is that throughout the whole broadband video ecosystem there is a vibrant sense of entrepreneurialism that is slowly but surely remaking the traditional video landscape. To be sure, not all of this stuff is going to work out; either business models will be faulty, technologies won't deliver as promised or consumers will reject what they're being offered. Nonetheless, from my vantage point, the wheels of innovation continue to spin faster. That makes it a very exciting time to be part of the industry.

What do you think? Post a comment now.

Three significant trends are behind today's launch of HD Cloud, a new video transcoding service being announced today: the proliferation of video file formats and encoding rates, the increase in syndication activity to multiple distributors and the cost and scale benefits of "cloud computing." HD Cloud founder and CEO Nicholas Butterworth (who I have known since he ran MTV's digital operations 10 years ago) walked me through the company's plan yesterday and how it benefits content providers looking to cost-effectively capitalize on broadband video's surging popularity.