Cloud video transcoding services - take 2!
 

Hi all,

I posted this on the webmaster Q and fuckin' A, but with no responses. Being impatient and a bit of a nag, I thought I'd broaden the scope by re-posting it here (I hope it's not against any rules):

"I've been tasked with looking into cloud video transcoding services and have narrowed my shortlist down to four: AWS, Zencoder, Encoding.com and Panda. They've all had good reviews and I've signed up to each (free accounts) to evaluate them, but it's always good to get feedback from people that actually use them. Can anyone out there rate or rant about them?"

My inclination is to go with Zencoder: they seem to have the best API and request builder, though it will be hard to convince the boss (Paul) to pay twice as much for it as AWS. As for Encoding.com, they just seem far too expensive for the relatively low volume of transcoding we're looking at. And Panda's options seem too limited, though I like their flat price structure.

Anyone got any thoughts they'd like to share?

I use zencoder on a custom built application and also use it with Mechbunny's tube application (for a paysite).

I was at a similar stage to yourself and the following page didn't exist:
http://zencoder.com/en/file-transcoding/compare-aws

It goes some way to describing the differences I personally found. Primarily support, which you'll rarely need but when you do, Zencoder (props to Matt McClure) is fantastic.

Depending on what you are comfortable cost-wise and how much support you feel you may need, I would personally narrow down the options to AWS and Zencoder and go from there.

Hope I've gone some way to making your decision easier.

Curious, why don't you use MechBunny for encoding the videos with ffmpeg or handbrake?

I buy videos from various sources and unfortunately there is no single standard format being adhered to. This means I can buy videos from vendor x in avi format, from vendor y in mpeg format, etc. Using ffmpeg I found I had to constantly adapt to changes and create profiles etc. Additionally I also had to pay for colocation of a couple of servers to actually handle the encoding.

A lot of people outsource things like programming, writing, etc. and I guess I found "outsourcing" my video encoding was more cost effective for me :)

I free up resources, I don't have to worry about the changing landscape of video, if a certain video type fails to convert I simply rely on experts to get it sorted or tell me what the issue is.

in my opinion, ffmpeg is all what you need! it's able to convert any file extention to any file extention.
why should you pay for anything you could get for free?

There are a number of reasons to pay for a service like zencoder instead of using ffmpeg but this obviously depends on your use case.

For me, I enjoy being able to encode more than one video at a time and not have to worry about queues. I buy several thousand videos, have them sent to my colo partner, have them mount the drive and simply let zencoder handle the encoding. A batch of 1000 videos averaging 20-30 minutes will be complete in a day or a little over. Using ffmpeg this would take considerably longer.

FFMPEG isn't a set and forget type utility. When one needs to support various non-standard formats, files and even settings, it pays to have someone, who knows what they are doing, on board to constantly help fine tune. Using a service negates any need for this.

In my case, ffmpeg wasn't free. I paid people to set it up, I paid someone to fix it when a file type failed to convert, I paid for two servers, I paid to have those two servers hosted.

Like I said though, it does depend on your use case and more importantly how comfortable you are handling video. I personally prefer to outsource this part of my business and let people who know video handle it for me.

Ballpark, what does encoding 1000 videos cost when you use a service like Zencoder?

We set up Handbrake within Mechbunny to do our encodes, as we only upload our own videos, but we're always looking for the most efficient way to do things. Loading so many at once via a drive elsewhere sounds like a nice way to do it.

Thanks for the info.

Hi DWB, they charge per minute of video:
http://zencoder.com/en/file-transcoding/pricing

In my opinion, this is much more cost effective than paying based on video size which is what encoding.com does.

So basically $300 buys me 10,000 minutes of encoded video. This allows me to encode approx. 330 SD videos at 30 minutes each per month. Or 165 SD videos at 30 minutes each in 2 formats (example mp4 and webm) per month.

HD videos count as double minutes.

Thanks. I think I'm going to give them a try with their trial run and see how it goes.

You have me on ICQ if you have any questions.

Hint: I'm the guy that took the pic of the Jag with your personalised number plate :)

Thanks RazorSharpe, you've sold me on Zencoder, although I had already narrowed my shortlist down to them and AWS. Now to convince the boss to pay a little more for them!

And it looks like you may have referred DWB to them; you should get a commission :thumbsup

I use www.heywatchencoding.com (but for really small scale converting) and happy with it

Thanks socialerts,

Our input files alone will be around 50GB, and they charge at 3x for HD (the others are 2x) so they don't look too affordable to me right now. The same problem with Encoding.com who also charge by the GB rather than minutes.