Thriller Media Group

For Immediate Release
March 8th, 2010

Thriller Media Group, LLC announces the general availability of the Thriller ULTIMATE Encoder (TM) – Compatible with most content delivery networks, Flash Media Server, Wowza, Windows Media Server, and more!

Palm Springs, FL:  Thriller Media Group(TMG), LLC announced today the immediate availability of a top-of-the-line streaming Internet Video Encoding box, The Thriller ULTIMATE Encoder (TM).  This encoder supports all major streaming formats, including; Flash Media Server 3.5, Windows Media Server, iPhone live video, QuickTime/Darwin, RealMedia Helix, and Wowza.  It’s also compatible, Influxis, Live Stream, Multicast Media Suite, Justin.tv, uStream, and more!  The encoder will work with Akamai, Limelight, Edgecast, Level3, Bitgravity, Highwinds, Amazon Cloud, and others.

The Thriller ULTIMATE encoder (TM)  is available for rent or purchase for live webcasts, webinars, video conferencing, internet broadcasts, sporting events, corporate functions and more!  The encoder boasts a speedy CPU, plenty of RAM, ample storage, and most importantly professional hardware analog to digital encoding, all packed in a box much less than 1 cubic foot.  Miguel Dunkley, TMG President and Co-Founder says, “we found that although Digital Rapids, Viewcast, and Newtek make some of the best hardware out there, they are just too expensive for the average person to afford.  We set out to build a portable, powerful device which could compete head-to-head with the best at a fraction of the cost.  We believe we’ve achieved our goal.”.

The Thriller ULTIMATE Encoder (TM), supports component, composite, S-Video, balanced and unbalanced audio.  The device also sports USB and Firewire ports to support digital camcorders and even basic web-cams.  No other encoder on the market can support all these devices. TMG will even pre-configure and test the encoder for you before sending it out to ensure it’s ready to go out of the box.

An optional feature is the addition of the Thriller Ultimate Presenter.  This feature will allow easy integration of slide shows, images, and any other media into your broadcast.  Easily add titles, transistions, and multiple cameras to your presentation. 

TMG also offers on-site encoder management.  If you feel more comfortable having an encoding engineer on-site during the event, TMG will hand deliver the encoder, set it up, work with your A/V crew to ensure that all components are functioning.  The company also offers live event archiving, post-production video editing, post event video hosting, Flash and Silverlight player development and streaming media consulting services.

“We’re very excited about this”, says Dunkley, “No on else in the industry is offering this type of service.  We’ve talked to countless organizations who are looking to do 1 or 2 live events per year and can not or will not justify spending ten thousand dollars on encoding equipment.  This way, you can have the best of both worlds;  use a professional hardware encoder and achieve a broadcast quality live stream, but don’t invest the capital and depreciate a piece of equipment which is going to sit in a store room 11 months out of the year.”.

About Thriller Media Group, LLC
TMG is a sister company of SIGISIS, LLC, a company that provides cutting edge web and graphic design services.
Contact information:
Miguel Dunkley – miguel@rentanencoder.com
http://www.rentanencoder.com
(561) 856-3332

By:  Mike Colburn (StreamMediaGuy)

You will want to have some idea as to how much bandwidth you will use during a live webcast, webinar, or video event.  This will help you estimate costs and plan capacity. There is a fairly simple formula to calculate this.  Keep in mind that this will be an estimate and depending on your encoder, codecs, and compression methods, this number could vary.  You can use the formula to figure out how large a file will be once you encode and save your video as well.

There are 3 things we must know.
1. Video Bit Rate – this is the bit rate that you encode you video at.  If you are encoding above 1000Kbps then convert the number to Kbps don’t use Mbps.  In other words.  1Mbps=1000Kbps   2.5Mbps=2500Kbps  etc.

2. Length of the video – This can be tricky.  You don’t want to calculate the actual length, you want to estimate the amount of time each person is likely to watch.  If you are calculating for On-Demand viewing, then YES, use the whole length of the video.  But for live streams, figure about 10-20% of the actual event per viewer.  Don’t kid yourself, no one is going to watch your 4 hour antique auction in it’s entirety.  They are going to watch 30 minutes tops.

In my experience, the only types of live broadcasts which get watched in their entirety are big name concerts and church services.  Otherwise, plan on 10-20% of the length of the stream per user.

3.  Lastly, how many people will watch the event?  You may have 2 Million visitors to your site each year, or a mailing list of 500,000 but consider this when planning.   What is the event?  When is it?  Is it a concert on a Saturday night (do you think your audience is home in front of their computer Saturday night or out doing what they do then?  Oprah Winfrey got 500,000 people to watch her book club online webinar.  She has a viewing audience of 50,000,000 dedicated viewers.  This content was ONLY going to be available on the web, not TV as well.  She has about as much pull in the media as anyone anywhere.  So if you think you’re going to get 1Million people to watch your stream, think again.  (unless you’re Oprah or maybe Barack Obama).

Here’s the formula.

Bit Rate X Time (in seconds)

———————————  = Y

………………..8

Take Y and divide that number by 1000.  This will give your number for 1 Viewer watching for that amount of time represented in MegaBytes (MB)

Now multiply that number by the number of viewers you’re expecting and that will be how much bandwidth you will use.

Remember:

• 1000MB=1GB
• 1000GB=1TB
• 1000TB=1PB
• Approximately 1TB=10Mbps
• I know 1MB is really 1024KB.  Most CDNs and ISPs will round 1 MB to 1000KB, it makes for better billing

Example: 750Kbps for 1 Hour watched by 1500 people

750 X 3600 =2700000 / 8 = 337500/1000 = 337.50 X 1500= 506250MB or 506GB

You can use this same formula to estimate how large a file will be once you encode it.  Just don’t multiply it at the end by the number of viewers.  Of course if want to estimate your Content Delivery Network (CDN) usage, then just take the file size and multiply it by the number of monthly views.  This will estimate how much you should commit to your provider.

When choosing to use a CDN there may be numerous ways to integrate your content to deliver it.

Most CDNs employ one of 2 methods for delivering content.  The first is origin pull or off-site origin.  This evolves the CDN pulling the content from some outside source.  This origin could be your webserver, a cloud computing service, something like Amazon S3 or any other internet connected HTTP server.  The key is, that the CDN needs to access your content via HTTP GET requests.

The second method is CDN storage.  This is storage that the CDN supplies to you on their network.  This is usually a preferred method as the CDN does not have to go far to get your content to cache it on edge servers.  You can expect to pay for this storage on top of your other CDN charges.  Typically, you will FTP the content to the CDN storage or in some cases, there will be an HTTP upload option or even RSYNC may be an option.  If your content is large in size, larger than 5-10MB its recommended  you store the content on the CDN.

Using CNAMEs to access content

Most CDN’s will use CNAMEs to allow you to access your content.  A canonical name or CNAME is simply an alias.  For example   ‘static.domain.com’  could point to the CDN URL. You can use this instead of the URL that CDN supplies to you.  This way you can better brand your site and won’t have the CDN URL floating around on your site somewhere.  Talk to your CDN on how to implement a CNAME, they may have special requirements or might not even allow them.

When you do off-site storage, the CDN usually needs to know where you store that content.  So be prepared to supply the CDN the CNAME and the Source/Origin URL.  Origin, being the URL where the CDN can go to, to pickup your content.

When you write your HTML instead of using a relative path to a file like “./images/logo.jpg” you will use an absolute URL instead, such as “http://static.domain.com/images/logo.jpg”.  This way you are essentially embedding content from the CDN on your website.

If you are using a content management system, check to see if there is a way to address all your static elements like images, CSS, java script, PDF, MP3, FLV, MP4, etc at once.  You may be able to specify a “pre-pend” URL for specific file types.  This would make switching to a CDN easy and quick.  You could “CDN enable” your whole site in one click.

WordPress users, see the CDN Rewrites Plugin –

How do you know if your content is cacheable?

If you are uploading the content to the CDN then it will be cacheable.  If the CDN is going to pull the content from you then you need to consider a few things.  Most CDNs will honor any cache control headers you put on your content.  For example, if you put a Max-Age=86400 on your content, then the CDN will consider that piece of content fresh for 24 hours.  Don’t think for a second you can tell the CDN how long to hold a piece of content in cache for.  They will decide when that piece of content needs to be purged from an edge server.  However, setting this TTL will tell the CDN that after 24 hours they need to look to see if there is a new version of the file.

Also consider this, if your content has a Private, or No-Cache header on it, then the CDN will probably not cache it, you’re wasting bandwidth.   You are trying to deliver non-cacheable content through the CDN, they will go back to your origin for every request.

Some CDNs can address this issue by implementing some custom work around, so talk to your CDN of choice for advice.  Also, check with your CDN to see if they require specific cache control headers to be present, you may need to alter your headers in order to make your content cacheable even if you don’t have a No-Cache type header.

Conclusion

This was a basic overview on how CDNs handle basic caching of content from different origins as well as how to deliver your content through the CDN.  Consider the issues of cache control headers, these can be very powerful and allow for flexibility on how your content is cached and for how long.  You should always work with your CDN of choice directly as they will have specifics for implementing their solution.  No 2 CDNs are exactly alike.

Jeff Kopang, Vice President of Marketing for ViewCast, provides a quick overview of the Niagara 2120 streaming media appliance.

If you are considering renting the Viewcast Niagara 2120 for your next webcast, web conference, live event, or pod cast, please watch this video for more information

This article will explore some of the issues about doing a live web cast.  Why you want to go live, bit rates, encoders, audiences, etc.  You will have a better understanding of a live webcast and get some alternatives to hiring an expensive CDN for a 1 time event.

Why go Live?

Why are you choosing to have a live event?  Is it because you want interactivity?  Is it a happening event that people need to see live?  Or is it because your CEO said that he wants his quarterly address to be available to the 40 employees live when he gives it?

There are good reasons to offer a live event and there are bad reasons.  Interactivity doesn’t really require a live broadcast.  You can achieve most things like chat, and poll taking without it being live.

Know your audience
If this is corporate event, then it’s likely your attendees will be required to attend.  However if this is a concert or a sporting event, be sure to know who your audience is and if they will be able to attend.  It sounds great to have a live concert for a band on a Friday night, but consider this; is the audience 15-25 year olds?  If so, they are probably going out on Friday night and won’t be at home in front of their computers to watch a concert.

It would be better to offer the concert as a pay-per-view or VOD event that people can watch at the leisure.

Know your encoding options
First choose whether this is to be a Windows Media or Flash event.  What about Real Media (really, does anyone use RealMedia anymore?).  What about QuickTime?  It’s gaining popularity because of the iPhone, the issue is, not too many providers support Darwin live streaming (yet, check with them over the next 6 months).

Once you have a format chosen, choose an encoder.   For Flash Live Encoding you can use the Flash Live Encoder from Adobe and a high end computer. This product is ok for most consumer applications. You are really limited to the horsepower of your computer. There is no Mac version available so you must be on a Windows machine.

A better option for Flash Live Encoding is the On2Flix Live encoding software or the Sorenson Squeeze Live product. Both of these will offer higher quality video and more flexibility.

You are still at the mercy of your computer. So I suggest you get the biggest, baddest computer you can when using a software live encoder. Throw as much CPU, RAM, and Video Memory at it as possible. Use a SATA or Firewire hard drive which runs at least at 7200RMP.

You also need to consider how you connect your camera source to the computer. Don’t use a simple off the shelf Web Camera or an analog to USB device. These are ok for home movies, but for professional videos you should look at a Prosumer HD Video Camera or a high end encoding capture card like the Ospry card.

For a hardware live encoding solution, look at the Digital Rapids, Vbrick, orNewtek products. Digital Rapids has a cool new product called the TouchStream Appliance. It’s a portable standalone hardware encoder perfect for field productions.

Windows Media/Silverlight encoding

Try the Windows Media Encoder or for Silverlight Encoding, try Microsoft Expression

For WM/Silverlight hardware encoding, choose a Vbrick, Digital Rapids (in some cases), or Tricaster device.

Watch your bitrate
Everyone wants everything in HD these days.  There is a compelling reason to broadcast at 1.5Mbps or higher.  But is it really necessary?  Consider this about bitrate:  Many people can’t sustain much more than about 1000Kbps for any length of time.  3G wireless networks at best do about 700Kbps.  You can get full-screen good quality video at about 750Kbps.

If you want to go high bit rate, utilize some new technologies.  Microsoft and Adobe both have bandwidth detection (variable bit rates).  However, Silverlight now offers Microsoft Smooth Stream which will dynamically change the bit rate of the video to adjust for conditions at the player level.  Adobe FMS 3.5 also uses dynamic live streaming which does about the same thing.  The important thing to know about broadcasting in high bit rate is make sure you have enough upload bandwidth at your venue.

Test before you go live
You need to be at your venue a day or 2 in advance.  If you are using a CDN, see if they offer some sort of live event monitoring service.  Connect to your publishing servers and make sure you can sustain the bandwidth required for the event.   If you have the option of multiple ingest points, run ‘trace routes’ to the different servers and see which one is really closest to you.  The one in the city your in doesn’t necessarily mean it’s closest

Talk to the venue IT coordinator, see if you can get dedicated bandwidth.  My experience in conference centers is that the shared wireless Internet offered is usually sub-par.  If you can’t get dedicated bandwidth, ask them what their usage is like during the time of your event.  If it’s normally heavy, then you may need to lower your bit rate to accommodate for the poor connection.

Fire up your encoder and get people on different networks in different geographies to watch your test stream.  You only get 1 shot at this, and there are about a million moving parts in this that can break.

How do I get my signal out there so people can see it?
You have a lot of choices.  The first to consider is how big is my audience?  This will ultimately dictate how much bandwidth and resources you will need.  Use this equation:

(Bit rate)  X  (seconds) *
————————
8

Take that number and divide by 1000,  this will give you your number in MB.  Then multiple that by the number of viewers and you will know how much bandwidth you use

*average number of seconds a person will watch, not the length of the event

example:
500Kbps  X  1800 (30 min)
———————————-
8
= 112,500  then divide by 1000 = 112.5MB.  That’s how much bandwidth 1 user will consume watching for 30 minutes.

If you will have over 50 or so viewers, it makes sense to look at dedicated servers or using a CDN.  If you plan to have more than 1000 viewers, then a CDN is almost a must.

But for those events with just a handful of viewers look into free services like Mogulus and Ustream.  Or look at low cost options like Amazon cloud computingwith Wowza servers.  Also check out Influxis who can host your FMS server for you.

A one time live event from a Tier 1 CDN like Limelight or Akamai will probably cost you about $5000 and up, or they will ask you sign an annual contract somewhere in the neighborhood of $12,000 or more.

That’s a wrap!
There are lots of options out there for doing live webcasts.  Ask us how you can produce your own webcast today!

If you have any questions about this topic, please feel free to post them here and I will respond.

Thanks,

Mike Colburn (DigitalMediaGuy)

When choosing to buy CDN service there are a lot of factors which go into play.  Obviously, you want the best service for the best price.  Use the following as guide to help you when interviewing CDN service providers.

1. Bandwidth needs
What are your bandwidth needs?  Are you going to use 50GB/month or 50TB/month?  CDNs charge by GB transferred (in most cases).  If you’re only delivering a small amount of traffic, it may not be necessary to purchase CDN service.  You might be able to get away with upping your current web host provider from a shared environment to a dedicated environment.  Maybe it’s time to move to a business class web host, instead of that $5/month provider you’re using now.

It doesn’t make sense to pay a Tier 1 CDN thousands of dollars a year to deliver 4 videos.  If you’re having so much problems with your video or software downloads, then look at the root cause and fix it!

When you are delivering about 500GB/month it starts to make sense to off load that heavy lifting to a CDN.  By now, you are getting several thousand requests per month or even per second and your single web server in 1 data center won’t be able to keep up with the traffic.

Certainly when you are doing over 1TB/month of static content delivery, you should use a CDN.  This will ensure your videos, podcasts, music, images, documents, and software downloads are getting to your customers quickly and efficiently.

2. Network Performance

All CDNs big and small say they have the best network!  There are basically 3 kinds of CDNs:  Internet based, Peering/Private based, and Peer to Peer (P2P).

About the only Internet based CDN is Akamai.  Akamai has thousands of servers all over the place.  Then using some fancy algorithms, they route traffic from 1 PoP to the next getting your content onto the backbone of what ever ISP your end user is on.  They then cache the content in that closest PoP so the next person in that region/ISP has the content already close to them.  Obviously, this method works as Akamai is the biggest CDN on the globe and boasts the most customers.

A peering/private CDN is one who puts servers in regionalized PoPs around the world.  Then in those PoPs they peer with, or directly connect with as many ISPs and backbones as they can.  Then when someone requests a piece of content, the file is delivered directly from the CDN to the end user network and is able to by-pass the Internet all together, in most cases.  Most other CDNs use this model.  Limelight Networks is the most successful in this configuration.  They have a private fiber backbone as well to move content from Origin Server to PoP.  Other CDNs who follow this model are Panther, EdgeCast, Level3, CDNetworks, and others.

Finally, the idea of P2P is intriguing.  Simply have all content viewers act as a PoP and replicate the content around the globe.  There’s little or no infrastructure cost and theoretically you can get your content on to any ISP in the world.   P2P has it’s place, but as a means to deliver mission critical and revenue generating content, this method should be avoided.

As a side note, there are Hybrid CDNs who employ P2P and Peering/Private methods.  These are intriguing, however for secure delivery, using a P2P is less desirable as your content will end up on hundreds to thousands of individual computers with little or no control over who gets access to it.

3. Technology
Does your CDN support the technology you require?  All CDNs will deliver content via HTTP Progressive download.  But does your CDN support true Flash Streaming (RTMP), true Windows Media Streaming (MMS, RTSP), Quicktime or Real Media streaming?  What about Flash Live or Windows Media Live?  Can they do MP3 Live?  Do they have a Token Based Authentication secure URL product?  Can they do pseudo-Flash streaming?  Do they have any special services for HD delivery?  What about a mobile CDN platform? Is it easy to get content to the CDN?

Finally, what about their analytics?  Do they offer quality analytics? Is it easy to use?  Does it show number of request per object?  Is there a content management piece?  Do they offer Geo-Reporting?  Can you get raw logs?

4. Other products and services
What else can your CDN of choice do for you?  Do they have a professional services department?  Can they help with monetization?  Do they offer encoding/transcoding?  What about digital rights management (DRM)?  Do they offer a live event monitoring service? Is there a content management system or digital asset management system available?  Does your service include embeddable media players?  Can they cache whole web sites?  Do they support e-Commerce or shopping carts?

5. Support
What kind of support can your CDN offer?  Ask for the number of the helpdesk and call it.  How quickly did they answer?  Did you get a person or just voice mail?  Is there email support available?  Do you have access to technical personnel during the integration phase?  Who do you call if you have a question about your bill?  Does your CDN even offer support?  What happens if you call in the off hours?  What does their Service Level Agreement look like?  Most CDNs offer a 100% SLA, but what does that really mean and how do you get credit if they don’t meet their SLA?

6. Contracts
Does your CDN require an annual contract?  Do they offer a month-to-month contract?  Are they asking you to commit to a minimum amount of money per month whether or not you use that much?  What happens if you go over your commit, how much is that going to cost you?  Can you pay with a credit card?  Do you have to pay with a credit card?

7. Longevity
How long has your CDN been in business?  Are they funded by venture capital?  Do they have huge amounts of outstanding debt?  Are they facing an uncertain law suite by a competitor?  How much cash do they have in the bank?  Over the past 12 months there have been some major moves in the CDN industry.  There have been a number of players who have all but disappeared.  There have been some acquisitions and mergers, and some major players are bleeding cash so much that they may not be around in the next 12 months.  Be careful about putting content on an iffy CDN.  Research them independently and see if they have had any major complaints or severe outages.

8. Cost
Notice cost is at the bottom of the list?  This is because cost should not be your number one concern.  You will find huge differences in cost from CDN to CDN.  Expect to pay anywhere from a few cents per GB up to over $1 per GB.  There are a number of factors that will dictate what you pay.  Don’t expect to get the same pricing that a big boy like Netflix will get when you are passing 200GB/month.  Your price will be based on how much traffic you pass.  The more you pass, the cheaper the price will be.  Also, most of the other items mentioned above will factor in your cost.

If the CDN you decide to go with is too expensive or is asking for more of a commit than you want.  Ask them if they have resellers you can go through.  Usually these resellers can offer better terms.  You may pay more per GB than going straight with the CDN, but you might only pay for what you use.  Also beware that going with a reseller may limit you to support from that reseller.  You might not be able to call up the CDN directly for support.  You may also only get basic reporting with a reseller instead of the full blow analytics package offered by the CDN.

Conclusion
Consider all these factors when deciding which CDN to go with.  The biggest factor is how much traffic are you going to pass.  You may have fun driving that Lexus, but you can still get to work in your Toyota.   Choose a CDN that meets your needs and fits your budget.

If you have any questions about this topic, please feel free to post them here and I will respond.

Thanks,

Mike Colburn (DigitalMediaGuy)

Do I need a CDN if I have Cloud Computing?

Over last year or so, the term Cloud Computing has been making headlines.  There are several new entrants into the Cloud Computing industry.  The idea is simple, you have all these computers or servers directly connected to the cloud (The Internet) and you have massive computing power at your fingertips.  Companies like Rackspace, GoGrid, Amazon, and AT&T are all offering one form of Cloud Computing or another.

The services available from these companies range from simple “Cloud Storage”, to fully scalable virtual servers in the cloud.

When to use Cloud Computing
The great thing about these services is the instant setup and “unlimited scalability”.  When you want a new website, with a few clicks of a mouse you bring up a new Linux or Windows box.  They even make it easy for you by pre-installing services like SQL, Mail, and in some cases applications like Wowza or Windows Media streaming server.

The setup process is usually wizard driven and they take the guesswork out of setting up server software and services.

A couple of cloud-computing providers even partner with Content Delivery Networks (CDN) to offer Cloud Storage.  Essentially you put your files in the cloud storage and they are on a CDN.

Sounds good, why do I even consider a CDN?
All of these services are on virtualized boxes and shared resources.  They are not dedicated.  The services are not fully managed either.  You would be responsible for software updates, patches, licenses, etc; although you really shouldn’t ever be concerned about hardware or bandwidth.  The idea behind cloud-computing is that you just pay more and they dedicate more resources to your servers.

If you have an existing data center or web servers, you may hesitate moving your web sites or web servers to a cloud-computing Provider.  This may mean abandoning hardware and software you’ve already invested in.  You may consider bringing up new servers in a cloud environment to reduce costs or gain flexibility.

If you have a lot of web sites it may make sense to consider a cloud provider versus a normal web host provider.  You will have more control over your domains and depending on your provider you may be able to scale easier.  Plus you would have full root access to the web servers to configure them however you want.  It would be like a dedicated server package from a web host provider.

If you plan to use a cloud computing company in lieu of a CDN, thinking you can just build your own CDN within their cloud, think again!  Start asking your cloud-computing vendor these questions:  how many data centers are they in?  What kind of peering arrangements do they have?  What are their peek bandwidth capabilities/egress capabilities?  Where in the world are they hosted?  Will your servers be replicated everywhere around the world or just in the US, just in one data center?  Are there more costs involved for Europe, Asia, or Australia delivery?   What if you need streaming servers for videos, can they do that?  What about mobile delivery?  Do they offer token-based authentication? Pseudo Flash Streaming? What about encoding and transcoding?  Does your cloud-computing vendor have any content management software or video?  Do they support live video delivery?  These are all questions to consider if you think you want to use a cloud-computing company instead of a CDN.

A tier 1 CDN like Limelight or Akamai will have thousands of servers to cache your content around the world.  They will offer all those ancillary services related to content delivery.  A CDN will support streaming and HTTP progressive downloads.  They will probably have Adobe, Microsoft and Apple servers.  A CDN will be able to support live events.  On top of that you will be able to accelerate your whole site, with Akamai’s DSA or Limelight’s Limelight Site services.  You are not limited to just videos with a CDN, any piece of content can be delivered via a CDN.

You will probably find that integrating a CDN is easier and less time consuming than bringing up new servers and maintaining them.  In some cases with a CDN it may be as simple as pointing a CNAME to the CDN or just uploading your content to them.

Pricing
Certainly, the pricing of cloud-computing is more attractive than a CDN.  But you will need to figure out what your needs are and find the right combinations of services.

Mosso by Rackspace:

• $100/month
• 50 GB of storage space
• 500 GB of monthly bandwidth
• 10,000 compute cycles.  Compute cycles measure how much processing time your applications require on the Mosso cloud. 10,000 compute cycles are roughly equivalent to the monthly capacity of a server with a 2.8 GHz modern processor. per month
• Prices go up from there.

GoGrid:

• $.19/hour of RAM (add more RAM, pay more) $136/month per 1GB of RAM plus
• $.50/GB of transfer outbound
• 10GB of storage included $.15/GB thereafter
• Free Load Balancing with F5 load balancers

Amazon EC2:

• $.10/hour up to $.80/hour for “On Demand”
• $325 setup up to $2600 setup + $.03/hour up to $.24/hour for a “Reserved” server
• $.10/GB on inbound traffic
• $.10 to $.17/GB for outbound traffic
• Storage is extra through the S3 service
• Other services are extra

AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service:

• Pricing not disclosed

CDN Pricing
Pricing for CDN service will vary greatly depending on what you want and where you get if from.  With the Tier 1 CDNs expect a minimum commitment per month and to sign a 1-year contract.  With a Tier 2 CDN like Level3, CDNetwork, Edgecast, etc, you may get a month-to-month contract and lower prices, but you may not get the same service either.

Pricing for CDNs will be anywhere from $.05/GB to $1.00 or more per GB depending on what you commit to.  Keep in mind only the largest contracts in the hundreds of TBs to Petabytes will get down to the $.05/GB range.  When you add on ancillary services, you will add to your monthly bill as well.

It appears that Rackspace wins on pricing, although as you add on more CPU Cycles and storage they may increase significantly.  Rackspace is also known for their customer service, which will count for a lot.  Amazon’s pricing seems convoluted and confusing, it looks cheap on the outside, but if you add up all your inbound/outbound, storage and class of service, their pricing isn’t too aggressive.  Also, Amazon is not known for customer service at all.  Getting a hold of tech support may be a chore.  GoGrid’s pricing is very close to Rackspaces’ and their product seems top notch, also the free load balancing counts for a lot, so don’t count out GoGrid.  Finally, AT&T has only just announced their cloud storage product.  Their web site doesn’t disclose pricing.  Good luck getting someone at AT&T on the phone that can help you understand their product.

Conclusion
If you’re looking at Cloud Computing to increase website performance, you may consider a CDN first.  Examine why your site is under performing.  Do you need more databases, do you need more mail servers? Do you need more domains?  These are all reasons to get cloud computing.  But if you have a lot of videos, music or software downloads or your pages are sluggish, then a CDN is the way to go!

Ideally, your best solution will be to use both a cloud-computing company and a CDN.  This will give you optimal performance, flexibility, and reliability.

If you have any questions about this topic, please feel free to post them here and I will respond.

Thanks,

Mike Colburn (DigitalMediaGuy)

The online video delivery experience

When delivering online videos there are generally two distinct ways to do it. HTTP Progressive Download or Streaming. You may assume that all videos are streaming, but you’ll be surprised to know that most aren’t.

So what are these two methods? How do they differ? What are the advantages and disadvantages of both? Why would I want to use one method over another?

Progressive Download
All web servers are capable of progressive download. This is merely the method of a video file being delivered via HTTP to a browser. This is similar to someone downloading a file from your website. In fact the video is delivered in the same manner that an image, a CSS, a JS, PDF, or any other file on your web site is.

The real difference is that media players can begin to show the video while it’s downloading. For example, a FLV file being delivered via HTTP Progressive download will begin to play in your Flash Player as soon as a little bit of data is received by the browser. The same is true for Windows Media files. Quick Time will wait until the entire file is downloaded before it plays, unless the QuickTime player on the PC/Mac is set for progressive play. So be careful when posting QuickTime videos.

It’s quite obvious when a video is being delivered via HTTP Progressive Download. You will typically see the little status bar grow as the video downloads. You won’t be able to move the scrubber button past the amount that has downloaded already. This makes it impossible to jump to the end of the video before that portion has downloaded. If you have a slow web server or limited bandwidth or the end user is on a slow Internet connection, then it’s possible for the enduser to notice buffering.

Buffering occurs when the download can’t stay ahead of video. The video will stop while it downloads more. If you pause the video and it allow to download a large portion, then you can watch the video uninterrupted. In either case, this is a poor enduser experience, this is when you would consider using a CDN.

There is a technology called Psuedo or Seek streaming. This method utilized TCP/IP Range Requests to allow the user to jump to any portion of the video and the player will make a range request of the file to download that portion. This method is usually only for FLV videos and requires special services, or servers and custom Flash players to function.

When a video is delivered via HTTP, it is actually downloaded to the end users computer. This is good and bad. It’s good because if the person watches the video again, it’s already cached on their computer. It’s bad because it makes it extremely easy for someone to steal your content.

Finally, if someone only watches the first minute of your video but doesn’t stop the download, the browser will download the whole file and you will pay for the delivery of the file even though the person didn’t watch the whole thing.

Streaming Video
Streaming video requires access to a streaming media server. Some servers are Flash Media Server, Wowza Media Server, Windows Media Server, Darwin Media Server (QuickTime), Real Media Server. These servers usually require licensing and may cost several thousands of dollars.

Some well known streaming protocols are RTMP, RTSP, and MMS.

When a video streams, it is being sent via UDP protocol to a player on the end users compter. The user will have the ability to fast forward or rewind the video. The video isn’t being downloaded to the end users computer so it is less likely that the content will be stolen. Also if the user only watches 5 minutes of a 30 minute video, then you only pay for the delivery of 5 mintues, not the whole video.

The biggest disadvantage of streaming over progressive download is if the user watches the same video over and over you will pay for the delivery of it each time.  Videos are also streamed at what ever bit rate they are encoded at.  Keep this in mind when creating HD quality video.  8Mbps video may sound and look great, but most homes can’t sustain an 8Mbps connection.  If you have really high bit rate video, consider delivering via HTTP.

Most web hosting providers or Content Delivery Networks (CDN) will have streaming media servers available to use. Historically, Flash video was more expensive to deliver than other forms. Recently prices have compressed and you will find that it costs about the same to deliver Flash or Windows Media files. In the past I would have said if your video is more than 10 minutes in length deliver it via Stream and less do progressive. Since prices have come down, I would consider streaming for any length video since streaming typically begins to play faster than progressive.

If you are looking at using a service such as a CDN or Cloud Computing and they say you can stream your videos, confirm with their tech support that they are utilizing a streaming server and not just offering bandwidth.

If you are delivering Flash videos, then you should be delivering via RTMP or RTMPE protocol for streaming and http for progressive. Windows Media uses either MMS or RTSP. Quicktime and Real Media use RTSP.

I hope you find this article of interest? This is a good guide to help you through deciding to use streaming delivery of videos or HTTP Progressive Download.

If you have any questions about this topic, please feel free to post them here and I will respond.  As always I ask that you support our sponsors.

Thanks,

Mike Colburn (DigitalMediaGuy)
Top Content Delivery Networks which support Streaming
* Limelight Networks
* EdgeCast Networks
* CDNetworks
* Level3
* Akamai

Do you want to increase your website sales, web-traffic, or start your own online TV talk show? Would you like to broadcast your newsletter articles or videos over the Internet to others? Has this seemed impractical because video loads too slow, takes to much web space or just seems to hard to understand. We’ll welcome to the NEW world of instant loading, user friendly web video.

You may have noticed that a large number of websites are now featuring videos, everything from music videos, to online training. News is a popular use for presenting website video. You’ve probably heard a lot about RSS (Really Simple Syndication), a format designed for sharing web content like news headlines. RSS will be covered in a future article.

Did you know?

That there are so many new advancements in online video and audio in the last year, almost anyone can have their own online radio or TV talk show, radio or television station without high fees, advanced technical knowledge, and no FCC (Federal Communications Commission) intervention or regulation. Just build a website, install your audio and/or video files, advertise, and you’re in business. You can even broadcast your audio and video files through RSS feeds (we’ll explain in a moment) to websites worldwide and Joint Venture (JV) with other website owners to include your video on their websites.

Why would you want to put video and audio on your website?

There are many reasons. We are now in the 21st Century and 2009 is said to be the year of online video. Video is a premier sales tool. You’ve heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. How many words is a video with audio worth? A LOT! More than ever, people today are in a hurry and easily distracted, and even sensitively attuned to watching television many hours a day. TV is losing some of its ground to web-surfing.

Give the people what they want, video. Entertain, inform and educate them the way they are already trained for. Now it’s easier than ever to do this. Here, we are focusing on adding video / audio to your website for various purposes such as, marketing, training, V-Blogging, video sharing and etc. New technology has made it easy to add fast loading (called Streaming) video content to your website.

Until recently, between slow dial-up Internet connections and older technology, adding video wasn’t practical for general website usage. But since over 60% of individuals online now have broadband access, and the new streaming technology, audio and video files can now be viewed online with little or no buffering. Buffering means to make the video viewable to your computer (the simple explanation). Therefore, video is now a feature that can be efficiently used online. There are still size and quality limitations to consider, but the industry is making progress in this arena almost daily.

The other problem hindering website video use was its complicated installation process. It’s been very difficult for the average individual to add video files to their websites. Windows Player simplified this process but still had limitations. It played a few formats, but not the streaming .swf (Flash) files and you had to know how to install their player on your website to play the video. You needed to know html webpage code or have a program like Microsoft’s FrontPage to install the player and video on a webpage.

Now there are a few new solutions that make it easy for the average person to install video on a website without needing too much computer or webpage knowledge. If a person knows how to cut and paste a simple code into a webpage, they can ad existing video files to their site. The tutorials even teach how to do this for the absolute beginner.

The latest software is an integration of several individual modules assembled as one user friendly software package that permits anyone to convert most of the existing video formats into fast loading, high quality, and streaming website videos. This software even enables you to customize your video player, video size, and quality. There is no player or software for your website visitor to download since the player is built into your webpage and loads almost instantly.

There are many software programs available that claim it’s easy to install video on your website. Most don’t work as promised. One good suite is Camtasia, but it is complex to use and cost several hundred dollars. A good user friendly, beginners’ level, feature-rich software should cost less than $100.

Stopping content thieves from taking your Flash video content requires a little extra work and some resources.  If you follow these guidelines, then your content won’t show up on PirateBay or YouTube.

There are lots of applications and plug-ins out there to allow you to capture video streams off the Internet.  It’s so easy that you may think there is no way to protect your content at all.  The following with give you some advice on how to protect your videos and sleep better at night.  You’re going to employ some extra services or buy some software, but if your content is valuable then it’s worth the investment

Protecting Windows Media content has been fairly easy for quite some time.  You can use the Windows Media DRM suite which will attach a digital certificate to the WMV file and require an active and valid cert to be downloaded in order to watch the video.  Although this system isn’t fool proof, it’s pretty strong and will stop most people dead in their tracks.  Microsoft is gearing up to roll out PlayReady which will plug the holes up in WM DRM.  It fully supports Silverlight in both Windows and Mac OS, and will be easy to use (so they say).  Look for a full deployment of PlayReady this summer.

But how do you protect Flash videos, specifically FLV, F4V, and MP4?  If you deliver your content via progressive download, then there will be little chance you can stop someone from taking that video from you with little effort.  Progressive download is literally downloading the file to the end user PC.  Where’s the protection?

There is no technology today to add DRM to the file itself.  Although there are some services out there that will offer something like that, they typically require you to use their proprietary Flash player in order to protect the content, who wants to do that?

So that leaves us with one option, protect the delivery of the video.  You may immediately think you can just stream the video using a Flash Media Server or Wowza server.  Think again.  Products like Replay Media Capture can snatch that stream right up.  What you need to do is stream the video using a Flash Media Server using RTMPE instead of RTMP.  You also need to disable RTMP from the server all together.  Adobe had a security warning about this awhile back.  Leaving RTMP on, allows for a back door.  RTMPE will encrypt the stream during delivery makeing it very difficult to de-compile and capture.

Are we done yet?  Nope, I’m just getting started…  What’s to prevent someone from discovering your stream name and then embedding that in their own Flash player?  You need to use SWF verification.  SWF verification will will ensure that the SWF playing the video is your SWF and not someone elses.  Again, you will need Flash Media Server to do this with.

Are we done now?  Not quite.  You’ll be delivering your SWF via HTTP to the browser, so it wouldn’t be too hard to locate that file and WGET it.  Now I have your player I can play it all I want.  What do you do now?  Use a Token based authentication with a time expiring URL.  These schemes usually use a MD5 128-Encrypted hash.  What will happen is, a unique URL will be used to play the video each and every time someone visits your site.  The URL will pass a token back to a secure server proving that the hash is authentic.  Then an time expire value is appended to the URL that will expire that link in a matter of seconds or a minute.  Nothing too long.  Access to the link is the only thing expiring, not the content.  So as long as the person has started watching the video with in that time frame, there is no problem even if the video is 2 hours long.  If they need to re-watch it, then they visit the site again and get a new URL.

All of this sounds like a lot of hassle and expense, is there an easier way?  If you deliver your videos through a CDN who uses FMS, then they probably offer all these services, you won’t have to incur any of these expenses.  Try a company called Influxis, they host FMS servers and you can setup a FMS how ever you want with minimal cost.

For a higher end solution, check out WideVine.  Widevine uses some proprietary technology which goes beyond what I’ve mentioned here.  Widevine’s intuitive DRM management tools offer total control over the encryption, key management, distribution and consumption of digital media. Using Widevine Cypher, pre-configured policies, digital rights and encryption are applied to inbound assets, automatically registered with Widevine and the CMS, then uploaded to a destination partner network or CDN.  Just know, that WideVine doesn’t come cheap!

I hope this information is useful for you.  Like all security on a computer, as soon as you plug a hole, another one is dug.  The goal is to stay one step ahead of the bad guys.

Thanks,

Mike Colburn (DigitalMediaGuy)