Encoding in the Cloud
Editing and Encoding Features
Most batch encoding programs support features such as watermark insertion, thumbnail extraction, intros and outros, clipping, cropping, and subtitle support, and your cloud encoding solution should do the same.
That said, one of the hottest features coming in batch encoding solutions is automated quality control, which is currently a feature of Inlet’s Armada. It is available with several encoders from Digital Rapids and is also coming from Rhozet for Carbon Coder. At this time, none of the cloud encoding services offer this feature, which feels pretty essential given the automated nature of encoding and delivery.
Price
In terms of price, as mentioned, Hey!Watch is simplest, charging one credit (10 cents) for the first 45 minutes of source video and additional credits for every 15 minutes thereafter. That’s on a per-encode basis, not on a per-job basis, so encoding one 10-minute file to four formats will cost you a princely 40 cents.
Most other services charge via data transfer. For example, below an aggregate of 100 gigabytes transferred in and out per month, Encoding.com charges 25 cents per 100MB in and out. In contrast, both HD Cloud and mPOINT start at $2 per gigabyte for total video in/out, with reductions for volume. Flix Cloud charges $1.75 per gigabyte in and $2.25 per gigabyte out.
Format Quality
Shockingly, none of the services use the tagline "Our Quality Sucks, but We’re Cheap." To the contrary, most trumpeted their quality during our conversations and in their marketing literature.
Fortunately for all of us, the beta customers used by these cloud encoding services were high-volume shops with lots of encoding experience and high quality-related expectations. Steve Rosenbaum from Magnify.net says, "Magnify.net prides itself in being able to provide high quality platform services to large enterprise customers, video channel start-ups, and content entrepreneurs. Overall, in terms of video quality, HD Cloud was able to meet or exceed the current encoders in the marketplace."
As you can read in my interview with Sonicbids product manager Lou Paniccia (see sidebar), when asked about quality, he says, "There are far less errors during the conversion process, but the end result is pretty much the same quality as we had before."
Experience and Longevity
Not to dwell on the negatives, but cloud encoding is in its infancy, and there’s guaranteed to be some shakeout, particularly because platforms such as EC2 lower the barrier to entry into the encoding-services market. Before cloud computing, companies entering the rendering-for-hire business would have spent a fortune on a rendering farm, meaning significant initial capital requirements. With EC2, a team of talented programmers could pull together a rough encoding framework in a matter of weeks and launch as a cloud encoding solution.
If the cloud encoding market gets hot, this dynamic could mean a lot of Toms, Dicks, and Harriets entering the market with insufficient capital to last far beyond the startup phase. Since there will be some startup costs and time, you should do what you can to check the financial stability of the service that you choose and minimize your exposure should the company go under.
Trying and Implementing Services
When I first considered cloud encoding, the uploading times seemed like the biggest bar, but then I remembered that gazillions of folks were uploading massive files to YouTube and the like on a daily basis. This perspective, plus rapidly accelerating connection speeds, minimized my uploading-time objections.