5 ms·

Building Cloudflare TV from Scratch

176 points by mxschmitt 6y ago

eastdakota 6y ago
Here's the original motivation for the project: https://blog.cloudflare.com/ladies-and-gentlemen-cloudflare-tv/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/ladies-and-gentlemen-cloudflare-...
carlosdp 6y ago
> When the live programming ends at 1100, the video experience would break and the user would need to hit refresh to see the next show on the schedule. If that was the only problem, why wouldn't changing the stream with a small amount of JS have worked rather than having to add a muxing layer in front of the streams?
- kevmo314 6y ago
  I wonder if they have plans to expand to non-browser viewports?
  - vanshg 6y ago
    They do. From the last section of the article, entitled "Thinking Ahead..." > Bring Cloudflare TV to platforms like Apple TV and Roku
- kick 6y ago
  Breaks/introduces annoying amount of lag for people using things like mpv for an "actual" live television experience would be my guess.
- phn 6y ago
  This is just a guess, but JS only works in the context of a website, and it might actually be simpler to control the server side muxer without having a whole bunch of logic and the systems to support it.
- yazaddaruvala 6y ago
  1. This might not be built in a browser. e.g. Hulu or ESPN iOS app. Although any client of the byte stream could implement the "refreshing" protocol on the client, its more work for each client to do. 2. Given this is Cloudflare they are probably trying to find optimal ways to use bandwidth and their edge fleet. Like TV, maybe there will be no "rewind", and each Cloudflare edge server fans out the same "currently live" bytes to all available clients (i.e. shared state across all client connections, rather than independent state for each client connection). Which can't happen if there is a "refresh" event from each client that needs to be synchronized. 3. "refreshing" implies new state, added latency, and a "janky" feel. If "transitioning" is all server side, bytes from the next "episode" can be pipelined before the previous episode is finished and the refresh event has occurred. |-Episode A->| |-Episode A->| |-Episode A->| | <-| | <--Refr| |<--Refresh--| |-> | |de B-> | |-Episode B->| |-Episode B->| |-Episode B->| Rather than: |-Episode A->| |-Episode A/B->| |-Episode A/B->| |-Episode B->| |-Episode B->| |-Episode B/C->|
anonms-coward 6y ago
Is cloudflare at a scale where it would be possible for them to provide cheap enough prices on video hosting and bandwidth to enable someone to build a profitable YouTube alternative on top of that? Assuming that a youtube competitor can get to similar scale and make similar revenue.
- paulpan 6y ago
  The competitive advantage of YouTube isn't really in video storage or bandwidth, but rather in its creators community and ad revenue sharing/monetization. Also copyright, regulatory compliance, content moderation are non-trivial. These are the causes (among many others) that sunk Microsoft's Mixer and potentially Facebook Watch...
  - angel_j 6y ago
    No, it needed network and storage first, losing billions for years in order to supply the creators with a service. The non-trivial factors could be trivialized by better community moderation features and niche networks.
  - monkeywork 6y ago
    youtubes competitive advantage is search... that plus the simple scale of users and content.
    - solarkraft 6y ago
      > youtubes competitive advantage is search How? YouTube videos aren't all that prominent on Google and its search features are rather terrible. What they do have is a semi working recommendations system. How hard would that be to replicate?
- jpalomaki 6y ago
  They have a service for streaming stored video. ”$1 per 1,000 minutes viewed, $5 per 1,000 minutes of video storage” https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/ https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/
colesantiago 6y ago
Will there be any support for DRM or video protection?
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Isn't live video just bytes being relayed around, thus you can serve encrypted content and have something in the client decrypting it into playable video? If so you can reuse everything that the satellite TV industry (one single feed being broadcast across the entire continent) for their pay-TV DRM.
  - Mindwipe 6y ago
    No. You have to handle key rotation and a thousand other variables, it's a very different environment.
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
  It's 2020, shouldn't we have learned by now that DRM software is pointless in almost any situation?
  - colesantiago 6y ago
    If it is pointless in 2020, why does Netflix have DRM then?
    - Shacklz 6y ago
      Wild guess (I really have no idea): Because otherwise they wouldn't get the licenses for their bought content to begin with? Netflix themselves probably couldn't care less; they know that everything they offer for streaming will be available for pirating the second its released, with or without DRM; people have Netflix because its convenient, not because they cannot pirate their content.
      - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
paulpan 6y ago
Very cool for multiple reasons! The first is that it seems a lightweight and straightforward approach to launch first and thereafter iteratively improve, e.g. using Zoom to push live video to Cloudflare. Secondly the content, while all Cloudflare-related, seems useful to learn about internet infrastructure, etc. Perhaps the elephant in the room is "what's next"? Seems like it could at least become a Twitch competitor, if not also to YouTube if Cloudflare is able to figure out the monetization, privacy and copyright aspects.
dmix 6y ago
Seems very close to "rolling your own (internet) TV station using open source and Zoom". That's exciting that it's become so accessible. Of course the hard part then is having a producer running the content all day + getting enough content.
- trynewideas 6y ago
  > the hard part then is having a producer running the content all day + getting enough content If I'm managing a local access/community TV/open studio system right now, I'd be pulling as much inspiration as possible from this post and working to deploy something similar ASAP. Those places already have the content, and their cable and broadcast reach is either less viable or actively reduced each year.
unityByFreedom 6y ago
> Cloudflare TV is a 24x7 TV channel that takes you behind-the-scenes and let’s you hear directly from the builders working on your favorite Cloudflare products. So 24x7 monitoring of developers' screens overseen by the world? RIP devs X_X
- corobo 6y ago
  No, not that at all. Has anyone online ever done a “so what you mean is..” and got it right?
TechBro8615 6y ago
It’s an interesting experiment, albeit one that doesn’t make much sense to me from a product perspective. I guess producing the content at a loss is something Cloudflare is uniquely positioned to do. And it’s probably a good chance to dogfood some video delivery products. Personally, I would almost always prefer a blog format over a live segment. If it is a live segment, then I’d hope I can at least watch the recording later. I’m curious about engagement. Is anyone watching this? Does anyone seem to actually care?
- ttul 6y ago
  It seems to me that someone told the marketing team to burn money in a creative way. And they did.
- jpalomaki 6y ago
  Maybe they are actually testing for a new Cloudflare service. Lot’s of public officials for example are running live covid update sessions. Companies are broadcasting general meetings, artists are having virtual live concerts. Resliable and scalable distribution platform for live video that plugs into existing tools could be of an interest.
- sm2i 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm not sure what are they thinking... i have some calendar reminders popup from time-to-time on an interesting _broadcast_, but not once i actually sit down to watch it. Shame, as there're 4-5 programs every week i would be happy to watch on-demand
  - corobo 6y ago
    I asked about this, they’re working on making them available on demand :) src: https://twitter.com/cloudflarehelp/status/1272939106583171072?s=21 https://twitter.com/cloudflarehelp/status/127293910658317107...
- sudhirj 6y ago
  Cloudflare already has a video ingestion, encoding and streaming service, this is very likely dogfooding of that. Also when launching that service they seemed to imply that they they generally buy bandwidth at fixed costs, so all the edges in the world where the population is currently sleeping are unsaturated. They stream the video off those edges, so really its no skin off their backs.
mike_d 6y ago
Given all the important things sitting behind Cloudflare, how do you justify having Zoom installed on employee machines?
ra 6y ago
Hmmm.. works in Chrome but not Firefox for me. Firefox plays the live stream but not recorded videos.
Raed667 6y ago
I can't wait for this to become available as part of Cloudflare Stream! I need a simple API that would allow both a basic user with browser and a webcam, or an advanced one with OBS (RMTP...) to just live-stream as part of my product. And building everything at scale is just super painful.

176 points by mxschmitt 6y ago

Here's the original motivation for the project: https://blog.cloudflare.com/ladies-and-gentlemen-cloudflare-tv/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/ladies-and-gentlemen-cloudflare-...

carlosdp 6y ago

> When the live programming ends at 1100, the video experience would break and the user would need to hit refresh to see the next show on the schedule. If that was the only problem, why wouldn't changing the stream with a small amount of JS have worked rather than having to add a muxing layer in front of the streams?

kevmo314 6y ago
I wonder if they have plans to expand to non-browser viewports?
- vanshg 6y ago
  They do. From the last section of the article, entitled "Thinking Ahead..." > Bring Cloudflare TV to platforms like Apple TV and Roku
kick 6y ago
Breaks/introduces annoying amount of lag for people using things like mpv for an "actual" live television experience would be my guess.
phn 6y ago
This is just a guess, but JS only works in the context of a website, and it might actually be simpler to control the server side muxer without having a whole bunch of logic and the systems to support it.
yazaddaruvala 6y ago
1. This might not be built in a browser. e.g. Hulu or ESPN iOS app. Although any client of the byte stream could implement the "refreshing" protocol on the client, its more work for each client to do. 2. Given this is Cloudflare they are probably trying to find optimal ways to use bandwidth and their edge fleet. Like TV, maybe there will be no "rewind", and each Cloudflare edge server fans out the same "currently live" bytes to all available clients (i.e. shared state across all client connections, rather than independent state for each client connection). Which can't happen if there is a "refresh" event from each client that needs to be synchronized. 3. "refreshing" implies new state, added latency, and a "janky" feel. If "transitioning" is all server side, bytes from the next "episode" can be pipelined before the previous episode is finished and the refresh event has occurred. |-Episode A->| |-Episode A->| |-Episode A->| | <-| | <--Refr| |<--Refresh--| |-> | |de B-> | |-Episode B->| |-Episode B->| |-Episode B->| Rather than: |-Episode A->| |-Episode A/B->| |-Episode A/B->| |-Episode B->| |-Episode B->| |-Episode B/C->|

anonms-coward 6y ago

Is cloudflare at a scale where it would be possible for them to provide cheap enough prices on video hosting and bandwidth to enable someone to build a profitable YouTube alternative on top of that? Assuming that a youtube competitor can get to similar scale and make similar revenue.

paulpan 6y ago
The competitive advantage of YouTube isn't really in video storage or bandwidth, but rather in its creators community and ad revenue sharing/monetization. Also copyright, regulatory compliance, content moderation are non-trivial. These are the causes (among many others) that sunk Microsoft's Mixer and potentially Facebook Watch...
- angel_j 6y ago
  No, it needed network and storage first, losing billions for years in order to supply the creators with a service. The non-trivial factors could be trivialized by better community moderation features and niche networks.
- monkeywork 6y ago
  youtubes competitive advantage is search... that plus the simple scale of users and content.
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    > youtubes competitive advantage is search How? YouTube videos aren't all that prominent on Google and its search features are rather terrible. What they do have is a semi working recommendations system. How hard would that be to replicate?
jpalomaki 6y ago
They have a service for streaming stored video. ”$1 per 1,000 minutes viewed, $5 per 1,000 minutes of video storage” https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/ https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/

colesantiago 6y ago

Will there be any support for DRM or video protection?

Nextgrid 6y ago
Isn't live video just bytes being relayed around, thus you can serve encrypted content and have something in the client decrypting it into playable video? If so you can reuse everything that the satellite TV industry (one single feed being broadcast across the entire continent) for their pay-TV DRM.
- Mindwipe 6y ago
  No. You have to handle key rotation and a thousand other variables, it's a very different environment.
DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
It's 2020, shouldn't we have learned by now that DRM software is pointless in almost any situation?
- colesantiago 6y ago
  If it is pointless in 2020, why does Netflix have DRM then?
  - Shacklz 6y ago
    Wild guess (I really have no idea): Because otherwise they wouldn't get the licenses for their bought content to begin with? Netflix themselves probably couldn't care less; they know that everything they offer for streaming will be available for pirating the second its released, with or without DRM; people have Netflix because its convenient, not because they cannot pirate their content.
    - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago

paulpan 6y ago

Very cool for multiple reasons! The first is that it seems a lightweight and straightforward approach to launch first and thereafter iteratively improve, e.g. using Zoom to push live video to Cloudflare. Secondly the content, while all Cloudflare-related, seems useful to learn about internet infrastructure, etc. Perhaps the elephant in the room is "what's next"? Seems like it could at least become a Twitch competitor, if not also to YouTube if Cloudflare is able to figure out the monetization, privacy and copyright aspects.

dmix 6y ago

Seems very close to "rolling your own (internet) TV station using open source and Zoom". That's exciting that it's become so accessible. Of course the hard part then is having a producer running the content all day + getting enough content.

trynewideas 6y ago
> the hard part then is having a producer running the content all day + getting enough content If I'm managing a local access/community TV/open studio system right now, I'd be pulling as much inspiration as possible from this post and working to deploy something similar ASAP. Those places already have the content, and their cable and broadcast reach is either less viable or actively reduced each year.

unityByFreedom 6y ago

> Cloudflare TV is a 24x7 TV channel that takes you behind-the-scenes and let’s you hear directly from the builders working on your favorite Cloudflare products. So 24x7 monitoring of developers' screens overseen by the world? RIP devs X_X

corobo 6y ago
No, not that at all. Has anyone online ever done a “so what you mean is..” and got it right?

TechBro8615 6y ago

It’s an interesting experiment, albeit one that doesn’t make much sense to me from a product perspective. I guess producing the content at a loss is something Cloudflare is uniquely positioned to do. And it’s probably a good chance to dogfood some video delivery products. Personally, I would almost always prefer a blog format over a live segment. If it is a live segment, then I’d hope I can at least watch the recording later. I’m curious about engagement. Is anyone watching this? Does anyone seem to actually care?

ttul 6y ago
It seems to me that someone told the marketing team to burn money in a creative way. And they did.
jpalomaki 6y ago
Maybe they are actually testing for a new Cloudflare service. Lot’s of public officials for example are running live covid update sessions. Companies are broadcasting general meetings, artists are having virtual live concerts. Resliable and scalable distribution platform for live video that plugs into existing tools could be of an interest.
sm2i 6y ago
Yeah, I'm not sure what are they thinking... i have some calendar reminders popup from time-to-time on an interesting _broadcast_, but not once i actually sit down to watch it. Shame, as there're 4-5 programs every week i would be happy to watch on-demand
- corobo 6y ago
  I asked about this, they’re working on making them available on demand :) src: https://twitter.com/cloudflarehelp/status/1272939106583171072?s=21 https://twitter.com/cloudflarehelp/status/127293910658317107...
sudhirj 6y ago
Cloudflare already has a video ingestion, encoding and streaming service, this is very likely dogfooding of that. Also when launching that service they seemed to imply that they they generally buy bandwidth at fixed costs, so all the edges in the world where the population is currently sleeping are unsaturated. They stream the video off those edges, so really its no skin off their backs.

mike_d 6y ago

Given all the important things sitting behind Cloudflare, how do you justify having Zoom installed on employee machines?

ra 6y ago

Hmmm.. works in Chrome but not Firefox for me. Firefox plays the live stream but not recorded videos.

Raed667 6y ago

I can't wait for this to become available as part of Cloudflare Stream! I need a simple API that would allow both a basic user with browser and a webcam, or an advanced one with OBS (RMTP...) to just live-stream as part of my product. And building everything at scale is just super painful.