4 ms·

> Where are they going to go Pay for your own hosting.

jb1991 5y ago
Most indie video creators are not developers, and most developers would still struggle with the extraordinary challenge of effective video hosting.
- root_axis 5y ago
  > Most indie video creators are not developers, and most developers would still struggle with the extraordinary challenge of effective video hosting. Huh? I didn't say "build a homebrew video hosting service". When you don't know how to do something you need done, you pay an expert to do it. I'm sure indie artists expect to be compensated for their own work, why shouldn't the people doing the technical work the artist is unable to do on their own be compensated?
  - jb1991 5y ago
    It was easy to misunderstand you. You said pay for the hosting, which implies paying a hosting company. Of course, it would make more sense if you’re also paying an entire team to build it for you. But that wasn’t the initial reading of your comment.
    - root_axis 5y ago
      Fair. I could have articulated my point more clearly. I was indeed implying that they "pay a hosting company" with the unstated implication that they also pay a company or individual to deal with the technical details surrounding that process. If I told someone to "build your own house" in the context of home ownership, I wouldn't expect them to understand that as literally building it themselves, I'd expect them to hire an architect, contractor etc, but on HN I can understand why the implication might sound like a DIY suggestion.
      - jb1991 5y ago
        Even still, hiring a team to basically replicate a high-performance video streaming service like Vimeo is not an easy task.
        root_axis 5y ago
        You don't need to "replicate a video streaming service like Vimeo" which is obviously a massive undertaking, you just need a system to deliver your own videos, minus all the infrastructure necessary for a platform that is meant to support a multi-tenant video publishing and billing service as a product. That's like if I said "build your own web storefront" and you said "replicating shopify is not an easy task" or "build your own newsletter" and you said "replicating substack is not an easy task".
        jb1991 5y ago
        My emphasis was on the high-performance aspect, not the platform itself. It's not a trivial problem to host videos and have them easily watchable in a way like Vimeo does it. Bandwidth, streaming tech and other aspects can't be done adequately by the average development team without significant expense.
        root_axis 5y ago
        I'm going to copy and paste something I wrote somewhere else in this thread since it's the same point. The tech stack necessary to host your own HD videos is open source and really quite simple for an experienced developer. ffmpeg, nginx (with a couple plugins) and one of the many open source web player clients and you're all set. Payments and subscriptions are a long solved problem via stripe or paypal, it's really not a massive endeavor. Most of the work would be on the aesthetic side, not the technical side.
        jb1991 5y ago
        That sounds very optimistic. I work for a startup right now which is private but valued in the 10 digits, and they have some video streaming features on their platform, and despite an engineering team spending a few years on this, it still causes some customers problems with freezing playback and stuttering video. On the surface, sure, you can probably get it to work in a basic way. But the reliability, consistency, the overall experience of the user, that is extremely hard to keep going. And I’m not even talking yet about the interface.
- tnzk 5y ago
  This. You would need to be capable of not just hosting but providing convincing playback experience to end users.
  - root_axis 5y ago
    Right... those are the things they are paying for...
    - ryanbrunner 5y ago
      Building this with freelancers for an independent content creator has basically zero chance of being profitable in the end. There's a reason that the notion of an "independent video content creator" didn't really exist until YouTube existed - it's prohibitively expensive for every content creator to develop their own version of YouTube. Not to mention that you need to deal with payment (or at least gating) and subscription management if you're not using other platforms.
      - root_axis 5y ago
        First, the suggestion isn't that artists "build their own YouTube" any more than writers hosting their own blog are "building their own medium.com". A lot has changed since the debut of YouTube, the tech stack necessary to host your own HD videos is open source and really quite simple for an experienced developer. ffmpeg, nginx (with a couple plugins) and one of the many open source web player clients and you're all set. Payments and subscriptions are a long solved problem via stripe or paypal, it's really not a massive endeavor. Most of the work would be on the aesthetic side, not the technical side.
  - Schroedingersat 5y ago
    So any http server capable of delivering the bandwidth and a <video> element? Video isn't particularly latency sensitive so no need for edge nodes right by them. One of the many reasonably priced s3 compatable services would work.
bombcar 5y ago
I assume the major CDNs have to offer "video as a service" - anyone have experience with them?
- root_axis 5y ago
  I'm not sure about the CDNs themselves, but there are many dozens of commercial video hosting services on the web.
- ssijak 5y ago
  cloudflare has "stream" product which offer both livestreaming and on demand video options.
  - smileybarry 5y ago
    It's still very raw, though. They're effectively giving you the edge storage, playlist streaming, etc. but you still need to setup the player and website surrounding it. Most indie creators would still (rightly) struggle with setting that up effectively.
    - ssijak 5y ago
      I think the targeted market is just different. I don't expect cloudflare to ever offer some kind of self-hosted paywalled pages or something similar like vimeo.
- neurostimulant 5y ago
  You can upload your video to cloudflare stream, get the embed code and put in on your own webpage. No programming needed unless you want to access it via api for some custom integration.
sequoia 5y ago
To be fair that's what they were doing, with Vimeo (who they paid).

jb1991 5y ago

Most indie video creators are not developers, and most developers would still struggle with the extraordinary challenge of effective video hosting.

root_axis 5y ago
> Most indie video creators are not developers, and most developers would still struggle with the extraordinary challenge of effective video hosting. Huh? I didn't say "build a homebrew video hosting service". When you don't know how to do something you need done, you pay an expert to do it. I'm sure indie artists expect to be compensated for their own work, why shouldn't the people doing the technical work the artist is unable to do on their own be compensated?
- jb1991 5y ago
  It was easy to misunderstand you. You said pay for the hosting, which implies paying a hosting company. Of course, it would make more sense if you’re also paying an entire team to build it for you. But that wasn’t the initial reading of your comment.
  - root_axis 5y ago
    Fair. I could have articulated my point more clearly. I was indeed implying that they "pay a hosting company" with the unstated implication that they also pay a company or individual to deal with the technical details surrounding that process. If I told someone to "build your own house" in the context of home ownership, I wouldn't expect them to understand that as literally building it themselves, I'd expect them to hire an architect, contractor etc, but on HN I can understand why the implication might sound like a DIY suggestion.
    - jb1991 5y ago
      Even still, hiring a team to basically replicate a high-performance video streaming service like Vimeo is not an easy task.
      - root_axis 5y ago
        You don't need to "replicate a video streaming service like Vimeo" which is obviously a massive undertaking, you just need a system to deliver your own videos, minus all the infrastructure necessary for a platform that is meant to support a multi-tenant video publishing and billing service as a product. That's like if I said "build your own web storefront" and you said "replicating shopify is not an easy task" or "build your own newsletter" and you said "replicating substack is not an easy task".
        jb1991 5y ago
        My emphasis was on the high-performance aspect, not the platform itself. It's not a trivial problem to host videos and have them easily watchable in a way like Vimeo does it. Bandwidth, streaming tech and other aspects can't be done adequately by the average development team without significant expense.
        root_axis 5y ago
        I'm going to copy and paste something I wrote somewhere else in this thread since it's the same point. The tech stack necessary to host your own HD videos is open source and really quite simple for an experienced developer. ffmpeg, nginx (with a couple plugins) and one of the many open source web player clients and you're all set. Payments and subscriptions are a long solved problem via stripe or paypal, it's really not a massive endeavor. Most of the work would be on the aesthetic side, not the technical side.
        jb1991 5y ago
        That sounds very optimistic. I work for a startup right now which is private but valued in the 10 digits, and they have some video streaming features on their platform, and despite an engineering team spending a few years on this, it still causes some customers problems with freezing playback and stuttering video. On the surface, sure, you can probably get it to work in a basic way. But the reliability, consistency, the overall experience of the user, that is extremely hard to keep going. And I’m not even talking yet about the interface.
tnzk 5y ago
This. You would need to be capable of not just hosting but providing convincing playback experience to end users.
- root_axis 5y ago
  Right... those are the things they are paying for...
  - ryanbrunner 5y ago
    Building this with freelancers for an independent content creator has basically zero chance of being profitable in the end. There's a reason that the notion of an "independent video content creator" didn't really exist until YouTube existed - it's prohibitively expensive for every content creator to develop their own version of YouTube. Not to mention that you need to deal with payment (or at least gating) and subscription management if you're not using other platforms.
    - root_axis 5y ago
      First, the suggestion isn't that artists "build their own YouTube" any more than writers hosting their own blog are "building their own medium.com". A lot has changed since the debut of YouTube, the tech stack necessary to host your own HD videos is open source and really quite simple for an experienced developer. ffmpeg, nginx (with a couple plugins) and one of the many open source web player clients and you're all set. Payments and subscriptions are a long solved problem via stripe or paypal, it's really not a massive endeavor. Most of the work would be on the aesthetic side, not the technical side.
- Schroedingersat 5y ago
  So any http server capable of delivering the bandwidth and a <video> element? Video isn't particularly latency sensitive so no need for edge nodes right by them. One of the many reasonably priced s3 compatable services would work.

bombcar 5y ago

I assume the major CDNs have to offer "video as a service" - anyone have experience with them?

root_axis 5y ago
I'm not sure about the CDNs themselves, but there are many dozens of commercial video hosting services on the web.
ssijak 5y ago
cloudflare has "stream" product which offer both livestreaming and on demand video options.
- smileybarry 5y ago
  It's still very raw, though. They're effectively giving you the edge storage, playlist streaming, etc. but you still need to setup the player and website surrounding it. Most indie creators would still (rightly) struggle with setting that up effectively.
  - ssijak 5y ago
    I think the targeted market is just different. I don't expect cloudflare to ever offer some kind of self-hosted paywalled pages or something similar like vimeo.
neurostimulant 5y ago
You can upload your video to cloudflare stream, get the embed code and put in on your own webpage. No programming needed unless you want to access it via api for some custom integration.

sequoia 5y ago

To be fair that's what they were doing, with Vimeo (who they paid).