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Our business isn't professional encoding vs. [unprofessional encoding?]. It's cloud vs. non-cloud. We do what the "professional" non-cloud tools do, but in the

Our business isn't professional encoding vs. [unprofessional encoding?]. It's cloud vs. non-cloud. We do what the "professional" non-cloud tools do, but in the cloud, and we have many customers who are investing more than $6,000. (We're also entirely API-based for programmatic high-volume encoding, so if you're thinking of things like video editing and manual post-production, that's not really what we do.)

jpdoctor 15y ago
> We're also entirely API-based for programmatic high-volume encoding So why wouldn't folks use the API on (say) Rhozet's tool and maintain control of the flow? > We do what the "professional" non-cloud tools do, but in the cloud, Yes, I assume that you have a "professional" engine since you have a team of only 20 people. > and we have many customers who are investing more than $6,000. Kudos. Now when they find out that they can take the transcoding API in house for about that much money, what financial incentive will they have to stay with Zencoder?
- jfb 15y ago
  Capital expenditure. Video encoding is bursty; you either carry a shitload of capacity that stands idle 90% of the time, in order to guarantee SLAs for clients at peak times; or you don't, and you get to explain to the EVP at e.g. Paramount why their content is falling behind. FULL DISCLOSURE: I worked pro video at Apple and am now a very happy employee of Zencoder.
  - jpdoctor 15y ago
    > you either carry a shitload of capacity that stands idle 90% of the time But costs less. THAT is the point. (A quad-core is almost there, dual hex xeons will provide 10x capacity. Not enough? Add more cores. At $2000/mo, the payoff is pretty easy in less than a year.) Look: You guys have a business which is not yet breaking even. Perhaps that will fix itself with a bunch more customers. But as with all businesses, once your invoices start showing up on the CFO's screen, he is going ask to design you out. He will walk down to the office of his head IT geek, who is always trying to justify his salary, and say: What does it cost to take this in-house? You think the IT geek is going to say: Oh no. We need to have that in the cloud. Really?
    - jfb 15y ago
      I think perhaps you underestimate the magnitude of the difference between the lower and upper bounds of the capacity demands placed on a video transcoding service, and the difficulty of building one in the first place.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
  - ajays 15y ago
    With EC2, why do you need so much idle capacity? Just spin up more instances when demand picks up. I'm probably missing something, so I'd be happy to be enlightened.
    - jfb 15y ago
      That's exactly the point of doing the work in the cloud as opposed to buying a giant stack of machines.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]

jpdoctor 15y ago

> We're also entirely API-based for programmatic high-volume encoding So why wouldn't folks use the API on (say) Rhozet's tool and maintain control of the flow? > We do what the "professional" non-cloud tools do, but in the cloud, Yes, I assume that you have a "professional" engine since you have a team of only 20 people. > and we have many customers who are investing more than $6,000. Kudos. Now when they find out that they can take the transcoding API in house for about that much money, what financial incentive will they have to stay with Zencoder?

jfb 15y ago
Capital expenditure. Video encoding is bursty; you either carry a shitload of capacity that stands idle 90% of the time, in order to guarantee SLAs for clients at peak times; or you don't, and you get to explain to the EVP at e.g. Paramount why their content is falling behind. FULL DISCLOSURE: I worked pro video at Apple and am now a very happy employee of Zencoder.
- jpdoctor 15y ago
  > you either carry a shitload of capacity that stands idle 90% of the time But costs less. THAT is the point. (A quad-core is almost there, dual hex xeons will provide 10x capacity. Not enough? Add more cores. At $2000/mo, the payoff is pretty easy in less than a year.) Look: You guys have a business which is not yet breaking even. Perhaps that will fix itself with a bunch more customers. But as with all businesses, once your invoices start showing up on the CFO's screen, he is going ask to design you out. He will walk down to the office of his head IT geek, who is always trying to justify his salary, and say: What does it cost to take this in-house? You think the IT geek is going to say: Oh no. We need to have that in the cloud. Really?
  - jfb 15y ago
    I think perhaps you underestimate the magnitude of the difference between the lower and upper bounds of the capacity demands placed on a video transcoding service, and the difficulty of building one in the first place.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
- ajays 15y ago
  With EC2, why do you need so much idle capacity? Just spin up more instances when demand picks up. I'm probably missing something, so I'd be happy to be enlightened.
  - jfb 15y ago
    That's exactly the point of doing the work in the cloud as opposed to buying a giant stack of machines.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]