Video in the Cloud
In the last Silverlining Cloud Computing Group meeting on Nov 11, Branko Gerovac and David Carver shared some impressive numbers. Their take on their talk is described at their site. Below is my take.
The numbers they quoted focused on answering the question,”Is Cloud the best platform for video broadcasting?” The answer is nuanced, and to set the stage Branko analyzed some of the key aspects: B/w, storage capacity, and the data center size and cost.
It is interesting to see how the current (November 2009) viewership (measured by multiplying the viewers by the minutes watched) of You Tube compares to some of the TV programs. While You Tube is at approx 40 Billion Minutes, American Idol is at 29 Billion Minutes, and the single event SuperBowl XLIII is at 24 Billion Minutes! It is obvious that we have only scratched the surface on video in the cloud.
If the entire TV program in the US were available on the web, it would take a b/w of 1140 Tbs for High Def, and 382 Tbs for Standard Def TV! This translates to roughly 46 Tbs per DMA (Designated Marketing Region, there are 25 in USA) for High Def TV, and 14 Tbs for Standard TV. This calculation assumes there is a single provider, but obviously that is not the case, and the actual b/w needed will be a multiple of this.
Storage capacity needed, assuming a single copy storage, is also a “big number.” 20M Hrs of video content from the beginning of TV is roughly 22.5 PB, wheras the user generated content (including home movies) is at roughly 112.5 PB (assuming 100M Hrs per year).
Branko argues that the current video in the cloud is at the 1% transition point, and therefore is viable for business investment. On the question of video in the cloud – not all videos are viewed equally. Apparently, 50% of the videos are never viewed more than once in You Tube, transcoding cost (for playing in 8 different formats) becomes an important factor. There are two options – transcoding while uploading, and transcoding while downloading. Branko and David think that the entire TV Service of USA will cost about $50oM with transcoding on the upload with a dedicated system. If AWS (Amazon) is used, the cost goes up by 8 times. They advice a mixed policy that stores different formats based on demand for viewing.
Their company is looking for partnerships to bring their vision of video in the cloud a reality.