Videos are typically watched on the web in one of two ways.
First is progressive download. This is how the vast majority of web videos are viewed (including YouTube). With progressive download, the video is simultaneously downloaded to the viewer’s computer as they watch it. The drawbacks are this can lead to buffering messages (if enough video hasn’t been downloaded so someone can watch it, the video buffers while more is downloaded) and security issues (since the video is being downloaded to a viewer’s computer, they will have a copy of it). Progressive download videos can be hosted from virtually any web server or web host.
Second is true streaming. With true steaming, a viewer’s computer only downloads the portion of the video that is being displayed and then discards it. For example, a viewer can start watching a video and then jump around to the middle or the end of the video…instantly. There will be no buffering issues and since the entire video is never downloaded (or kept), there are generally far fewer security issues too. In addition, the delivery of the video can automatically be adjusted to match the viewer’s download speed. However, delivering videos via true streaming…up until now…has been very expensive and complex. You needed special software and servers to do it.
That has just changed thanks to Amazon. Amazon has long offered a service called S3, where you could rent storage and bandwidth on their servers at a very low cost (great for delivering videos…via progressive download).
About a year ago, they introduced an additional service called CloudFront. CloudFront uses edge servers, which deliver the videos from your S3 account using servers closest to the viewer’s geographical location (this means faster video delivery).
And today they announced that CloudFront now offers true streaming of videos as well. In other words, Amazon has integrated the “expensive and complex true streaming software” directly into their CloudFront services. Except you don’t need to know how to configure, manage or use this software. It’s just automatically there and works. And it doesn’t cost you anything extra…if you want to deliver your videos via progressive download or true streaming…the cost is the same.
You can learn more about S3, CloudFront and Amazon’s new true streaming offering at Amazon’s CloudFront page by clicking here.
This sounds interesting. I currently use S3 for all my content. So you are saying if I have videos on my website that true streaming is going to give the fastest and best experience for my users?
I already have some video files in cloudfront, do I have to change stuff or does this happen automatically?
@Will – No, true streaming does not necessarily mean “fastest” and “best” for the viewer. It can mean more security for your videos. As far as what you need to do to configure your Amazon account, see this:
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonCloudFront/2009-12-01/DeveloperGuide/index.html?RTMPStreaming.html
Thanks, Dave. As usual — super info from you. I am finally delving into S3 and your post answered the question I was pondering. Any feeback as to your results w/ this “real” streaming via Cloudfront over the past few weeks?
One thing I noted… the edge servers delivering the streaming are not replicating across servers too fast. I am using JW player and its streaming slow.. a 17MB file.. but takes a longtime to seek to time locations or even start. So not sure how the edge is doing FMS streaming.