Video streaming - possible, or not?

Mark

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Oct 18, 2010, 10:10:12 PM10/18/10

to Google App Engine

Hi,

I'm looking to upload a video file into the blobstore, then stream it
to a flash player. I'm not sure if this is possible or not because I
see conflicting messages here about support for it.

I know there's a 30 second http connection limit. I'm not sure if that
counts towards streaming a file.

I would host the videos on youtube, but the video content for this app
is supposed to be 'protected', meaning I don't want to let people view
the video unless authenticated. Using the youtube api would be an easy
win otherwise.

Thanks

Ritesh Nadhani

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Oct 18, 2010, 11:54:35 PM10/18/10

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Hello Mark

AFAIK, the 30sec limit is only for request time. Uploading/storing to
Blobstore does not have this limit. Neither does serving a Blobstore
data has this issue.
http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/blobstore/overview.html#Serving_a_Blob

I currently run a music site to which users regularly upload more than
10MB file taking more than 30 seconds. Users are successfuly able to
stream the music using any freely available Flash music player.

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Ritesh
http://www.beamto.us

Mark Wyszomierski

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Oct 19, 2010, 11:12:57 AM10/19/10

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Hi Ritesh,

Thanks for your response, I really appreciate it. It looks like I have to see how large my intended video files are, and how much usage I'll get from users. For example, outgoing bandwidth costs $0.12 per GB. If I have a single video file that's 1gb, and 100 people watch it that day, then I'll end up paying $12. Amazon has similar pricing. I don't know much about how or if browsers will cache any video content, but that would help if users want to keep replaying the same video. Or replay the same video on different days (which is likely in my case). The other option is hosting on youtube for free, but then I believe they take over the rights to the video.

Thanks,

Mark

Ikai Lan (Google)

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Oct 19, 2010, 2:39:47 PM10/19/10

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Mark,

More likely than not, you're going to have to charge if you intend on streaming a 1gb video file to many users. I'm not expert on media streaming business models; I just enjoy my Hulu and pay for my Netflix.

--

Ikai Lan
Developer Programs Engineer, Google App Engine

Blogger: http://googleappengine.blogspot.com

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Ritesh Nadhani

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Oct 19, 2010, 11:53:40 PM10/19/10

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Hello Mark

I agree with Ikai or if you could figure out other revenue stream.
Though even with $0.12/GB, its possibly one of the cheapest rates out
there. Long story short, its technically possible, now one has to see
if it makes business sense.

Best of luck.

aah

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Oct 20, 2010, 3:41:55 AM10/20/10

to Google App Engine

Hi Mark,

Maybe AppEngine could be combined with something like
http://www.bitsontherun.com/system-apis

-aah

Mark Wyszomierski

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Oct 20, 2010, 11:11:51 AM10/20/10

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Ah, I grossly over-estimated the size of the videos I'll be working with. They'll be more in the size range of a few mb. So this seems easier to get going business-wise.

If anyone has any walkthroughs about video streaming and app engine, that'd be great. If not, I'll be happy to post a walk-through once I get it done,

Thanks all,

Mark

nacho

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Oct 20, 2010, 6:49:06 PM10/20/10

to Google App Engine

I have to do something like Mark, but i also need the posibility of
encoding the videos uploaded by the users.

So, my question is: does appengine supports ffmpg or some other
encoding tool?

On 20 oct, 12:11, Mark Wyszomierski <mar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ah, I grossly over-estimated the size of the videos I'll be working with.
> They'll be more in the size range of a few mb. So this seems easier to get
> going business-wise.
>
> If anyone has any walkthroughs about video streaming and app engine, that'd
> be great. If not, I'll be happy to post a walk-through once I get it done,
>
> Thanks all,
> Mark
>

> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 3:41 AM, aah <aalvara...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Mark,
>
> > Maybe AppEngine could be combined with something like
> >http://www.bitsontherun.com/system-apis
>
> > -aah
>
> > On Oct 19, 4:10 am, Mark <mar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi,
>
> > > I'm looking to upload a video file into the blobstore, then stream it
> > > to a flash player. I'm not sure if this is possible or not because I
> > > see conflicting messages here about support for it.
>
> > > I know there's a 30 second http connection limit. I'm not sure if that
> > > counts towards streaming a file.
>
> > > I would host the videos on youtube, but the video content for this app
> > > is supposed to be 'protected', meaning I don't want to let people view
> > > the video unless authenticated. Using the youtube api would be an easy
> > > win otherwise.
>
> > > Thanks
>
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > "Google App Engine" group.
> > To post to this group, send email to google-a...@googlegroups.com.
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> > google-appengi...@googlegroups.com<google-appengine%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>
> > .