Amazon EC2 or Google App Engine - Video Upload, conversion and serving

Question

I'm starting a new project that will mainly involve the following:

uploading a large quantity of videos
converting them
serving them to users

I'm looking into Google App Engine and using the new Google Cloud storage API to store the videos.

But the Google Could storage API is still experimental with Google App Engine which is a bit scary.

But i'm wondering if the EC2 from Amazon will not be a better choice, because it's more mature and may be more adapted to that kind of service that i'm trying to build.

You could use the blobstore if you're worried that Cloud storage API will change too much. https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/java/blobstore/ — Rob Curtis, Sep 28 '12 at 16:20
Also,what are your metrics for defining "best choice"? Is it cost, ease of use? — Rob Curtis, Sep 28 '12 at 16:23
Ok, check this post too: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6157014/how-to-upload-and-stream-video-using-appengine-blobstore — Rob Curtis, Sep 28 '12 at 16:24

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 28 '12 at 17:22

First choice would be neither.

Video transcoding is fairly CPU intensive. You'll want to use an optimized transcoder that takes advantage of the transcoding features on newer CPUs or GPUs. Neither EC2 or GAE will let you do this, since they don't reveal what hardware you're running on. You might consider using a cloud based transcoding service instead of doing it yourself.

In this you'd mostly be storing and serving. and Amazon is cheaper for storage and bandwidth.

Given the question I'm assuming you're no expert on transcoding. You wouldn't be writing your own Go transcoders, so in that case Amazon would be your only option to run some open source transcoder.

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 30 '17 at 18:12

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Well from memory this was the exact demonstration from this years Google IO, using App Engine combined with Google Compute Engine to do uploads + transcoding + other goodies.

Here's a blob post for example with some details.

Here's one of the presentations from I/O.

edited Nov 30 '17 at 18:12

hamx0r

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answered Oct 01 '12 at 09:46

Stuart Langley

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Oh i watched a lot of Google IO this year but i missed this one i guess! thank you ;) – Jerome Ansia Oct 01 '12 at 13:14

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Feb 01 '13 at 16:30

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Amazon Web Services recently released a new web service called Amazon Elastic Transcoder.

edited Feb 01 '13 at 16:30

Brad Larson

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answered Feb 01 '13 at 15:32

Adam

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As a note, footers are generally frowned upon here, particularly if they link back to your website. I've removed them from your last two answers. – Brad Larson Feb 01 '13 at 16:32

Amazon EC2 or Google App Engine - Video Upload, conversion and serving

3 Answers3