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I am going to work on a video website where users/admin will be able to upload the videos and play them using some opensource javascript player. However, I want to know if it is a good idea to start this kind of project on google app engine considering its limitations to server and store the data.

What are the issues which I may have to encounter on Google application engine and if there are any possible solutions for those issues.

Currently, I have doubts on converting the videos while uploading, creating images from the videos uploaded (something like ffmpeg for google app engine) and whether google app engine will allow streaming for large videos considering its request and response constraints.

Please suggest.

Thanks in advance.

Ankit Jaiswal
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    I'm currently working on a side project that will have heavy video needs. While app engine is not the most straight-forward place to start in terms of uploading and storing video, as well as streaming, it has been workable so far (haven't gotten too far into it). I have uploading, tagging and streaming parts working as a proof-of-concept, but in the next few weeks I should be able to gather more concrete data and will post a proper answer for you with my experiences. The main thing that I both love and hate is the blobstore... it's very fast, but seems really weird at first. Good luck! – Sologoub Jan 06 '11 at 17:27
  • @Sologoub thanks for your reply. Can you please provide some pointers on how you are uploading, converting and streaming the videos, just some hints will be useful. Please post them as answer. – Ankit Jaiswal Jan 06 '11 at 17:32
  • As soon as I have something good, I'll post it up. At the moment, I'm only uploading, creating datastore records with tags (to enable searching for them), and serving them back. Unfortunately, the converting remains a sore point. – Sologoub Jan 06 '11 at 17:36
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    Hi @Sologoub, it has been more than a year since your last comment, is there any blog post where you share the results of your side project? Would be an interesting read to say the least. Thanks. – Ibrahim Arief Apr 17 '12 at 12:33

3 Answers3

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Yes, this is practical. You'll probably want to check out the blobstore for uploading and serving your videos. Conversion will be a little trickier, since you can't do it directly on App Engine - you'll need to use an external service, and either set things up so your users upload directly to that, or have the service download, transcode, and re-upload videos to your App Engine site.

Nick Johnson
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    I had the similar idea in my mind but thought that there might be some option to do it using Google app engine services only. Thanks for your response. – Ankit Jaiswal Jan 07 '11 at 17:19
  • @AnkitJaiswal appengine is not designed to work with large data files. For example if you would like to upload/move the file somewhere else from GAE you won't be able due the urlfetch limit . – themihai Sep 22 '13 at 16:03
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As Nick pointed out, it can be done and it won't be a straight forward implementation.

I would suggest using the Amazon EC2 service for video conversion and Amazon S3 for storing of videos while using App Engine for creating a fast reliable and unbelievably scalable front-end.

Gaurav
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Yeah, you are going to hit all the app engine quotas relating to bandwidth and storage very quickly. Check this page: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/quotas.html for the actual numbers. I tried to create an app that indexes all the links in wikipedia articles and I probably got to only 10% of all articles.

Venkat S. Rao
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    You can pay for more storage and CPU usage. Obviously you're not going to be able to store a huge dataset for free. – Wooble Jan 06 '11 at 16:25
  • @wooble I agree with you. Paying for extra usage is not the concern right now. The main concern is whether the website will be able to run smoothly and is it feasible to develop this type of website on google application engine as I have mentioned in my question. – Ankit Jaiswal Jan 06 '11 at 16:34