Cheap File Transfer Ideas?

[David Kaye]

Okay, here's the scoop: I'm on Amazon's AWS and unfortunately I
miscalculated the use of my new video service. It seems that I can't afford
their pricing of $0.09 per GB transfer (over a 10GB threshold) based on
prices I've set. I'm going to make some changes in my software, but what I
really need is a very low transfer cost. I'm only storing about 25GB of
files, but those files will be fetched by a bunch of people.

So, small storage and large amount of transfer is what I'm looking for.
Since whole files are transferred at once in 1 GB chunks, it doesn't seem
that transfer speed would be as much an issue as the transfer charges.

Does anybody have any ideas for dirt-cheap file transferring?

DANG! The perils of launching a new business when the business model is
slightly screwed <sigh>.

Anybody?

[n***@sbcglobal.net]

Post by David Kaye
Okay, here's the scoop: I'm on Amazon's AWS and unfortunately I
miscalculated the use of my new video service. It seems that I can't afford
their pricing of $0.09 per GB transfer (over a 10GB threshold) based on
prices I've set. I'm going to make some changes in my software, but what I
really need is a very low transfer cost. I'm only storing about 25GB of
files, but those files will be fetched by a bunch of people.
So, small storage and large amount of transfer is what I'm looking for.
Since whole files are transferred at once in 1 GB chunks, it doesn't seem
that transfer speed would be as much an issue as the transfer charges.
Does anybody have any ideas for dirt-cheap file transferring?
DANG! The perils of launching a new business when the business model is
slightly screwed <sigh>.
Anybody?

Did you ever look into locally run CDNs? You could put your content on a USB memory stick and walk it in. A quick search when you raised the issue a couple months back showed there are indeed some local ones.

[David Kaye]

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
Did you ever look into locally run CDNs? You could put your content on a
USB memory stick
and walk it in. A quick search when you raised the issue a couple months
back showed
there are indeed some local ones.

The question is not about uploads. My 25GB upload is just fine. It's
downloads to my customers, which Amazon is charging me 9 cents a GB to send
down to the Roku players. AWS is all about speed and all that, but from the
looks of it, I don't need much speed since it seems that any given video
file is downloaded in its entirety before playing, so my only speed concern
would be the lagtime between my channel's splash screen and the content
coming down.

That's why I'm looking for something cheaper.

[n***@sbcglobal.net]

Post by David Kaye

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
Did you ever look into locally run CDNs? You could put your content on a
USB memory stick
and walk it in. A quick search when you raised the issue a couple months
back showed
there are indeed some local ones.

The question is not about uploads. My 25GB upload is just fine. It's
downloads to my customers, which Amazon is charging me 9 cents a GB to send
down to the Roku players. AWS is all about speed and all that, but from the
looks of it, I don't need much speed since it seems that any given video
file is downloaded in its entirety before playing, so my only speed concern
would be the lagtime between my channel's splash screen and the content
coming down.
That's why I'm looking for something cheaper.

You didn't set the bit to allow the file to begin playing immediately? Also using DASH would allow the file to play in segments. GoDaddy also operates a CDN if you want to go there. Probably some of the other hosting companies do too. Are these HD or SD videos?

[David Kaye]

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
You didn't set the bit to allow the file to begin playing immediately?

Uh, no, I'm new to this kind of stuff. I'll look into it.

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
Are these HD or SD videos?

Almost all SD, but there are some HDs in there as well. The movies are
produced for HD and the Roku settings are HD. When viewed on various
screens they play perfectly. I haven't seen significant difference in file
size between the SD and HD settings.

[n***@sbcglobal.net]

Post by David Kaye

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
You didn't set the bit to allow the file to begin playing immediately?

Uh, no, I'm new to this kind of stuff. I'll look into it.

What tool are you using to create files? There should be an option for web video in the encoder settings. It will move the MOOV atom from the end to the front. You can also do this with ffmpeg

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:a copy -c:v -movflags faststart output.mp4

An article:

https://walterebert.com/blog/start-playing-mp4-videos-before-download-has-finished/

DASH encoding is another technique where the video is sent out in little file segments. Simple tutorial here:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn551368%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

What this does is keep bandwidth down for streaming servers. Let's say that if you were to just stream these files an Joe's Bar is shutting down for the nigh it won't have wasted bandwidth for video not used when the device is turned off. Or sites like Netflix don't waste bandwidth when you decided you didn't like the movie you started.

Post by David Kaye

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
Are these HD or SD videos?

Almost all SD, but there are some HDs in there as well. The movies are
produced for HD and the Roku settings are HD. When viewed on various
screens they play perfectly. I haven't seen significant difference in file
size between the SD and HD settings.

That may mean the videos have quite a bit of static imagery in them.

[David Kaye]

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
What tool are you using to create files?

Windows Movie Maker. I may actually switch to Linux if I can find some good
movie software there. Thanks for all the info. I really appreciate it!

[n***@sbcglobal.net]

Post by David Kaye

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
What tool are you using to create files?

Windows Movie Maker. I may actually switch to Linux if I can find some good
movie software there. Thanks for all the info. I really appreciate it!

Video editing is one thing that I wind up doing on Windows not Linux. There are a few video editors for Linux but most are lacking. I've used Premiere and Ulead Media Studio over the years but these days I use MAGIX Movie Studio Pro actually "17" version which seems to run fine even on Windows 10. Try a demo of it and it is often priced reasonably even at Fry's. For the MP4 encoder they have a web setting and even will create a web page for your video and include a flash player to use. Don't need the flash player with HTML5 though.

[n***@sbcglobal.net]

Post by David Kaye

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
What tool are you using to create files?

Windows Movie Maker. I may actually switch to Linux if I can find some good
movie software there. Thanks for all the info. I really appreciate it!

Oops. I forgot to add a link to this site which is a CDN cost calculator for all the popular CDNs you might find useful:
http://www.cdncalc.com/

[b***@MIX.COM]

Post by David Kaye
Does anybody have any ideas for dirt-cheap file transferring?

https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/

| *We never charge for bandwidth*
|
| CloudFlare will never bill you for bandwidth usage.
| We believe if your site suddenly gets popular or
| suffers an attack, you shouldn't have to dread your
| bandwidth bill.

I'm not using them, but I did get an surprisingly
coherent reply to a support inquiry, so I'd call
them at least worth a look.

Billy Y..

[David Kaye]

Post by b***@MIX.COM
https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/

Thanks for the info!