Cloudflare Stream + Backblaze vs. GCP for Short Form Video?

3 points by slroger 145 days ago | 9 comments

Hi HN, I'm building a short form video app(avg clip length 40 seconds, expecting 10-50,000 plays per day, growing, with 20% of traffic outside the US,80% in the US, mostly mobile). I'm deciding between:

1.) CloudflareStream + Backblaze(B2): Pros: Simple product, minutes viewed pricing(possibly cheaper than GCP for video streaming), built in transcoding. Concern: not sure if their ABR quality will match the quality of say GCP's which was really good in prior use.

2. GCP(GCS+TranscoderAPI+MediaCDN) Pros: I used this set up previously and it was robust, storage was cheap, network costs were low and the streaming quality was excellent. And the console was fairly easy to navigate(especially compared to AWS) I left GCP because of non Video Streaming related issues(Video Intelligence API was exceptionally expensive) but considering going back just for Video storage and streaming Cons: There were some issues configuring the transcoder API and also concerned there may be gotcha prices as I get more users

So if you've used Cloudflare Stream or GCP's video streamin services I'd love your take on: Real world playback quality for short videos especially 1080p/720p behaviour and bitrate ladders on CloudStream.

Any gotchas in pricing when it comes to either CloudStream or GCP Video Streaming services

Reliability/Operational issues you've run into.

I'm currently leaning on Cloudflare Streaming as it seems cheaper/better deal but concerned about reliability and quality of video streams. So maybe going back to GCP for video streaming wouldnt be so bad.

So looking forward to your thoughts, thank you

gethly 144 days ago |

I would transcode myself. All you need is ffmpeg and a bit of code to manage the input and output files and to call ffmpeg. You can scale as needed. One VPS can do a lot of work. I am doing it myself.

Then you'll need storage(wasabi, backblaze, idrive) and CDN. Bunny CDN or Beluga CDN are, i think, one of the cheapest. Or you can build your own(I did), in case the CDN would pull too much data from origin and cause you increased costs as wasabi gives you only 1:1 egress with stored data and backblaze gives you 3:1. By that I mean that the CDN might always get the file from origin instead of sharing the file among its own nodes. So the origin would experience increased egress.

You can also rent a beefy storage VPS instead. For example, 2x 500 GB NVMe SSDs + 4x 22 TB Enterprise HDDs + 50 TB Bandwidth@2x 1Gbps costs 159€/month.

There are various ways how to do it and in the end it is up to you to pick what works for you the best. Mostly how much work you want to do yourself, how good are your programming skills and how much money you are willing to spend going forward.

slroger 144 days ago | |

I was transcoding myself when running it on the homeserver, but the convenience of Cloudflare stream doing the transcoding is tempting. Will definitely look into this, thank you. Hadnt heard about Bunny CDN till this week. Actually I am moving from a homeserver to my own rackmount in a datacolo in about 2 months so may take this route.

charlesding2024 145 days ago |

I've been using Cloudflare's ecosystem heavily for my video tools and can share some thoughts:

For your use case (40s clips, 10-50K plays/day), Cloudflare Stream's per-minute pricing model could be significantly cheaper than GCP, especially as you scale. Their ABR quality is quite good for 1080p/720p - I haven't noticed quality issues in practice.

One consideration: Cloudflare Stream has a 30s minimum charge per video, so for 40s clips you're paying for 60s. This might eat into the cost savings vs GCP.

Backblaze B2 + Cloudflare has free egress which is huge, but make sure you're using the Bandwidth Alliance properly to avoid surprise charges.

Have you considered keeping source files in B2 and only using Cloudflare Stream for delivery? That hybrid approach might give you more flexibility.

slroger 144 days ago | |

I see, yes I am planning to keep the raw video files in B2.

So about the 30 second minimum charge, my current scenario is users can record and upload videos of any length between 5-60 seconds max if they are recording from the app's camera. On average I have found its 40 second videos. But if uploading from their gallery max is videos of 3minute length or lower.

Thank you for the reply as well. Glad the quality of cloudflare stream is good

charlesding2024 144 days ago | | |

Makes sense. Just a heads-up on the hybrid approach: storing raw files in B2 while also ingesting to Stream means you're paying for storage twice.

Also, for the mobile app, definitely look into Direct Creator Uploads. You can generate a signed URL on your backend and let the phone upload straight to Cloudflare. It saves a ton of headache handling bandwidth on your own servers.

Merry Christmas!

christophilus 145 days ago |

I’ve used Netcup to run an ffmpeg transcoding fleet, stored in Wasabi, served via BunnyCDN. It worked great, and I had total control of everything. You might also check out Bunny’s video services which didn’t exist when I built out my solution.

Risse 145 days ago | |

What's the software stack you have been using for the transcoding fleet? Is there any ready made open source solution?

slroger 144 days ago | |

Thank you, first time I'm hearing about Bunny CDN will do some more research on them.