

As Google Shutters Flix Cloud Encoding Service, Zencoder (YC W10) Gets A Boost - jon_dahl
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/20/as-google-shutters-on2s-encoding-service-flix-cloud-zencoder-gets-a-boost/

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adriand
I submitted this separately but it didn't go anywhere (no big surprise, it has
a pretty narrow focus) but if you're interested in integrating Zencoder with a
Rails app, the tutorial I published earlier today may be helpful:

[http://factore.ca/on-the-floor/65-automatically-encode-
video...](http://factore.ca/on-the-floor/65-automatically-encode-video-to-
html5-formats-with-zencoder)

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jonasvp
More power to Zencoder! I integrated their service into a client site a couple
of weeks ago and their support is phenomenal. I chatted with one of the guys
and he was very helpful. Another Zencoder technician actually emailed me
because he noticed that some API callbacks we're errorring out. I was testing
from a LAN machine and he was trying to save me some time debugging.

Nice to see them moving onwards and upwards.

~~~
andrerobot
I'm considering integrating their service. Using ffmpeg can be a bitch when
you have to deal with many combinations of input codecs.

How does it run when you send a request with hundreds of jobs? They autoscale
so there is little waiting time on queues, but I don't get if that means if
the scaling is per job or per user.

~~~
fowlduck
We autoscale very, very quickly to serve all the jobs in our system. The only
limitations we place are on test jobs, where they execute sequentially per
account and only 100 can be processing or waiting.

~~~
Splines
Just curious - what's your customer base composed of? Is it mostly youtube
knockoffs? Adult sites? Enterprise customers?

I understand if you don't share, but I'm just curious. I do transcoding at
home from DVD to MP4 for place-shifting (I <3 Handbrake), but I'm thinking
your customer would be some sort of video-hosting site. Are there really that
many out there?

What kind of challenges have you faced wrt bandwidth?

~~~
jon_dahl
We have a pretty wide range of customers. It's mostly websites today - niche
video sharing sites (<http://schooltube.com>), blogging engines
(<http://posterous.com>), content sites (<http://www.giantbomb.com/>), online
video publishing tools, and other sites that accept video uploads. We also
have mobile and enterprise customers.

You'd be amazed how many websites out there need something like this - tens
and tens of thousands. Every website with an "upload" button that accepts
video or audio files needs transcoding, plus many others. And since a site
like Zencoder makes it possible to do complex things with video in 2-3 hours
instead of 2-3 months, we open the door to a whole new class of video
functionality.

