
Why the Creators of Zencoder and Video.js Started Mux - jon_dahl
http://mux.com/blog/why-the-creators-of-zencoder-and-video-js-started-mux/
======
jon_dahl
Hey everyone - Jon from Mux here. We've been hard at work on this since
January, and are excited to start showing off what we're working on. Happy to
answer any questions, or take any feedback!

~~~
gm-conspiracy
So, does this only "hook" into video.js, or can it be integrated into other
existing players? Can I roll my own?

What kind of analytics can it gather?

What do you think are the most impressive features of Mux?

[edit]

Found on the site:

    
    
        Overall score
        Playback failures
        Time to first frame
        Exit before video start
    
        Player load time
        Page load time
        Buffer %
        Buffer frequency
    
        Seek time
        Upscale %
        Downscale %
    

Players supported:

    
    
        HTM5 Video Element
        Video.js
        Brightcove
    
        Ooyala
        Bitmovin
        Chromecast
    
        iOS (soon)
        Android (soon)

~~~
jon_dahl
Yep, we work with a few players now, and have several others in development.
Ultimately, we'll work with every major web player and mobile/OTT device. You
can also roll your own integration if you have a custom player, though if it's
HTML5-based, the HTML5 integration might have you covered.

Today, we're focused on the performance side of things: errors, startup time,
rebuffering, and video quality. Over time, we'll go more places.

As for the most impressive features: we're still early (just coming out of
beta), and so some of the things we're most excited about are coming down the
pipe. As a preview, though, one of the challenges we're tackling is extracting
meaning out of streams of data, and so we're working hard on things like
alerting and dashboards that surface the most important information (while
also making it easy to do your own explorations). That's also why we've spent
a lot of time on our interface; we think a good UX is really important to a
product like this.

------
snowwrestler
Most website owners use a 3rd-party service provider to stream video--like
YouTube, Vimeo, Ustream, etc. And very big video providers build custom
analytics into their custom platforms--like Netflix, Amazon, Apple, etc.

So the remainder is companies big/clever enough to try to build their own
video platform, but not enough to build in their own analytics. That seems
like a pretty small market to be going after.

~~~
thejosh
I know a lot of website owners who can't use Youtube/Vimdeo/Ustream/etc
because the video playlist is private, but don't have the budget for the
hosted video solutions.

And not big enough for netflix/amazon/apple/etc :)

~~~
snowwrestler
Thanks (to you and jon_dahl). I find it interesting that the cost difference
is enough to entice so many folks into doing video themselves.

I think of video as taking up a lot of resources, so therefore having a lot of
costs--not to mention writing and maintaining the code.

Edit: I think of video like email--a surprisingly complex pain in the butt
that is best outsourced. Apparently not, though, for a lot of companies.

~~~
jon_dahl
Actually, email isn't a bad analogy. Video is complicated, and most people
shouldn't build their own proprietary technology. But the outsourcing often
happens at the API level: if you use a third-party CDN, transcoder, player,
and analytics platform, you can outsource much of the complexity.

