[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Recommend video streaming CDN service
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Ask HN: Recommend video streaming CDN service
I would like to provide users with video streaming but would like
to avoid the hustle of running the infrastructure. Can you
recommend a cheap CDN service for video streaming? The way I
imagine it is that a user will request a video stream instance, I
will set it up via automated API calls and provide the user with
access details for OBS(or similar software). The user then starts
the video stream. Other users/audience will be able to watch it on
my platform via embedded video player that will be streaming the
video from this video cdn service. And I will be charged per
use(although I would prefer something more predictable, rather than
actual per-data pricing to not go bankrupt in case of sudden
extreme interest in some video stream).
Author : hknmtt
Score : 15 points
Date : 2022-10-06 17:52 UTC (5 hours ago)
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| You most likely want https://antmedia.io/ Ant Media WebRTC
| streaming library. It's the back-end for most adult streaming
| sites and alternative livestreaming sites. Cheapest option by FAR
| if done on budget hosts, especially if bandwidth is free or cheap
| (ex. Hetzner Cloud US gives 10TB free).
|
| Some other options:
|
| Free:
|
| https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/ Free/Open Source, built for video
| calls but also works for livestreaming*
|
| https://livekit.io/ Free SDK, similar complexity to Jitsi but
| tailored specifically for live streaming
|
| https://www.ovenmediaengine.com/olk Roll-Your-Own auto-scaling
| live-streaming solution
|
| ...
|
| API as a Service:
|
| https://www.100ms.live/ Super low-latency livestreaming API with
| premium pricing
|
| https://castr.io/ All-In-One, ok pricing
|
| https://www.api.stream/ Good, pay as you go pricing
|
| https://liveapi.com/pricing/ Good, pay-as-you-go pricing
|
| https://www.simplelive.co/livestream One click embedded live
| stream start-up, pricing seems too good to be true
|
| ...
|
| * Example repo which used Jitsi for livestreaming to thousands:
| https://gitlab.com/guardianproject-ops/jitsi-aws-deployment
|
| ...
|
| All of the options will run ~$100 to $3000/month for streaming
| 100 hours a month to 1000 users, with APIs costing the most and
| bandwidth being the main cost of self-hosted solutions.
|
| <$100/mo is possible by self-hosting on Hetzner or another free
| bandwidth host.
|
| Using AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud anywhere in your stack can
| easily 2-3x your costs above the high bound.
| trevorishere wrote:
| Azure Media Services?
|
| https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/media-serv...
|
| Supports HEVC (H.265) output.
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/media-services/lates...
|
| You can put budget alerts in place on Azure resources to handle
| costs.
| manv1 wrote:
| Since you care more about cost and don't mind building it
| yourself, just build it yourself.
|
| ffmpeg -> MPEG-DASH -> nginx + MPEG-DASH -> your own video
| player.
| mobilio wrote:
| +1
| jacooper wrote:
| Cloudflare Stream? Seems perfect for your, and they do not charge
| per bandwidth, as usual by cloudflare.
| jenaimarre wrote:
| YouTube?
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| I looked into this a few years ago and it was pretty rough. There
| are free platforms like YouTube, then there are extremely
| expensive options. The least expensive of the expensive options I
| found was just digital ocean, but I found playback didn't work
| under a vpn
|
| Let us know what you find
| wh0thenn0w wrote:
| bunny.net Video Streaming service might also be interesting for
| you
| hknmtt wrote:
| i did, 6h stream at 1Mbit with 1000 viewers would be 108$. i
| can have 3 powerful VPSs with 2Gbit unlimited bandwidth in OVH.
| so far it seems there is no service that makes financial sense
| :(
| phillipseamore wrote:
| Don't know any service that would be considered cheap or even
| affordable that doesn't charge by the byte or watch time. But I'd
| certainly like to be proven wrong!
|
| It would be hard to find anything that wouldn't be at least 2x
| more expensive than running your own, at least the origin/ingest
| and transcoding side (as well as origin for DVR/recording/VOD).
| Depending on the scale, running your own edge servers for
| delivery to viewers might also be a lot cheaper.
| hknmtt wrote:
| i am not afraid of handling the infra myself but the problem is
| that the tech is still outdated so you have to do h264 and
| multicast. in other words you have to use old codec(h264), not
| vp8, vp9 or av1 and you have to transcode the ingress into
| different resolutions to serve slow clients instead of doing
| Scalable Video Coding where you have one source and you simply
| drop some data out of it for slow clients on the egress per
| client while they still can consume the same source in lower
| quality. and i just don' want to be doing that entire
| transcoding and multiple egress streams.
| phillipseamore wrote:
| You are mixing things up now. In the OP you mentioned OBS,
| SVC isn't available there (or pretty much anywhere). It now
| sounds a lot more like you want to deploy a WebRTC solution,
| were CDNs play no role.
| hknmtt wrote:
| I am not mixing anything. SVC is on the egress side, not on
| the ingress side. WebRTC is just a protocol. Seems you are
| the one mixing terms here ,)
| phillipseamore wrote:
| I've been running streaming infrastructure for 14 years.
| The encoded incoming stream needs to be SVC with subset
| bitstreams for the server to selectively deliver
| bitstreams from it.
| hknmtt wrote:
| obviously...
|
| just for fun i checked cloudflare's streaming offer. 6h
| stream with 1000 viewers would cost 360$.
| rozenmd wrote:
| streaming live is hell expensive
| hknmtt wrote:
| yep, some other cdn(don't remember which) added up to
| $100. better than 360 but still outside of a budget for
| daily use. as a one-off, sure, price is not that
| important. but if i would have just one user streaming
| once a day for 6h i'd go bankrupt in no time.
|
| right now i am thinking i would simply do 1:1 streaming.
| so no transcoding. what you put out is what the audience
| gets. so if you stream with too high if a bitrate, tough
| luck. i could handle it with couple of cheap VPSs.
| bdod6 wrote:
| Fastly
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