Network operators, content creators and media companies are constantly seeking ways to streamline their workflows and improve efficiency. One critical aspect of this process is transcoding, the conversion of media files from one format to another in various qualities. Traditionally, this task was accomplished using standalone vendor appliances. But with the advent of cloud technology, there’s a powerful alternative available. However, outsourcing to clouds has proven to be extremely expensive, leaving transcoding users to reconsider and go back to on-premises. Fortunately, Jet-Stream’s latest innovations are now enabling cloud technologies for on-premise use, offering the best of both worlds. In this blog, we’ll explore the benefits of using cloud technology for on-premises transcoding compared to standalone vendor appliances.

Scalability and Flexibility

One of the most significant advantages of cloud technology is its scalability. With standalone vendor appliances, you are limited by the hardware’s capacity. This means that as your transcoding needs grow, you may have to invest in additional appliances, which can be costly and time-consuming to set up, manage and manually manage the load, scaling and uptime. In contrast, cloud transcoding scales resources up or down as needed, automatically. This flexibility ensures that your life is made much easier.

Cost-Efficiency

By integrating transcoding accelerated hardware with new cloud technologies, you now enjoy the benefits of both the scalability and flexibility of cloud software, and the disruptive cost and energy savings of hardware acceleration, reducing 75% transcoding costs, 89% energy costs and 50% operational costs.

Speed and Performance

Cloud transcoding leverages the vast computing power of automatically clustered servers, which surpass the capabilities of standalone appliances. This results in faster transcoding times, allowing you to process media files more quickly and meet tight deadlines. Moreover, cloud software is constantly updated and optimized, ensuring that you benefit from the latest technology without the need for regular hardware upgrades.

Disaster Recovery and Redundancy

Cloud technology offers robust disaster recovery and redundancy options. Transcoding your media files and live streams in your private cloud ensures that your data is protected against hardware failures or disasters. You can have data centers in multiple geographic regions, to create high availability and data redundancy. That is challenging to replicate with standalone appliances.

Accessibility and Collaboration

Cloud transcoding facilitates remote access and collaboration. Team members can access the transcoding infrastructure from anywhere with an internet connection. Consequently, enabling remote work and collaboration with partners or clients. This accessibility enhances productivity and flexibility in media production workflows.

Security and Compliance

Cloud technology is advanced in security measures, including encryption, access controls, and compliance certifications. These measures often surpass the security features available on standalone vendor appliances. By leveraging the cloud, you can ensure that your media files and transcoding processes are protected against unauthorized access and data breaches. 

Environmental Impact

Utilizing cloud technology for transcoding can also have a positive environmental impact. Cloud software is increasingly focused on energy-efficient resource usage and sustainability initiatives. By moving your transcoding services from standalone servers which can consume thousands of watts each, to a hybrid hardware accelerated cloud stack, you can reduce your organization’s carbon footprint to the extreme.

Ease of use

Transcoding appliances are pre-modern web technology based. You will often find quite outdated and complicated interfaces to do simple tasks such as setting up streams and customising profiles. Jet-Stream’s MaelStrom live transcoding uses the latest user interface and user experience designs. Thus, offering you powerful yet the easiest user friendly tools to manage transcoding, previewing and testing streams and monitoring load, status and performance.

Solution

Stand-alone transcoding appliances are a component in a larger ecosystem with for example origin servers, CDNs, portals and players. Jet-Stream MaelStrom offers powerful APIs to automate and orchestrate such workflows. And, it also offers built-in origins, edges, portals and players. So it can both be used as a component, and also as a full solution, with powerful new features such as live audio to text AI subtitling, media filtering, logo overlays, access control, packaging to HLS and DASH, and many more. 

In conclusion, the benefits of cloud technology for on-premises transcoding are clear. Scalability, cost-efficiency, speed, accessibility, security, ease of use, integration, and environmental considerations all make hybrid cloud and hardware accelerated solutions an attractive option for network operators, media companies and content creators. While standalone vendor appliances served their purpose in the past, cloud transcoding has emerged as a superior solution, empowering organizations to efficiently handle their media processing needs in a dynamic and competitive landscape.

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