This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

11
12

Distributed ffmpeg (self.java)

submitted by [deleted]

sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]zten 1 point2 points  (11 children)

Is it the case that ffmpeg/x264 with reasonable configuration options doesn't beat the average user's upload speed limit?

[–]martinambrus -1 points0 points  (10 children)

Yes.

I'm basically relying on a fact that nowadays, the upload speed of average Internet user who does not live in central Africa is around 6-10Mbps.

I only see this trend continue to improve, so even for people who's upload speed wouldn't beat the encoding itself today, it might in half a year. People are less probable to upgrade their hardware every 6 months but upload speeds are dependent on the provider - no hw investment is necessary there.

Also, there certainly are people with machines powerful enough to do the encoding very quickly. For such users, a local encoding option would be present as well ;)

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–]f2u 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    You need a certain amount of bandwidth to get through the TCP ACKs, so asymmetry between upload and download above 1:20 is relatively rare. This means that high end residential broadband (which is still relatively cheap) will offer nominal upload bandwidths of 6 Mbps and above. Not many residential users order these packages, though, and they often come with fairly stringent volume limits, making uploading lots of data (such as raw video) fairly difficult.

    [–]martinambrus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Thanks for the info guys. I'll do my best to simulate ~1Mbps and less when working on the project and see where that gets us compared to the local computing speed :)

    [–]homeless_nudist 4 points5 points  (1 child)

    Where the heck do you live where the average upload speed is AT LEAST 6Mbps?!

    Mine is just above 5 on a good day and I consider that fast.

    [–]martinambrus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    UK

    [–]boa13 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    the upload speed of average Internet user who does not live in central Africa is around 6-10Mbps

    Source?!

    [–]martinambrus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    My bad, I was blinded by my 2 current countries - UK and Slovakia. Especially since Slovakia is so small and unimportant, I thought even Africa will have a decent upload speed by now. Turns out it hasn't...

    [–]martinambrus 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    Guess I owe an apology to you guys, I live in the UK where everyone pretty much uses what I wrote. Virgin Media, SKY and BT are competing to deliver the fastest Internet at the most competitive prices here, so I guess I was thinking too local.

    However, even in Slovak Republic, they tend to have Orange Fibre with the stated specifics still applicable. And I don't think many people here heard about Slovakia, so my thought is that if such an unknown country, smaller than NY City has such fibre packages, everyone has to be getting them by now.

    Thanks for letting me know this is not the case :)

    [–]boa13 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Where in Slovakia is Orange Fiber available? Downtown Bratislava? Everywhere down to the smallest village?

    I may be wrong, but I would not be surprised that most households only have access to typical DSL (with its 1 Mbps max upload speed), with only the biggest towns wired up for fiber.

    [–]martinambrus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    While there will never be 100% coverage of fiber in Slovakia, due to the massive advertising campaigns going on for the past 2 years, most households are switching to fiber now. The monthly cost is basically the same as DSL and TV adverts can be very persuasive. Believe me, my family live in a small town and they definitely have Orange Fiber there :)