Wowza Community

WOWZA instance on EC2 for VOD - prohibitive costs perhaps?

Hi

Am trying to set up a VOD system using WOWZA, EC2, S3, etc.

I have just received my first bill which is for 442 hours (which is not even a full month) as my EC2 instance has been ‘open’ constantly. I haven’t actually managed to create my website yet or stream even one video as I can’t seem to get my head around the set up - (I have put out a consultant request for assistance for this now).

My question is this - if I want to stream VOD to (hopefully) many customers I assume I have to have a constantly running EC2 instance - and as such pay the cost. Which I now realise adds up!

I am wondering if this is all worth it - Its going to cost a fortune just to have a constantly open EC2 instance, let alone the cost of any streaming, encoding, Wowza licence, player licence, etc, etc. It will only be a small site and although I plan to charge for access I cannot see how it will work using this set up.

Have I got things wrong or should I give up on this set up and just look to use an existing streaming video hosting site and pay their monthly fee - which appears would be cheaper much to my surprise.

Looking forward to your thoughts, comments and suggestion

It is a very good question that you raise.

I think there are some times when you would be correct and sometime incorrect that it is too expensive.

I am probably like you , that it is too expensive for VOD because of my low penetration into market, while other high rollers would find that it is small pennies and they value the extra features that Wowza offers, not available in the cheaper options.

The cheaper option, is what I am using for VOD, simply using Cloudfront which can deliver at scale without an EC2.

The cheaper option, is what I am using for VOD, simply using Cloudfront which can deliver at scale without an EC2.

Hi shueardm

thanks for your response - can I just clarify your set up - you mention cloudfront - I was trying to set that up but would still need WOWZA opened through an EC2 instance - or so I thought - perhaps I have totally mixed things up and am trying to do two different things. Can you walk me through your set up please so I can see the delivery methods you are using, CDN, Streaming method, player, etc.

Thanks so much

Hi butchx5

I hope I am not treading on their toes here. I did say that there is a purpose for wowza in VOD, for example if you want DRM

If you only need the CDN feature without these premium Wowza features, then Cloudfront can be used as a server for RTMP, HTTP Live Streaming ( HLS) , in fact any web server can do this and also Microsoft Smooth Streaming is now supported with Cloudfront… you will need to see their documentation of course. I personally use JW Player to serve RTMP and HLS to iOS, then I have just recently been testing with much success the Microsoft Smooth Streaming VOD with free Silverlight player which is included in Expression Encoder download.

I don’t know what else I can help with, it is easy and you do not need Wowza, you just need to read some Cloudfront documentation really.