[pm]

Interested to hear more about your pipeline and infrastructure for processing and delivering video. I'm working with processing short videos at the moment for my current startup, though I didn't use Mux (I figured it was a core competency we needed to develop). It's just a queue using FFMPEG to convert from MP4 to HLS.

[rememberlenny]

I have horror stories about FFMPEG that I wont go into here.

In short, I'm just one person building this - so I'm sticking to what I know best. I want video to "just work" without having to worry about some video format/extension/containers that I have no idea about.

There are a number of video processing services, but Mux really is the best. The API is simple. They have a ton of really nice helper functions, that I use a lot (like timestamped thumbnails, preview gifs, and VTT storyboard generation), which I could easily spend a few days on making, and then countless hours maintaining.

I dont doubt that building video infra is a good idea, but just as I'm not about to train my own speech-to-text model, I'm not going to build out video infra.

At least for me, I'm more worried about the end user experience, and the more I can focus on that, the better the overall product will be.

[pm]

I'm in the same boat - I'm the one building it, and my focus is on the user experience, but the business model won't tolerate the amount of video on someone else's service. :(

I haven't had FFMPEG nightmares yet, but I've done relatively little with it so far.

Any video apps I should look out for? I'm also pursuing a content creation angle that I've yet to spec out, so I'm always curious as to how others have approached the problem.

[jon_dahl]

Hey! Jon from Mux here. Curious about this comment:

> the business model won't tolerate the amount of video on someone else's service

Does that mean you aren't using S3/EC2 or the like, or is there something about how we've built our cloud platform that doesn't work for your business model? We've designed Mux to be a low-level primitive for video, like Twilio is for SMS, so I'd be interested if we're doing something that makes this harder for you.

[pm]

Hey Jon! I've looked at Mux (mainly the careers page), and it's a great platform. It would be a great fit technologically, but I'm not sure that my business model (which is tentative admittedly) would cover infra costs for processing, hosting and consuming the amount of video I'm eventually expecting, as I'm running on a shoestring budget at the moment.

Plus, it's a good chance to for me to learn the ins and outs of video. It's not reflective of the quality of your platform, just a choice I've made early in the piece for curiosity's sake.

[jon_dahl]

Cool - thanks for the reply!

If some credits or a startup discount are ever helpful, we have a startup program and can help out there. Let us know.

[pm]

Thanks, I'll have a look. If it appears as though it's not worth the effort to maintain my own video infra, you're the first choice.

[rememberlenny]

And this is why Mux is awesome.

[rememberlenny]

If you want, I’d love to chat about it!

Email: [e-mail]