So how do YouTube manage?

Craig321

Craig321

Craig321

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I've always wondered how YouTube manage the converting/encoding of all the videos to FLV.

The main reason I wonder is the fact that I've never had to wait in a queue to upload or have my video encoded.

I've been messing around with mencoder/FFMPEG to convert videos to FLV (which is apparently what YouTube use).

A single conversion is nothing, but I really don't see how YouTube convert thousands of videos a day with no queues? (Above a Pizza shop IIRC :rolleyes: :p ).

Who wants to enlighten me? :)

(Couldn't make up my mind on what category this should go in, so it's here ;) )

Craig.
 
Could be the fact that Google now own them.

Also, there's a brief delay before it becomes 'searchable' so it's probably this overhead that allows them that little extra time to get it done.

Who knows :confused:
 
EVH said:
Could be the fact that Google now own them.

Also, there's a brief delay before it becomes 'searchable' so it's probably this overhead that allows them that little extra time to get it done.

Who knows :confused:
Click to expand...

But before Google had them you could upload videos just fine without a queue.

I know they set the thumbnails in a queue, but every time I have uploaded a video I can watch it straight away :eek:

Someone needs to tell me!!! :p
 
What I want to know is how they have enough file space to store ALL of these videos which keep being added daily. They must use a MAHOOOOSIVE amount of space. :eek:
 
It is safe to assume that not many people upload videos, and most people just download and view them, so even though YouTube is very popular, the amount of video's needing to be converted is a relatively small percent. And the quality of the video's on YouTube is pretty bad so they will run a fast optimized encode of what you upload and not a slow algorithm designed to produce high quality movies.

One of the first links I found on google says that they spend ~$1million a month on bandwidth, this was a year ago so is probably more now. If you can afford a million a month on bandwidth you can afford multiple seriously high spec servers.
 
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Vai said:
It is safe to assume that not many people upload videos, and most people just download and view them, so even though YouTube is very popular, the amount of video's needing to be converted is a relatively small percent. And the quality of the video's on YouTube is pretty bad so they will run a fast optimized encode of what you upload and a slow algorithm designed to produce high quality movies.

One of the first links I found on google says that they spend ~$1million a month on bandwidth, this was a year ago so is probably more now. If you can afford a million a month on bandwidth you can afford multiple seriously high spec servers.
Click to expand...

That's a lot of bandwidth!

So are you guys saying that their encoding/converting is just pure power?

I also found this for anyone interested: http://www.computers.net/2006/08/youtube_stats_r.html
 
NokkonWud said:
Lots of computers in a farm, thought that would be obvious?
Click to expand...

Pretty much, but I still wonder how they manage the video converting without queues... does it really just go straight into encoding when the user submits it?
 
Craig321 said:
Pretty much, but I still wonder how they manage the video converting without queues... does it really just go straight into encoding when the user submits it?
Click to expand...

Yes... hence why you can view it right away.

Try it on your home PC. Doesn't take that long - a few seconds in most instances - to convert a video into crappy quality flv. Now imagine a farm of high-spec servers doing it and you will start to see how they do it.
 
dbmzk1 said:
Now imagine a farm of high-spec servers doing it and you will start to see how they do it.
Click to expand...
Google don't use high spec servers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_platform#Server_hardware_and_software

Code: 
Current hardware

Servers are commodity-class x86 PCs running customized versions of Linux.
 Indeed, the goal is to purchase CPU generations that offer the best
 performance per unit of power, not absolute performance.
 Estimates of the power required for over 450,000 servers range upwards of
 20 megawatts, which could cost on the order of US$2 million per month
 in electricity charges.

Specifications:

    * Over 450,000 servers[2] ranging from 533 MHz Intel Celeron to 
       dual 1.4 GHz Intel Pentium III (as of 2005)
    * One or more 80GB hard disk per server (2003)
    * 2–4 GiB memory per machine (2004)

I think crazy optimisation is the key :)
 
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