A study of transcoding on cloud environments for video content delivery

Media content distribution poses different challenges when it comes to supplying the variety of existing media formats requested by end-users. The need for an on demand transcoding stage may be justified under specific circumstances but is hampered by the high latency and long processing times. The great power cloud computing offers can be leveraged in a situation like this. This paper analyzes a use case where a Hadoop-based computer cloud is used as an aid in the transcoding of media content. The results point to the suitability of such a resource in a media distribution process requiring low cost streaming, such as the HTTP Live streaming scenario which supports streaming of audio or video to the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and desktop computers as well as the transfer of video on demand with encryption and authentication.