Can we upload videos given advanced technology and changing times?

[TOBASH]

Great videos need to be saved, not just pictures. You tube accounts disappear with time. Any way to upload and save and preserve videos here on St So?

 

[patracy]

That is a concession I've made here. Given how people video in 4K and what not, the amount of space that would use could quickly make our database and system file size grow way larger than the giant size it already is. Also the post processing needed to downsize videos would mean additional servers would be needed.

 

[patracy]

Just a little background info. The forum database. (Just the text you see here that make up posts and information, not pictures) is over 150gb on it's own. That's text. Not pictures, PDFs, file, OS, exc. Just the text. For compairison, a straight txt file can hold ~500 pages of info in a 1mb file. Its over a thousand mb to make a gb.

Now let's go the other direction. Let's say there's 1hr of 4K video uploaded. That could easily make up 100gb or more in a single file. Yes, not everyone would be shooting in 4K. But some would. Also the system has to accept that file first. The bottleneck that would hit us with on bandwidth would be another thing. As well as the load it'd take on the server to actually cache then write the file to disk.

I wish we could. But to even consider that, I'd need multiple servers and virtually endless disk arrays. Lastly, here's some numbers from youtube. TEN years ago.


Rough summary (based on 2012 numbers)

• 80 petabytes of storage
• 500 petabytes of network traffic per month

I know I've given excuse after excuse. But what you're proposing and comparing the site to do is astronomical in terms of resources.

 

[Mullaney]

Just a little background info. The forum database. (Just the text you see here that make up posts and information, not pictures) is over 150gb on it's own. That's text. Not pictures, PDFs, file, OS, exc. Just the text. For compairison, a straight txt file can hold ~500 pages of info in a 1mb file. Its over a thousand mb to make a gb.

Now let's go the other direction. Let's say there's 1hr of 4K video uploaded. That could easily make up 100gb or more in a single file. Yes, not everyone would be shooting in 4K. But some would. Also the system has to accept that file first. The bottleneck that would hit us with on bandwidth would be another thing. As well as the load it'd take on the server to actually cache then write the file to disk.

I wish we could. But to even consider that, I'd need multiple servers and virtually endless disk arrays. Lastly, here's some numbers from youtube. TEN years ago.


Rough summary (based on 2012 numbers)

• 80 petabytes of storage
• 500 petabytes of network traffic per month

I know I've given excuse after excuse. But what you're proposing and comparing the site to do is astronomical in terms of resources.

.
Just fishing, but is it a dollar resource question?
If the yearly dues doubled for example - would that increase make in financially possible?

The site as it is today already limits file size for uploads.
Naturally video files would be larger, but even those could be limited.

Just have to ask since the conversation is out here...

 

[patracy]

It's absolutely money related. Even entry video hosting could cost $500 or more a month. And at that range, we'd likely exceed that cap quickly.

Yes, file sizes can be limited. But there's still the part where if you upload a 4K video that is 200gb and I spec that the max video size is 500mb. It first has to accept/cache that file, then store it on disk, then downconvert it.

Let me give a visualization on file size. This post from here up is: 1kb.

The entire database of steel soldiers for just the text: 150gb would equal 157,286,400 of these posts.

Videos would easily surpass 23 YEARS of info. Even downconverting it into "potato quality", would he a heavy ask.