(Apparently, it’s video day on Silicon Florist today.) Creating raw video content is becoming easier and easier. But that’s only part of the challenge of bringing your vision to the masses in this brave new world of online distribution. Video encoding can often be an equally challenging, costly, and time consuming part of the process.
But thanks to Portland’s CPUsage, that all may be changing. Introducing GridVid.Me, a much easier way for folks to encode video.
So how can it afford to offer encoding at a much lower price than competitors? Its secret is that unlike cloud encoding vendors, GridVid.Me doesn’t pay Amazon or other cloud computing providers for its compute cycles. That’s because GridVid.Me is part of CPUsage, a firm that leverages the unused compute cycles of idle PCs for profit. Kind of like a for-profit SETI@Home, CPUsage gets users to install a plugin on their PCs which runs in the background while a computer is dormant or using a limited amount of processing power. It can run various commercial applications, for which CPUsage pays a fraction of the cost of regular AWS services.
GridVid.Me is the product that CPUsage is launching based on its so-called “grid computing platform.” In addition to cost, there are other advantages that GridVid.Me gets from being connected to computers with CPUsage installed, according to co-founder Jeff Martens: For one, the average CPUsage computer is a lot more powerful than the typical AWS instance. That means some files could be transcoded more quickly than through competing cloud services.
For more information or to try the service yourself, visit GridVid.Me.
