Cost-Efficient Storage for On-Demand Video Streaming on Cloud

TL;DR

This paper proposes a hierarchical cloud storage method for video streams that reduces storage costs by up to 40% by selectively pre-transcoding videos based on access frequency.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cost-minimization approach for storing and transcoding videos in hierarchical cloud storage, optimizing resource use and reducing expenses.

Findings

Cost reduction of up to 40% in storage for frequently accessed videos

Effective hierarchical storage decision strategy demonstrated through simulations

Significant savings in cloud storage costs for on-demand video streaming

Abstract

Video stream is converted to several formats to support the user's device, this conversion process is called video transcoding, which imposes high storage and powerful resources. With emerging of cloud technology, video stream companies adopted to process video on the cloud. Generally, many formats of the same video are made (pre-transcoded) and streamed to the adequate user's device. However, pre-transcoding demands huge storage space and incurs a high-cost to the video stream companies. More importantly, the pre-transcoding of video streams could be hierarchy carried out through different storage types in the cloud. To minimize the storage cost, in this paper, we propose a method to store video streams in the hierarchical storage of the cloud. Particularly, we develop a method to decide which video stream should be pre-transcoded in its suitable cloud storage to minimize the overall cost. Experimental simulation and results show the effectiveness of our approach, specifically, when the percentage of frequently accessed videos is high in repositories, the proposed approach minimizes the overall cost by up to 40 percent.