The world we live in is changing considerably with technological advancements. And this digital age has enabled businesses to run remotely by leveraging technologies, whether you want to schedule a meeting, hire employees, or transfer payments to anyone residing in any part of the world. That said, people now love watching videos on their digital devices more than on TV, maybe due to more convenience. This is why video marketing is growing. Consumers arriving on a given eCommerce website via video content are about 184% more expected to buy. And if you want to make the most of your video content, you need that speed and high-quality deliverability for your videos. But it can be compromised with traditional content delivery networks (CDNs). This is where modern video streaming CDNs come into the picture. It will ensure your video content reaches your targeted audience worldwide with low lags and incredibly high speed and reliability. So, let’s discuss a bit more about video streaming CDNs and how they can help you.
What is a Video CDN?
A video CDN is an extensive network of connected servers spread in several global locations. They are used to deliver content through the internet. It is often helpful to businesses wanting to distribute large video files to their audience and stay in touch with them by informing, educating, or promoting their products/services.
How do CDNs work?
When we search for something online, we get results within seconds (if you have a decent internet connection). But a lot of background work happens within those few seconds. A CDN consists of connected servers located globally in a network. This network caches all the content by copying and storing data in different locations. It delivers requested data to users situated closest to a server, reducing transit time, increased speed, and low buffering.
The benefits of Video CDNs
Compared to website CDNs, modern Video CDNs offer many benefits to users and businesses, such as:
Faster video streaming
By connecting multiple servers globally, video CDNs help create shorter routes for video streaming on a user’s device. Hence, the content gets delivered to them at a faster speed than that of a local network.
High-quality videos
No matter how large or small your video content is, the best video CDNs deliver high-quality videos to your audience that they can enjoy. It not only increases their streaming experience but also adds to your brand reputation.
Minimal lags
No one likes buffering videos or the ones that frequently lag. With video CDNs, your audience will get to see videos with minimal lags or interruptions. Hence, it also increases their viewing experience.
Better security
You would never want to compromise your business data. But cyber attackers are always looking for security loopholes to breach your network, steal information, and wreck your business financially and reputation-wise. Delivering videos through a local network might come with vulnerabilities and give cyberattackers a chance to break in. On the other hand, video CDNs can provide an extra security layer on your network to prevent threats and cyber-attacks. All these benefits scream the importance of streaming video CDNs for businesses. Using a professional video CDN can help you achieve those benefits by storing your videos and delivering them to users quickly and seamlessly with the lowest lags. So, let’s talk about some of the best streaming video CDNs available in the market for serious businesses.
Cloudflare Stream
Cloudflare‘s Anycast network spread across the globe ensures faster video streaming delivery with lesser buffering and shorter startup times, irrespective of the user’s location. It delivers and caches HTTP/S video content, including flexible bitrate formats at flat pricing, saving your bandwidth costs from the original server. Cloudflare’s ecosystem of security services and performance offers optimal delivery and uptime. As a result, visitors’ demand for high-quality and fast online video streaming experiences can be met, irrespective of their connection type, location, and device, so that you can clock better engagement rates and ROI. Don’t worry about security; Cloudflare protects your video streaming from DDoS attacks or traffic spikes. Cloudflare’s CDN covers over 200 cities from 100 countries with more than 7 Tbps network capacity to ensure the fastest content delivery globally. They also enable video file purging from their network cache in seconds. Cloudflare CDN encrypts all the files to avoid snooping and secures connections between the website and visitors. In addition, TLS/SSL encryption prevents content errors. Cache tags, page rules, and cache-control headers allow you to configure cache TTLs and offer more customization and granular control. You will also find tiered caching for saving bandwidth usage. Cloudflare offers customizations and business logic as part of content delivery through solutions including DRM Light, User Authorization, and Watermarking. Go with Cloudflare’s free plan or get more features by choosing any paid plans starting at $20/month.
EdgeNext
Leveraging its globally deployed edge cloud nodes, EdgeNext provides seamless and reliable Video on Demand (VOD) and Live Streaming solutions with regional expertise especially in China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. EdgeNext’s video streaming solutions integrate highly secured anti-DDoS and WAF protection and private networks. These integrated solutions enable high availability, high concurrency, and low latency to ensure high-quality of services. EdgeNext has been a preferred vendor by a number of the world’s top short media platforms. EdgeNext’s streaming video solutions support high-speed performance of on-demand and live video content and optimize for workloads and reliability. The solutions also support multiple protocols and formats, real-time encoding and transcoding, combined with advanced streaming capabilities such as live stream recording, media processing, content distribution, data analysis, and multi-terminal playback services. Powered by edge computing and years of media industry service experience, EdgeNext helps minimize the high-security risks across the site to guarantee continuous and stable major events and smooth video content delivery. EdgeNext offers flexible customizations and special features to ensure its services are tailored to the customers’ needs. Get EdgeNext’s free trial or select more features by customizing your own plan. EdgeNext offers competitive pricing (Pricing varies based on regions selected and TB usage.)
Bunny Stream
Bunny Stream lets you deliver an enhanced video streaming experience with better transcoding, high security, and storage. It packages a video player in such a way that it becomes more powerful yet easy to use. Bunny Stream helps in reducing complexity in video content delivery without ignoring the features and security. It handles the entire process but also gives you the flexibility to have control over the content. Just follow some simple steps to get your work done more simply:
First, upload your video file through the Stream API Let the video transcode to multiple resolutions Now, the videos are replicated and stored around the globe The files are ready and supercharged by the global load balancer
Bunny Stream is powered by global 30 Tbps+ CDN and Edge storage to deliver a better playback experience. The worldwide network reduces the buffer time to 80% and enhances scalability. It ensures your video has robust security services and enables you to set who can use your content. In addition, it facilitates MediaCage DRM that prevents any suspicious downloading attempts to keep the content safe. Bunny Stream’s pricing starts at 0.01/GB.
CloudFront for Media
Reach your audience globally regardless of where they are through more than 225 points of presence, highly optimized software, and a private network. This is why major online video platforms (OVPs) leverage CloudFront owing to its high performance, security, reliability, full-stack AWS integration, etc. Furthermore, CloudFront integrates with AWS Elemental MediaPackage, AWS Elemental MediaConvert to provide sophisticated and simplified video content production workflows. You will be getting many resources like architectural considerations, AWS documentation, AWS CloudFormation templates, configuration steps, and many more to start Video-on-demand. CloudFront provides low latency that increases the performance of the video. Also, using petabit-per-second capacity and better software architecture, you will find its presence across the globe. Some necessary workload features for quality content are pre-fetching, connection optimization, multi-tiered caching, connection collapsing, and background fills. CloudFront works with AWS WAF and AWS Shield to provide proactive security, DDoS protection and secure your content from various other attacks. All the video content is delivered using the latest release of Transport Layer Security (TLSv1.3) to secure and encrypt the communication between CloudFront and viewers or clients. The price for CloudFront’s video-on-demand starts at $0.085/month for the first 10 TB and increases according to the regions and TB usage. You can also go for a free tier with a 50 GB data transfer.
CDN77
CDN77 is optimized for live video platforms and VOD and supports HLS, MPEG-DASH, MP4, and CMAF playback for all devices and platforms. You can deliver significant HTTP videos globally with PoPs across six continents and 70 Tbps+ capacity of the network. It secures the smooth delivery and highest speed of on-demand and live videos. CDN77 storage helps you reduce bandwidth cost and improve the cache hit ratio to 97% or more. It will secure your content from DDoS attacks and offers Geo-blocking and IP, Multi-DRM, SSL, and more. Avail of additional features for your video content like encoding, DVR and timeshift, transcoding, HTML5 player along with audience analytics, and many more. You can upload recorded videos to the CDN storage, create bitrate files through transcoding, and serve your audiences the formats according to your choice. You can also upload formats like RTMP, HLS, RTSP, MPEG-TS, and MPEG-DASH and let CDN77 transcode the video that helps in optimizing the viewer experience. Choose the best plan according to your monthly traffic and overages, starting at $199/month. A free trial is also available.
Conclusion
The demand for video content is rising, and it is expected to continue in the near future. It’s because the audience in this digital age loves video streaming and can better respond if you are trying to promote your products/services through it. Thus, it’s time you leverage streaming video CDNs to deliver high-quality videos to your target audience in high speed and quality with minimal lags, no matter where they are located on the world map.
