PRODUCTS
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Building tech products isn’t easy.
Even in the age of AI? Yes, because the battle isn’t about programming. It is about dissecting processes, crafting intricate workflows, working with design, working with humans, working with other systems, state management, logs & events, preventing abuse, balancing cost and value, and so many other things.
Now, if you want to add video to it, it gets harder.
To stream video, many more things need to work well. From scalable compute for video encoding, encoding for different types of content, delivering content globally, ensuring it plays across web, mobile and TVs, ensuring it plays well in fluctuating internet, debugging and fixing things before folks holler on social media etc.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a top cloud provider with more than 200 services, hundreds of instance types and numerous workflows. It’s built to be all things for all people. Everything is intentionally modular and granular, and best for large IT enterprises who can deal with its cumbersomeness and complexity. The cognitive overload resulting from this complexity necessitates long hours of configuration and management, along with additional training and certifications for your staff. Without a large IT and DevOps team, this scale of technological complexity is a colossal distraction for growth-focused businesses.
So many things.
FastPix focusses on just ‘Video’. The focus means we spend time on building what matters most to folks building video-centric products or video features in products. Our mission is to solve, simplify/abstract and automate in this space. Our product is intentionally complete to be a one-stop solution. It is intentionally interoperable so you can use what you want today and extend to other features with an API call (not a new product) when apt. It automates things like per-title encoding, data analytics, multi-CDN among others, so your team does not need to be video engineering experts, and yet deliver a top experience. And our pricing model’s simplicity and transparency is a stark contrast to AWS (figuring their pricing itself is another learning curve).
In the recent past, many businesses have migrated from AWS Media to FastPix. If you are considering building with video, here are some reasons why FastPix might be the better choice for you.
Now, let’s explore a few differences in a little more detail. First, to encode a video with FastPix, you can upload, encode and stream your video in a few mins. The video is ingested using our global accelerated uploads network, encoded using our per-title encoding, and playback URL is made available to you.
Our per-title encoding means our AI/ML analyzes your content and decides the optimal encoding recipe based on the content’s complexity. Action scenes that need more bits to encapsulate the information versus unchanging landscape scenes or animation that need less. This allows you to deliver the same or better experience while using less bandwidth, which can be particularly important in lower bandwidth countries and when video viewing often happens on mobile networks.
In contrast to our single API call, you need two AWS products, MediaPackage and MediaConvert to ingest and encode respectively. Moreover, with MediaConvert, you will be asked to fill in the following configuration as input before encoding can begin. This step for every video. every video. Sure, you could get a video expert to help or ask ChatGPT. But the reality is ‘content’ changes often and quickly (even more so in a UGC or PGC setting) that these initial configurations are worthless and right quick. We had customers who previously were using the same AWS setting for 5 years and paid for a lot of waste! This manual approach is a hark back to bygone times of online video.
FastPix empowers developers with a comprehensive suite of video editing features and streaming features and endpoints, including sprite sheets, live-to-VOD recording, and object removal. These features enable you to build robust, customer-centric in-app features and streaming workflows that would accelerate the video impact on your business.
Next, let’s talk about ABR – a foundational technology that powers modern viewing experiences. Adaptive bitrate streaming (ABR) is a technique that dynamically adjusts video quality based on the viewer's internet connection and device capabilities. It enhances user experience by minimizing buffering and ensuring smooth playback, making it crucial for both live and on-demand content delivery across varying network conditions.
At FastPix, every time we encode a file, we create multiple renditions of a video, each encoded at different bitrates and resolutions. For example, think 480p, 720p, 1080p and 1440p. We do this for every video file. So when your user requests a video and he is on train, our files ensure an uninterrupted viewing experience. Because as he moves from good internet zones to poor ones, the video does not stop playing. This is how modern video platforms like Netflix or YouTube function, and this is how your platform will be with FastPix. No manual intervention needed; just top tech delivered with no fuss. With AWS this is not straight, and you need to specifically and manually enable ABR packages in MediaConvert. Specifically mention how you want each set of files done.
Next let’s consider data. Video is one of those mediums where your viewers can be located across the globe, with varied devices, software and internet conditions (lots of permutations and combinations). Traditional analytical tools like session replay, heatmaps etc. don’t work in this spectrum. Video Data does. FastPix’ Video Data auto captures almost 50 different metrics for every video watched by your customer (even if that session is milliseconds). This monitoring enables developers to measure, identify and resolve streaming issues swiftly. This tool is a superpower that powers large VOD players like Netflix, YouTube etc. And now every FastPix customer has it – in fact we offer 100,000 view sessions free of charge for anyone using FastPix Video and Live Streaming API. FastPix’s Video Data and Video Player enhances your monitoring, development efficiency, and customer experience.
These are some of the reasons among others why we are intentionally 1 platform Vs AWS’s 10 platforms. Integrating, juggling and paying for multiple products is challenging. Getting data from one to the other daily is nightmare. This cycle to get video work was distracting from other parts of the technology, business, and commercialization. FastPix solves this problem for growth businesses looking to move fast.
The sentiment below from Reddit would be funny, if it wasn’t tragic, true, and funny. And that is because AWS Media Services has 10 different products. To stream your first video, you will need to hunt, learn, re-learn, iterate and integrate them all. Not forgetting the debugging feast. In contrast, FastPix is 1 platform Aka sort of a One ring to rule them all. We keep our docs and guides simple, helpful and efficient.
We offer integrations for all the most popular web, mobile and Smart TV SDKs, including Next.js, React, React Native, Android, iOS among others. More than most applications, this is supremely important for video applications. SDKs provide a straightforward way to implement video features, reducing the complexity of managing video playback and analytics across different platforms. Our Mobile SDKs are especially critical for folks because they facilitate smooth playback of FastPix-hosted videos on mobile devices, leveraging native player capabilities like AVPlayer for iOS and Media3 for Android.
Finally, we have other things you should care like our video specific webhooks. Our webhooks provide immediate alerts about significant events, such as when a video upload is completed or when a live stream starts or ends. This real-time communication allows users to respond quickly to changes without polling the API, allowing you to automate other workflows, to handle errors and maintain data integrity and overall use resources more efficiently.
10 different products, each with its own billing metric makes life at AWS Media complicated to understand, plan, and budget. Some products are billed by minutes, others by GB and others by TB. And you must keep shifting between them in the value chain. Intentional or not, it is confusing. If that is not confusing, hidden fees lurk everywhere from data transfer costs, reserved instance penalties, region-based pricing, bandwidth costs, API request charges etc. Nickel-and-dimed for every service.
With FastPix, our approach is centered on usage-based pricing, whereby we charge only for what you actually use, ensuring that costs align with your growth and needs. New users receive $25 in free credits to explore our services without any upfront commitment. This includes access to all capabilities, allowing you to experiment with our platform risk-free. Billing in one metric – minutes basis – means it is fairly easy to understand, plan and budget for us. And if that is not helpful, we built our own pricing calculator to provide estimates tailored to your specific usage patterns.
If you’re still choosing between AWS or FastPix, here are some questions to think through:
A. How much complexity is right for you?
B. How much time and money are available to you?
C. How much video expertise is available to you?
FastPix suits folks who have complex streaming workflows and needs, but themselves who don’t want to get bogged down in complexity. Folks choose us for velocity and time to market. We’ve productized our video expertise, abstracted complexity and built a one-stop platform to help folks focus on other pieces of their product roadmap, while we handle their video. Sometimes we might not have every feature compared to a competitor, but we've seen pretty much no one cares about that compared to the advantages of having everything in one place – and we'll always keep building!
Use the AWS to FastPix migration tool.
FastPix is ideal for growth-focused businesses that want a simple, efficient, and comprehensive video solution without the overhead of managing multiple complex services. If your priority is speed to market, reduced complexity, and predictable costs, FastPix is a better fit.
FastPix provides editing features like clipping, watermarking, thumbnail & GIF generation, video stitching, and audio overlay directly in its platform. For advanced editing, FastPix integrates easily with third-party tools via APIs.
FastPix supports automatic subtitle generation, multi-audio tracks, and regional video encoding for localized content. This allows developers to create a tailored viewing experience for global audiences.
FastPix prioritizes the security of your valuable content. They employ robust security measures, including Digital Rights Management (DRM), to encrypt and protect your videos from unauthorized access and piracy. You can also add watermarks to deter unauthorized copying and identify the source if necessary. Additionally, access controls allow you to manage who can view your videos and limit their rights based on specific criteria.
FastPix scales effortlessly with your growing video library and user base. Its robust infrastructure ensures smooth playback with minimal buffering, efficient video processing reduces storage costs, and a global CDN delivers videos reliably to audiences worldwide.
Advanced analytics provide insights into viewer behavior and content performance, helping you refine your strategy.
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