Cloudflare opens up video streaming to everyone

If as a business or an individual you want to put a video on your website you would usually use a public service like YouTube and embed a link.

If you wanted to host your own video you would need a service to encode video into a streamable format, another to act as the content delivery network, and yet another to provide the player code that runs on the client device.

Now though Cloudflare is launching a new, simpler way for content owners and app developers to integrate video into any application or website. Cloudflare Stream handles the infrastructure setup to give developers an independent platform, which enables owners to retain their own data, own branding, and keep viewers on their own pages instead of referring them back to other major sites. This allows creators and developers to have full control over their content.

"Now that Cloudflare Stream has democratized the video technology that was previously only available to the likes of Netflix, YouTube, and Facebook we can't wait to see what developers will build," says Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. "An engineer on our team was literally able to build a full-featured video sharing service over a weekend. Get ready for an explosion of apps that use video in innovative, new ways -- all powered by Cloudflare Stream."

Stream removes the need to be an expert in video processing and delivery, and adaptive bitrate streaming always serves the highest quality video through Cloudflare's network of worldwide data centers.

Stream is priced on a per-minute viewed basis, costing $1 per thousand minutes viewed with additional discounts available at higher volumes. You can find out more on the Cloudflare website.

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