Efficient Cloud Provisioning for Video Transcoding: Review, Open Challenges and Future Opportunities

Abstract

Video transcoding is the process of encoding an initial video sequence into multiple sequences of different bitrates, resolutions, and video standards, so that it can be viewed on devices of various capabilities and with various network access characteristics. Because video coding is a computationally expensive process and the amount of video in social-media networks drastically increases every year, large media providers demand for transcoding cloud services will continue rising. This article surveys the state of the art of related cloud services. It also summarizes research on video transcoding and provides indicative results for a transcoding scenario of interest related to Facebook. Finally, it illustrates open challenges in the field and outlines paths for future research. © 1997-2012 IEEE.