Would a cloud-accelerated export feature be usefull?

Software Natron
1

I wonder if a cloud-accelerated export feature could improve the video edition workflow? I’m trying to get opinions here before implementing such a feature.

How I see it: This could mean removing the need for a powerful hardware except for a good internet connection. It could improve the speed and the compression ratio of the final export. Maybe it will also enable the use of latest codecs. However I suppose the service could not be free, but it would only be an option.

What do you think?

2

Cloud render farms already exist! I don’t know of any off the top of my head that support Natron and it would obviously have to have your project file set up in a way where any linked files are available (relatively linked) but this is a thing that should be doable… Not by the Natron devs though.

3

Thank you for the answer!

I think this would not only be about speed, but more for the encoding process. The improvements could be:

  • Better compression quality with fewer parameters to set up: with heavy encoding techniques deployed on the server. Therefore smaller file sizes for the same quality.
  • Enable new codecs to be used. Use the AV1 for instance that would eat your CPU otherwise.
  • Exporting in multiple formats/codecs/resolutions in one call could be just as quick as one.

Do you know how much users could like this features? Would it be worth the fact they need to pay for the added cloud infrastructure?

Do you know how much time the rendering part (except encoding) relatively to the encoding part?

4

This is only the software, but running this on a public server should be trivial (or adapt to a paywalled service).

Or just use a simple script (Python) and maybe SSH to do the job (distribute on the local network etc). There are many possibilities.

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