Video Processing Changes

Today, we are putting a number of logic changes in place to prepare for our next version of the platform and to provide better service for platform customers.

As background to better understand what we are changing, we have a small cluster of processing servers that convert videos, resize photos, and do all of tasks like create documents on the fly.  Currently, when a video is uploaded, it’s sent to the first open server. If there are no open processing servers, the requests  waits in line for an open server and then the request is processed. The first request is the first one processed.  Like most sites, we have more unregistered guests than members and more free members than paying members.  We are taking steps to make our platform “smarter” to improve our service for our members.

Processing Priority: We’ve introduced the ability for prioritizing processing requests based on membership status or affiliation based membership such as a company or organization.  During periods of high activity, paying members will be prioritized over members who in turn will have priority over unregistered guests. Note that this change will have no impact when there are plenty of open servers. It will only kick in when requests are waiting in line.  In order to ensure that even low priority requests don’t have abnormal waits, we have also added a way of gradually raising a request’s priority over time automatically.

Parallel Processing: When a member with privileges to process multiple files at once sends the files, they’ll be processed on different machines at the same time.  Of course, this will depend on the member’s processing priority and open server availability.  Our old logic reserves a single server for them and they were processed one after the other.

Members using this functionality should see marked improvements in the amount of time needed to wait on a group of large videos to be converted.

Customized Processing Options: Certain membership levels will have highly customizable processing options.  We’ll cover this in detail upon launch of the next platform version.

If video processing is a bit wonky today, it’s because we are putting these changes in place in the live environment.

These changes will result in reduced waiting and far more flexibility for our individual and corporate customers.  They’ll apply across the board to all of the different types of platform customers (real estate, mobile services, etc.)  This should lay the foundation for our continued growth in 2010 and beyond.