User-Generated Content: Balancing Quality, Scalability, and Cost Efficiency

Producing user-generated content (UGC) presents unique challenges due to highly variable input quality, unpredictable demand, and the resultant need for cost-effective scalability. These challenges were explored in a recent webinar featuring Wowza’s Barry Owen, who discussed how Wowza’s transcoding options and deployment models help optimize cost, quality, and throughput for UGC applications.

Choose The Right Transcoding For UGC

By way of background, the session compared Wowza’s transcoding solutions—including AMD (FPGA), NVIDIA (GPU), and MainConcept (software)—in terms of cost, quality, and performance, while also exploring deployment options like on-premises, private cloud, SaaS, and hybrid setups. The webinar, available for replay here, provides expert guidance on choosing the right transcoding and deployment configurations for applications ranging from high-quality live events to user-generated content and surveillance workflows.

In regards to UGC, Owen explained that “quality may not be as critical because the input quality probably isn’t as high as other scenarios. For example, you’re not getting inputs from a high-end contribution encoder or playout server.” Instead, UGC streams often originate from mobile devices with inconsistent bandwidth, making scalability and cost-effectiveness the primary concerns. In such cases, GPU and FPGA-based transcoding solutions excel, enabling platforms to scale efficiently without over-provisioning resources.

To illustrate this, Owen shared cost comparisons for transcoding both 5 and 200 concurrent 1080p streams, each with a 5-rung ABR ladder. For 5 streams, CPU-based transcoding costs $228.48 per week, while GPU and FPGA solutions reduce weekly costs to $126.00 and $109.20, respectively.

For 200 streams, the cost disparity is even more pronounced, with CPU transcoding costing nearly $500,000 annually compared to $111,384 for GPU and $119,246 for FPGA solutions. As Owen noted, “For 200 streams, GPU solutions are the most cost-effective, providing the best balance between density and cost.”

Streams	Configuration	Ingest (hrs)	Transcode (hrs)	Number of Units Required	Cost per Hour	Weekly Cost (7×24)	Yearly Cost
5 Streams	CPU	4	12	2	$0.68	$228.48	$11,880.96
	GPU	20	60	1	$0.752	$126.00	$6,552.00
	FPGA	16	48	1	$0.65	$109.20	$5,678.40
200 Streams	CPU	4	12	84	$0.68	$9,596.16	$499,000.32
	GPU	20	60	17	$0.752	$2,142.00	$111,384.00
	FPGA	16	48	21	$0.65	$2,293.20	$119,246.40

Other transcoding-related features include support for a wide array of input and output formats, including H.264, H.265, VP8, and VP9 for video and AAC, MP3, and Opus for audio. In high volume use cases, H.265 and VP9 can deliver significant bandwidth savings over H.264. The Wowza platform also supports adaptive bitrate streaming using HLS, DASH, or CMAF, enabling optimal viewing experiences across devices and connection speeds. As you would expect, Wowza supports live-to-VOD capabilities, enabling content recording and repurposing for on-demand viewing, an essential feature for UGC.

Going Beyond the Transcode for UGC

Beyond transcoding, the Wowza platform also delivers multiple advantages for UGC sites, including deployment model. Given the unpredictable nature of UGC traffic, a hybrid deployment model is often ideal. Owen emphasized the importance of flexibility, stating, “You don’t want to have stacks of hardware burning electricity for no reason. Instead, deploy on-prem and burst to the cloud as needed to handle those peak demands.” This approach combines the efficiency of self-managed hardware for baseline demand with the scalability of cloud resources to accommodate input spikes. Of course, input spikes can also lead to traffic spikes, and Wowza excels here as well, with a best-in-class content delivery network (CDN) optimized for live and on-demand video.

Player technology is another standout feature. With the integration of Flowplayer, Wowza offers a lightweight, fast-loading player that supports both live and on-demand streaming. The player is highly customizable, featuring a rich plugin library for added functionality. This makes it an ideal choice for UGC platforms aiming to deliver engaging, interactive experiences.

Wowza’s analytics tools provide valuable insights into content performance, helping UGC platforms optimize their strategies, and provide its customers with valuable data for their own use. These tools include real-time metrics for audience engagement, cross-platform observability for end-to-end visibility, and API access for integrating analytics data with external systems.

For managing content, Wowza’s platform supports both live and on-demand video, and includes playlist generation features, making it easy to create curated channels or corporate newsfeeds. Advanced capabilities like AI-driven metadata extraction and auto-transcription further enhance content management, providing tools for seamless cataloging and accessibility.

For development and deployment, Wowza’s developer-friendly solutions make it easy to integrate and customize the platform to meet the unique needs of UGC platforms. Extensive APIs and SDKs, combined with robust documentation and tutorials, empower developers to create tailored streaming solutions. With deployment options spanning on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, with Docker container support for streamlined operations, Wowza offers unparalleled flexibility for any streaming setup.

Wowza’s 17 years of industry expertise and proven technology empower platforms to fully harness the potential of user-generated content. It’s no surprise that Wowza’s technology powers some of the largest social media platforms globally, including Facebook. As Owen concluded, “You need flexibility, density, and cost-effectiveness to make UGC streaming successful—and Wowza provides all three.”