As a publisher, you will want to predict your cost factor and factor in especially those costs which are dynamic, meaning which vary based on your uploaded content and viewership growth. In other words, those operational costs only come with.....
1. Publisher Usage:
= Number and file size of uploads controlled by the publisher. The publisher is in charge over these costs.
Calculation example: A publisher uploads 100 videos at 2GB of average file size. The transcoding into the 12 needed bitrates and file formats uses about 3 times the uploaded file size (1/3 is used by the original file and 2/3 are used by the 12 files rendered through transcoding). This means that the publisher would use about 600 GB of transcoding and 600 GB of storage for 100 uploaded videos of an average file size of 2GB.
The Storage & Transcoding formula:
Uploads X File Size X 3 (transcoding factor) for both transcoding and storage.
2. Viewership Usage:
= Number of viewers consuming content. These are the only costs not controllable by the publisher.
There are measures which can be taken to reduce bandwidth usage, such as reducing the amount of published content, adding time-out limits to linear streams, reducing the length or number of live-events. But this one cost - the bandwidth cost - can only be predicted if the viewership growth can be predicted. And while we always ask publishers prior to onboarding with us to consider this factor and to try to project their viewership for the next 12, 24 and 36 months, this will remain an unknown factor to some degree. But still, there are ways to calculate the costs under assumptions of viewerships numbers.
Calculation example: After 12 months a publisher who might have started out with a Lightcast Power package has grown their viewership to 50,000 views per month. Each view has an average of a 5 minutes usage in viewing time. The publisher needs 250,000 VM per month and is now starting to scratch on the limits, with occasional overage here and there, but not much. Upgrading to Power X would double the bandwidth, but may not yet be feasible until monthly overages are clearly sustained every month and it becomes cheaper to upgrade.
The Bandwidth formula:
Views X Assumed Average Viewing Time
Best taken from a 6-month average of the respective publisher’s account as each type
of content varies in average viewing time. If no historic data is yet available for a publisher, then a 5 minute per view average is a good starting point to make projections.
Please note that the formula above does not take the Bandwidth Progression Key into consideration. If your uploaded content is >= 720p, video files are accounted 3 minutes per minute viewed/streamed.
The Bandwidth formula for HD content:
Views X Assumed Average Viewing Time X 3
More about the Bandwidth Accounting Progression Key for on-demand and live content - Click here