Does streams "serve" or "copy" your video?

Developers Stream
1

Need a bit more understanding on how streams works

Hi there,

I’ve been using cloudflare streams for over a year now and I’m starting to think I got this all wrong.

My video files are hosted on a Backblaze B2 Cloud storage. I upload my video there, then use the backblaze link to “input” them to my streaming service on cloudflare. I assumed that my video file was being “served” from backblaze and “streamed” via cloudflare.

Today my cloudflare streams plugin on wordpress did not work, my library was empty. So out of desperation, I tried the “upload” functionality of that plugin. And it works! But now my file is being hosted on cloudflare, right?

Sooooo … I’m starting to think that the backblaze part is really redundant. So Cloudflares just “downloads” the file from backblaze? It’s a copy? So I don’t really need to store my files on backblaze at all?

Because if I can just upload my video files from within my wordpress cloudflare streams plugin … that saves me a lot of work! But I want to make sure I’m doing it right. That website is currently supporting me financially, so I don’t want to make any mistakes.

Kind regards
Dennis Claes

2

That is correct.

Also correct. It copies, then encodes. You no longer need the source (except as a permanent backup). In my case, I was uploading from my home computer.

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3

Thank you for the answer. So just to clear … I don’t actually need to upload my files to backblaze, I can just upload them straight to cloudlare?

Because that’s going to cut off a lot of my workflow, which would be great! But I’m super cautious. :slight_smile: So sorry for the “stupid question”. Just want to be sure. :slight_smile:

4

That’s what I always did. But Backblaze might have a faster connection. If it saves a step and some time, going direct will work.

5

Stream has built-in storage. You can upload files directly to Stream from the Dashboard. Or if you have users uploading videos, you can use the Direct Creator Upload API to avoid needing an intermediary storage provider (Direct creator uploads · Cloudflare Stream docs)

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Awesome, yeah, I can even upload straight from my wordpress site while I’m creating the post. That saves so much time.

I’ve been doing it wrong all this time! haha

Thank you all very much!

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