You have video working. Now every new format, traffic spike, and encoding change needs someone to own it. Let Chunkify handle video preparation and scaling while your team builds the product.
Updated October 16, 2026 · On-demand video
Your users, content, and publishing flow
Video expertise, delivered as a service.
Encoding decisions, processing workers, retries, and playback preparation
Keep your bucket, provider accounts, and domain
Your team wants reliable upload-to-playback preparation without making video infrastructure its specialty. Get per-title encoding, managed processing, and reusable application components while keeping your own storage and CDN.
Your workflow depends on custom filters, exact encoder builds, unusual formats, or processing inside your own environment. A stable, well-maintained pipeline can be a good fit when your team has the expertise and capacity to operate it.
FFmpeg is a capable multimedia framework, and Chunkify uses FFmpeg too. This comparison is about operating the video system around it. A custom pipeline can provide the capabilities below if your team builds and maintains them. About FFmpeg
An FFmpeg command can produce the file you need today. A production service also needs to handle tomorrow's phone recording, a batch of long uploads, and a processing worker that stops halfway through.
Which resolutions help this video? What bitrate preserves useful detail? Chunkify uses machine learning to inform those per-title decisions, so your team can add standard VOD without building an encoding research team.
Chunkify operates the workers, schedules processing, and manages retries and recovery. Your team no longer has to size an encoding fleet, deploy worker builds, or keep that processing service running.
Get adaptive HLS playback, a poster, and timeline previews through one video workflow. Chunkify prepares and publishes the outputs together, with lifecycle events your application can use.
Use supplied upload and player components. Add generated captions and translated subtitles in the same API, or automate them with workflows. These optional operations have separate charges.
Your developers still integrate the service, connect storage and delivery, and enforce the application's access rules. Chunkify takes over video preparation and its processing operations.
A screen recording, an interview, and a fast-moving match need different encoding choices. A fixed ladder can create outputs that add storage without helping the viewer.
Chunkify analyzes the source and chooses useful resolutions. Candidates that do not add enough value can be left out of the streaming ladder.
Per-title targets account for the video's complexity. Avoid spending the same bitrate budget on a quiet lesson and a detailed action sequence by default.
A planned production quality starts encoding when a player requests it. If nobody requests 1080p, that production rendition is never encoded or stored.
Building a predictive per-title system takes video-engineering and data-science expertise, representative training data, and ongoing quality validation. A brute-force approach instead tests many resolution and quality combinations, adding encoding work, compute cost, and delay for each video.
Chunkify uses machine learning to predict suitable bitrates and select useful streaming resolutions for each title. Your team gets that optimization as part of VOD preparation, without building and maintaining the prediction system.
Chunkify prepares an initial fallback for early playback while production qualities become available. Your users can start watching before the full ladder has finished.
Initial preparation and fallback media still require work. A player request starts the whole production rendition. Startup time and quality depend on the source and viewing conditions.
Fewer generated files can reduce stored bytes. Content-aware bitrates can reduce delivered bytes when the quality target allows. The result depends on your sources, current settings, viewers, and provider rates. Compare representative files before attaching a savings percentage.
A worker that handles today's uploads may become a bottleneck when customers import whole libraries. Adding workers also means coordinating concurrent work, failures, and output publication.
Chunkify runs the processing service behind the API, including scheduling, worker capacity, retries, recovery, and output validation. Chunkify coordinates processing capacity across videos and requested outputs. Processing events let your application track a video's lifecycle without operating those workers.
Your storage and CDN still handle file retention and delivery. Your team manages their configuration and the application around the video.
Managed scaling operates within plan limits and available capacity. Bursts can queue; preparation is not a promise of unlimited concurrency or a fixed completion time.
You do not need to move a working library into a hosted video account to stop running encoders. Both approaches can use your storage and CDN; the difference is who operates preparation.
Your original files and generated media
Your delivery integration and domain
Your uploader, compatible player, events, and analytics
Any S3-compatible storage, including Amazon S3 and R2
Keep your provider accounts and delivery domain
Chunkify components or compatible playback. Your access rules.
Chunkify runs processing as a managed service. It does not install an encoder fleet inside your infrastructure. Connect existing source files and output storage, then integrate preparation and lifecycle events. You can retain an Amazon S3 and CloudFront setup, use Cloudflare R2, or choose another S3-compatible provider.
Your existing pipeline may already do some of this well. Evaluate the work you want to maintain and the capabilities you would otherwise need to build.
Swipe the table to compare both approaches.
| Work to own | Chunkify | Self-managed FFmpeg |
|---|---|---|
| Ladder & bitrate policy | Machine-learning predictions inform bitrate targets and resolution selection for VOD. | Build and validate a predictive analysis system using video-engineering and data-science expertise, or run and evaluate repeated trial encodes. |
| Processing capacity | Workers, scheduling, retry handling, and recovery managed by Chunkify, within plan limits. | Run workers and your chosen queue, admission, scaling, and recovery system. |
| Playback packaging | Prepared HLS, early playback, posters, and timeline previews. | FFmpeg supports HLS and DASH. Configure packaging, validate outputs, and publish them through your pipeline. |
| Unused production qualities | Generate a planned production rendition when requested by a player. | Depends on your pipeline. Up-front ladders and demand-triggered encoding are different architectures to implement. |
| Application components | Supplied uploader and player, compatible HLS playback, and lifecycle events. | Use existing components or build your own. Connect transfers, job state, playback URLs, and application events. |
| Generated captions & translations | Available through the video API and workflows, with separate processing charges. | Connect speech recognition and translation, then publish and maintain the caption tracks. |
| Storage & delivery | Your S3-compatible storage and chosen CDN. You manage their accounts and configuration. | Your choice of storage and CDN. You manage their accounts and configuration. |
| Custom transformations | Supported Jobs API codecs and controls. Verify your required operations before switching. | Direct control over the installed FFmpeg build, filters, codecs, hardware, and processing environment. |
FFmpeg has no managed-service processing fee. Your total still includes compute, storage, delivery, engineering, and ongoing operations. Compare those responsibilities with the processing work you would hand to Chunkify.
Include encoding policy, queue management, worker upgrades, failed uploads, and the next feature request. Chunkify lets a product team use that work without first building a dedicated video operation.
Per-title selection and demand-triggered production encoding can avoid unnecessary outputs. Chunkify manages the processing capacity behind those decisions. Your bill uses published processing units rather than worker-runtime invoices.
You can keep the same storage and CDN on both sides. Encoding decisions change file sizes and delivered bitrates; your provider rates determine what those bytes cost.
A low-volume or highly optimized in-house pipeline can cost less in cash. A fair comparison uses your actual infrastructure bill and maintenance work. No universal savings percentage or assumed engineer salary is built into this page.
Chunkify VOD preparation is charged once per input minute at the source resolution's rate, with automatic streaming versions included. Standalone transcoding is charged per output minute. Storage, CDN, publication transfer, and optional operations remain separate.
Handing over standard video preparation should leave your team free to keep the parts of processing that are specific to your product.
Managed VOD follows Chunkify's supported formats and encoding policy. It is not an endpoint for arbitrary FFmpeg commands or custom binaries. Your application still owns user access, moderation decisions, and storage/CDN configuration.
Temporary testing outputs expire after 24 hours. Use lasting connected storage in production. Validate playback and supported media with your own source samples.
Use Chunkify-hosted analytics with 30-day retention on both plans, self-host the open-source server, or send events to your existing tools. Its read-only MCP server lets AI agents query view totals, inspect playback sessions, and export CSV reports.
Playback analytics & AI agentsA pipeline with unusual filters, hardware-specific encoders, specialist media formats, or an in-environment processing requirement may need to remain self-managed. You can move standard VOD to Chunkify and retain those workflows separately.
If you only want encoding, evaluate the Jobs API. It supports H.264, H.265, AV1, and VP9 with supported per-title, bitrate, CRF, dimensions, frame-rate, and trim controls. It does not expose every FFmpeg option.
Standalone transcodingKeep the existing route available while you prepare representative videos with Chunkify. Include the sources and edge cases that make your current system difficult to maintain.
Reuse your source library, S3-compatible storage, and CDN where appropriate. Give new outputs a separate path and verify credentials, browser access, and retention.
Test your long recordings, phone uploads, and detailed screen captures. Check time to playable media, final quality, output bytes, captions, and the application's completion flow.
Send a subset of new videos through Chunkify, save stable playback URLs, and connect lifecycle events. Keep existing published files playing from your storage; migrate the backlog only where it adds value.
Changing the preparation service still takes integration work. Preserve your content IDs, access rules, and analytics mapping. A compatible HLS player can stay, and generated URLs may differ. Do not remove the original pipeline until playback, failures, and rollback have been verified.
See the integration guideYou can hand over the service around encoding: per-title decisions, processing workers, scheduling, retries, output validation, and playback preparation. Keep your application, content model, storage, and CDN. The value depends on which of those responsibilities your team wants to stop maintaining.
For standard VOD, your developers can use Chunkify's managed preparation and supplied components without designing a streaming ladder or operating encoders. Your team still connects storage and delivery and applies application access rules. Specialist transformations should be checked against the supported processing controls.
CRF adjusts an encoder's quality target, so different sources can produce different bitrates. Effective per-title optimization also decides which streaming resolutions and bitrate targets are worth producing. Building that decision system needs specialist analysis and validation. Chunkify uses machine-learning predictions to guide those choices, then generates production qualities when requested.
Yes. Chunkify supports any S3-compatible storage, including Amazon S3 and Cloudflare R2, with your chosen CDN. A compatible HLS player can use the new playback URLs. Check output paths, browser access, delivery behavior, and analytics instrumentation before switching traffic.
Yes. Use standalone transcoding when you want encoded files for a pipeline you already control. Choose supported codecs and per-title, bitrate, or CRF targets, save the output to connected storage, and continue your workflow from processing events. Standalone output-minute pricing is separate from input-minute VOD preparation.
That depends on your workload and the system you already have. Include the infrastructure bill, time spent operating it, and the capabilities you still need to build. Compare representative source files and actual output sizes. Chunkify charges for managed processing while your storage and delivery providers bill separately.
Show us the pipeline you run today. Identify what can stay, what Chunkify can take over, and the source files to use for a fair evaluation.