Cloud Production Is a Lie
I've spent months trying to get to the bottom of why Zoom and other cloud tools keep upping the requirements for my device when work in their cloud production tools. In particular, Zoom says when using Sessions, "If your device’s hardware doesn’t meet Production Studio’s minimum hardware requirement, attendees may see lower-resolution videos." I've noticed in Restream that when I have multiple people on, or when I'm playing back a video that exists on their server, my CPU load goes up.
The conclusion is that these "low-end" cloud solutions push some processing back onto our computers. It's not all happening in the cloud. This is a direct contradiction to what we're led to think "in the cloud" means.
Many producers have spun up AWS "instances" to run vMix or other production software in the cloud. When this happens, there is indeed a computer (of the size and capability you pay for) doing all the work, in a server farm, somewhere else. It could be one computer, or several, if it's a big production. When you are handling 8 callers, and multiple NDI inputs and outputs to other machines for playback, graphics, and more, you can see the CPU load go up on the AWS instance you are using--but it doesn't change the demand on the computer on the desk in front of you.
That's because the computer in front of you is merely running some remote desk software. The computer in front of you is watching a video stream from the web --from the desktop of that cloud machine. The computer in front of you is sending mouse movements and clicks back to that cloud machine. The "load" on your machine is very small, and does not change. It's always just playing a video, and sending back clicks. It will always be the same framerate, same data rate. You'll have the CPU load, no matter what is happening in the show.
Compare this with Zoom telling you that "attendees may see lower-resolution videos if your device’s hardware doesn’t meet Production Studio’s minimum hardware requirement." How on earth does the horsepower on my laptop affect the resolution of other people passing through Zoom's cloud production studio?
Or compare this with my local CPU load changing from 30% to considerably higher when I start doing multiple people on a screen, titles, video playback, and more in Restream. I have not yet tested StreamYard, Riverside, etc., for this specific effect. But I expect that it would be similar.
This leads me to suspect that these "cloud" solutions are indeed leveraging your local CPU horsepower to perform some of their tasks. Meaning it's not just "cloud" production. They're using your processing power to do some the work.
Is this to be expected? Am I overthinking it? I mean, when I do a background replacement of my webcam, of course that happens locally. Right? Why compress and then send that to the cloud studio to be keyed out there? On my Intel Mac Mini it actually tells me that without a dedicated GPU in my machine, background replacement simply cannot be used. So there's not even an option to push this task to the cloud.
But if I was doing the same greenscreen in that vMix hosted in an AWS instance, then the greenscreen would indeed be performed in the cloud from my uploaded webcam video with green background. Heavily compressed and all. Here, "cloud production" really means it's all being processed in the cloud machine.
Not all cloud production solutions are created equal. Some indeed do everything in the cloud, meaning you can watch and mouse-click using in-flight Wi-Fi on a plane. But I'm finding that other solutions actually require you to do some of the heavy lifting yourself, on your machine. Do we know which processes are being pushed back onto our machines? No, we don't. So I've come to assess these "cloud" solutions with a bit of caution. They're more like "cloud-assisted" production where you can use their systems to produce, but you got to bring some compute too.
I look forward to the day when these cloud solutions take more of this processing back onto themselves, and we can use lighter-weight laptops or even tablets produce even more more complex shows. But for now, I'll have to resign myself to the fact that I do still need my gaming PC, to do a show "in the cloud."
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