What is VideoCache?
VideoCache is a Squid URL rewriter plugin written in Python for bandwidth optimization while browsing famous video portals like Youtube, Dailymotion, Metacafe etc. It helps you save bandwidth when a particular video is requested more than once from the same network/machine.
Squid can not cache the dynamically served videos. VideoCache fits into squid to help it cache the videos as well. The cached videos are stored on your proxy server’s local storage or on a storage server in your network. These cached videos can be served to your clients at a very fast speed saving you significant upstream bandwidth.
How does it work?
When a video is accessed first time on your network, VideoCache caches it on your proxy server's hard disk. Every subsequent request to this video will be served from local cache and your upstream bandwidth will not be used. An average music video on Youtube is about 60Mb in size (720p/4:00 minutes). Imagine this video goes viral and 1000 of your clients watch the same video. It'll cost you 60Gb of data. But when you are using VideoCache, it'll cost you only 60Mb of data.
There may be cases when videos can't be cached in first attempt. In those cases, videos are generally cached in second attempt. For some of the websites, VideoCache can cache videos in background as well.
Why should I consider VideoCache?
Bandwidth Savings Though bandwidth saving patterns vary across customers, we have seen savings between 15-35% on VideoCache deployment. Bandwidth savings depend on a lot of factors like server storage used, browsing patterns, overall bandwidth etc.
Easy Integration If you are already using Squid as a proxy server to cache regular web content, it'll be very easy to integrate VideoCache to cache videos which are served dynamically. If you don't have a Squid server, you should consider deploying a Squid server along with VideoCache to save bandwidth.
Extensive Documentation We have documented every step for setting up Videocache from scratch. The documentation will help you setup required components and will walk you through to setup and configure VideoCache.
Affordable VideoCache is a far more affordable solution when compared to the fancy plug-n-play devices out there in the market. It gives you the freedom to select your own hardware for setup. Also, you can utilize the hardware for setting up other servers in case you want to move away from VideoCache.
Free Tech Support Every VideoCache premium license accompanies free tech support. You will be entitled to full tech support via forums and email as long as your VideoCache premium license is valid. This includes one time VideoCache setup and configuration using SSH.