Movie Stream Journey [Completely Custom]

[PixelSoul]

Hello!

I've been slowly developing a movie streaming website for a few months now. There have been some delays due to personal issues but now I'm 100% focused on getting this thing done.

I truly believe my website will be quite unique in the movie streaming space as I have some ideas that haven't been done before as far as I know. I would like to keep some of the ideas private for the time being but I'll definitely be posting some information about my doings.

My income goals are quite humble, as of right now I'm making around 500-1500 passively per month from 2 projects. I have 2 projects in development, one of them being this. I want to reach a passive income of at least 3000 per month, that's my goal.

How the site will work

• Since everything is built from the ground up (no Wordpress or any other ready-made scripts) it's quite complicated yet easy at the same time.
• Media files will be encrypted and stored on a cloud storage service where I have unlimited* storage space for quite cheap. (* - safely 200-400TB)
• I have not yet tested if I can download and decrypt on the fly to serve to the users almost instantly but the speeds will be fast enough for the media to be ready within 5-10 seconds on the first request. After the first request, it will be cached on the streaming server until that runs out of space or hasn't been viewed for a while, and then it gets deleted.
• Since I control the streaming to the user(s) I can inject ads into the stream in a way that ad-blocks would be considered close to useless.
• Streaming server(s) will be proxied by multiple DMCA ignored servers, as it's easier and quicker to switch around DMCA ignored hosts.
  • The reason I'm proxying is that DMCA ignored hosts usually have less than ideal hardware, but it'll be good enough to proxy traffic.

What's done so far

1. I've gathered a huge database of movies and tv shows.
2. I've linked around 15k movies with torrents so far, after that I'll focus on the tv shows
3. I've written a system that:
   1. Downloads the torrents
   2. Transcodes the media files to a format that can be viewed in the browser
   3. Encrypts the media files for safe storage
   4. Uploads the encrypted files to the storage
   5. Repeat
4. Made an MVP backend API which will download, cache and serve the media files
5. I made a little bit of the frontend of the website. I'll wait until I have the tv show part of the system implemented and started before I will continue with the backend and frontend further.

I've also been thinking about potentially selling access to the transcoded media library and database I'm in the process of making but have not made a decision yet. After a while, I'd even consider selling the whole system.

• I do not know what ad networks I'll go with yet so suggestions are welcome.
• I will not be doing a lot of SEO, only the basics as I believe the website features will do its own work for gaining users.
• I will not be doing a lot of advertising to get the website out there, only some places here and there, not much effort.
• I have not yet bought a domain nor the DMCA ignored servers as I don't need them yet.
• Everything is done in Node.js.

Wish me luck.

Stats [11/05/20]

• 5,257 - files downloaded -> transcoded -> stored, so far
• ~350 - files processed per 12 hours on average
• a lot - time wasted so far

 

[Randize]

• Streaming server(s) will be proxied by multiple DMCA ignored servers, as it's easier and quicker to switch around DMCA ignored hosts.
  • The reason I'm proxying is that DMCA ignored hosts usually have less than ideal hardware, but it'll be good enough to proxy traffic.

Exactly my experience too. If they have good hardware, then the bandwidth is somewhat limited.

Best of luck man! Too bad I don't have the proper rig to go your route, but I guess we make do what we have. This is a huge endeavor, we are lucky to have you documenting and learning from your process. While you are transcoding those files, you are developing your site's software, that's a good use of time than most average if you asked me.

 

[Heiko]

Great read so far. I am not into Movie Streaming Journeys at all but the introduction was already worth a read, and its always nice to learn something new. You seem to be on a good path and have solid ideas planned. Will be following this - Good luck!

 

[TomTheCat]

Have you considered to do a multi-language website in the future with subtitles for each language, where possible?

 

[PixelSoul]

Have you considered to do a multi-language website in the future with subtitles for each language, where possible?

I have not thought about localization yet but it's something I'd like to do eventually. Subtitles are in the TODO list though.

 

[taouil]

Nice journey, I will be following,
Are you using the torrentapi to get the content?
Also, is it possible to share your cloud storage solution? I've been looking for something cheap for quite some time now but didn't find anything that can be used especially with remote upload.

 

[PixelSoul]

Nice journey, I will be following,
Are you using the torrentapi to get the content?
Also, is it possible to share your cloud storage solution? I've been looking for something cheap for quite some time now but didn't find anything that can be used especially with remote upload.

I decided against using torrentapi as they don't have full collections of some TV shows (missing seasons) and they're not even that unpopular. As I said - most of my stuff is completely custom. I'm even planning on switching away from ruTorrent/Transmission/qBittorrent over to a custom WebTorrent solution as those 3 are unstable as hell and I feel I can error handle a custom WebTorrent system much better.

I am using Drive, hence the need to encrypt and cache on the streaming server(s) to stay as low profile as possible. If you plan on streaming directly from there I doubt you'll find it useful without having tons of redundant accounts.

 

[taouil]

I decided against using torrentapi as they don't have full collections of some TV shows (missing seasons) and they're not even that unpopular. As I said - most of my stuff is completely custom. I'm even planning on switching away from ruTorrent/Transmission/qBittorrent over to a custom WebTorrent solution as those 3 are unstable as hell and I feel I can error handle a custom WebTorrent system much better.

I am using Drive, hence the need to encrypt and cache on the streaming server(s) to stay as low profile as possible. If you plan on streaming directly from there I doubt you'll find it useful without having tons of redundant accounts.

Thanks for the reply,
I'm working on my custom solution too,
GDrive isn't good for a lot of files and there are tons of things to handle if you want to do remote uploads, and no, I'm just looking for a cloud storage service that supports remote upload to use as a backup,
For streaming, I've another solution,
Also, for the series, I think torrentapi have all the episode on the popular ones (The ones airing),
For the ones that already ended, you can always do a manual check for a 1 torrent link containing all the seasons & episodes,
I find it much easier to do this way,
Also, it's not worth it to upload all the tv series, you'll just consume a lot of space for a minority of views and I don't think it's worth it,
better focus on popular shows.

 

[Randize]

It would be nerve wrecking to think if drive would shut down and delete all the storage.

I agree there should be a priority to shows that bring higher returns.

 

[PixelSoul]

Thanks for the reply,
I'm a working on my custom solution too,
I'm gonna check Drive, and no, I'm just looking for a cloud storage service that supports remote upload to use as a backup,
For streaming, I've another solution,
Also, for the series, I think torrentapi have all the episode on the popular ones (The ones airing),
For the ones that already ended, you can always do a manual check for a 1 torrent link containing all the seasons & episodes,
I find it much easier to do this way,
Also, it's not worth it to upload all the tv series, you'll just consume a lot of space for a minority of views and I don't think it's worth it,
better focus on popular shows.

Yes, torrentapi has all the episodes for the popular shows.

Prioritizing full season torrents is exactly how my current setup works - even then I failed to acquire some shows off there. Currently, there are only a few movie sites out there that have these older shows available and I'm looking to offer a library that can rival theirs. Plus space and time consumed to transcode these files is not an issue for me.

I experimented with the easier solutions but in the end, there was always a reason to go the harder route.

It would be nerve wrecking to think if drive would shut down and delete all the storage.

I agree there should be a priority to shows that bring higher returns.

Indeed. I do plan on having a backup for all the files so if that does happen I can just set it back up again.
Popular TV shows have a higher priority already set, though like I said - I didn't find complete sets for some shows that have ended but have quite a huge following.

 

[NX_NULL]

Streaming server(s) will be proxied by multiple DMCA ignored servers, as it's easier and quicker to switch around DMCA ignored hosts.

• The reason I'm proxying is that DMCA ignored hosts usually have less than ideal hardware, but it'll be good enough to proxy traffic.

Can you explain about this part?

doesnt this increase your bandwidth usage by 2 times.

For example your servers are in USA and some one download a 1GB file, Your proxy server is in Russia, so The Russian server download the 1 GB files to itself and then display it to users. Am I getting this right?

 

[Rachmaninoff]

Sounds like a solid plan. It's good to hear that you're doing this with your own twist. Following your journey.

 

[Cron]

Following this. Very interested in seeing how it turns out.

 

[Deleted member 1107112]

Following
Good luck

 

[Deleted member 1376265]

All is good BUT...... @PixelSoul

What about traffic? did you purchase some backlinks?
How do you get traffic?

 

[pauliakas]

wow solid plan and you put a lot of effort.
What ads systems you are willing to use?

 

[PixelSoul]

Can you explain about this part?

doesnt this increase your bandwidth usage by 2 times.

For example your servers are in USA and some one download a 1GB file, Your proxy server is in Russia, so The Russian server download the 1 GB files to itself and then display it to users. Am I getting this right?

You are correct. Bandwidth would be a problem on metered servers thus I'm looking at unmetered ones.

All is good BUT...... @PixelSoul

What about traffic? did you purchase some backlinks?
How do you get traffic?

Not going to spend money on traffic. Most I'll do is share the site on some relevant Reddit subs.

wow solid plan and you put a lot of effort.
What ads systems you are willing to use?

Video ads, banner ads, never been a fan of popunders but for this project I'll consider testing them as well.

 

[Randize]

Can you explain about this part?

doesnt this increase your bandwidth usage by 2 times.

For example your servers are in USA and some one download a 1GB file, Your proxy server is in Russia, so The Russian server download the 1 GB files to itself and then display it to users. Am I getting this right?

2 reasons.

1. Is to protect the anonymity of your central storage, so you can pull and cache it on your proxy servers, much like how CDN works. For example, if you make your central backup server at your home for example, which I highly not recommend for obvious reasons, then it's probably smarter to mask with some layer of delivery network. After you have cached your files to a proxy server, your total bandwidth mileage isn't exactly x2 on the next requests.
2. Bandwidth isn't always direct proportional to server cost. Some host will be able to provide good bandwidth but with less powerful rig. It's a leverage play between performance cost and bandwidth delivery cost.

 

[Deleted member 1376265]

thanks for info!

 

[Cron]

After a while, I'd even consider selling the whole system.

Check your pm plz.