Youtube and Facebook have a much different encoding problem then say HBO/Netflix/Hulu...etc
YT & FB have a few popular videos, and a ginormous long-tail. That long-tail needs to be encoded, and cheaply as it might not get many views.
The TV/Movie VOD over IP industry stands to benefit optimizing the encoding to have the smallest filesize with highest quality. Spending considerable CPU cycles to find that best quality path.
For those like Netflix, why would you invest with ASICs. You likely don't have a huge infra bill (relatively) when it comes to encoding. And CPU vs ASICs, the ASICs mean you loose flexibility to really fine-tune the quality and use the latest codecs.
For those like YT/FB. You just gotta encode that long tail. Getting something cheap that's 80% the quality of CPU-based encoding is good enough for 99% of the content.
YT & FB have a few popular videos, and a ginormous long-tail. That long-tail needs to be encoded, and cheaply as it might not get many views.
The TV/Movie VOD over IP industry stands to benefit optimizing the encoding to have the smallest filesize with highest quality. Spending considerable CPU cycles to find that best quality path.
For those like Netflix, why would you invest with ASICs. You likely don't have a huge infra bill (relatively) when it comes to encoding. And CPU vs ASICs, the ASICs mean you loose flexibility to really fine-tune the quality and use the latest codecs.
For those like YT/FB. You just gotta encode that long tail. Getting something cheap that's 80% the quality of CPU-based encoding is good enough for 99% of the content.