Comment by tomerv
14 years ago
I'm not an Instagram user, so I may be off base... but why not start uploading the photo right when the user snapped it, i.e. before selecting a filter. Then apply the selected filter server-side on the original photo. That way you save a few more seconds while the user is selecting the filter.
Image manipulation on a large scale is expensive. Leaving it up to the user's device to run the image through filters eliminates server strain.
Definitely the case especially since they were on Amazon, and thus had to pay for EC2 minutes.
Now that they're at Facebook, server load shouldn't be a problem anymore though. So they could implement that.
What about sending a video stream to the server and then when you hit the button it just sends a timestamp that determines which frame to extract on the server and delete the unneeded ones?
The future is going to be sweeeeeet.
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for previewing each filter's effects, this would require constant downloads of the processed images off the server in addition to the initial upload
No it wouldn't. You could run the filter on the client, then finally run it on the server when their choice is made.