Billing of On-Cloud Recording and Recording Delivery
The recording feature includes two parts: on-cloud recording and recording delivery. It records the audio and video streams within the TRTC room in the cloud, generates audio and video files, and delivers them to the specified storage service product.
If you have a contract with TRTC, the billing details in the contract will apply.
On-Cloud Recording
Billing Components
The on-cloud recording feature mainly includes the following two aspects, which will result in the following billing components:
Recording Robot Subscription Fees
When starting a recording task, the system assigns a recording robot as a virtual audience member to join the room and subscribe to the required audio and video streams. The billing is based on the duration of the audio and video streams, following Billing of Audio and Video Duration.
On-Cloud Recording Fees
After the recording robot subscribes to the streams, it starts the recording process. The billing is based on the on-cloud recording service, and the video recording duration is divided into four types based on the aggregate resolution, with pricing set for each type.
Billing Instructions
Billing method: The billing starts by deducting the free 10,000 minutes per month provided by TRTC for each developer account. As long as the account is not suspended, any usage beyond the monthly free minutes will be billed on a daily pay-as-you-go basis.
Billing period: The billing is settled on a daily basis. The on-cloud recording fees for each day will be deducted from the billing statement on the following day. The detailed billing and invoicing time will be based on the actual billing statement.
For the same on-cloud recording task, if multiple formats of recording files are generated, separate charges will be applied for each recording duration.
Billing Formula
On-cloud recording fees = Audio duration x Unit price of audio duration + Video durations of different types x Unit price of the corresponding type
Billing Price
TRTC categorizes video usage into four types based on the aggregate resolution of subscribed video streams in the recording process and calculates the fees for each type of videos as follows:
Category | Video Usage Type | Aggregate Resolution Range | Unit Price (USD/1,000 Min) |
Audio recording | - | - | 1.49 |
Video recording | HD | Aggregate resolution ≤ 921,600 (1280 x 720) | 5.99 |
| FHD | 921,600 (1280 x 720) < Aggregate resolution ≤ 2,073,600 (1920 x 1080) | 13.49 |
| 2K | 2,073,600 (1920 x 1080) < Aggregate resolution ≤ 3,686,400 (2560 x 1440) | 23.99 |
| 2K+ | 3,686,400 (2560 x 1440) < Aggregate resolution ≤ 8,847,360 (4096 x 2160) | 53.99 |
Usage Calculation
Note：
Durations are calculated in seconds and then converted to minutes by day (rounded up to the nearest minute).
For a single stream being recorded, if there is a period of audio-only input followed by a period of video input, the audio-only period will be billed based on audio, while the video period will be billed based on video.
If both audio and video streams are recorded simultaneously, only the video fees will be calculated.
The recording service refers to the comprehensive cloud service product provided by on-cloud recording, while the recording process denotes the initiation and termination of a single recording task through APIs.
Recording duration: The video duration usage of the on-cloud recording service is calculated from the start of recording until the recording is stopped. It represents the duration of recorded videos in the on-cloud recording service.
Video duration usage: It refers to the total duration of video recordings from all recording processes within an RTC room.
Audio duration usage: It is calculated by subtracting the video duration from the total duration of all recording processes within an RTC room. Regardless of whether audio is recorded, it is considered as audio duration usage.
Factors affecting duration calculation
Duration calculation is affected by the number of recording processes. If multiple recording processes are started within a room, the duration of each process needs to be calculated and included in the total recording service usage for that month.
Duration calculation is not affected by the number of audio and video streams being recorded. Within a single recording process, the duration is not accumulated. For example, if a recording process simultaneously records video streams A and B for 5 minutes, the duration of the recording service will be 5 minutes, and the fees will be charged based on the aggregate resolution of the recording service.
During the recording process, the recording server subscribes to the audio and video streams within the room, which incurs real-time audio and video service duration usage.
Billing Examples
Example 1
For example, if a recording process simultaneously records 2 video streams with a resolution of 960 × 720, the collective resolution of this recording process would be 960 × 720 + 960 × 720 = 1,382,400. The usage for this recording process would be billed based on the pricing for the Full HD type.
Example 2
This section describes how TRTC calculates aggregate resolution, recording durations, and recording fees.
Suppose you have a project named testRTC under your Tencent Cloud account. In addition to using audio/video services, the project also records and saves audio/video interactions through on-cloud recording. The usage is as follows:
Recording 1
On February 11, 2022, four users had a video call that lasted for 5,000 seconds. One on-cloud recording process was started to record four audio streams.
Usage: 5,000 seconds of audio recording duration in total.
Recording 2
On February 12, 2022, four users had a video call that lasted for 5,000 seconds. Two on-cloud recording processes were started. One was single-stream recording and the other mixed-stream recording. Four audio streams were recorded in each process.
Usage: 5,000 + 5,000 = 10,000 seconds of audio recording duration in total.
Recording 3
On February 13, 2022, four users had a video call that lasted for 3,500 seconds. One on-cloud recording process was started to record four audio and video streams. Each video stream had a resolution of 640 x 360.
Usage: 3,500 seconds of HD video recording duration in total.
Streams Received | Resolution Calculation | Aggregate Resolution | Recording Duration Type |
Audio/Video streams of 4 anchors | 640 x 360 x 4 | 921,600 | HD |
Recording 4
On February 14, 2022, three users interacted over video for 1,800 seconds, and their video resolutions were 640 x 360, 1280 x 720, and 960 x 720 respectively. After 1,800 seconds, a fourth user entered the room and interacted for 540 seconds, and the user's video resolution was 1920 x 1080. One on-cloud recording process was started to record the audio and video streams of all users throughout the process.
Usage: 1,800 seconds of FHD video recording duration and 540 seconds of 2K+ video recording duration.
Streams Received | Resolution Calculation | Aggregate Resolution | Recording Duration Type |
Audio/Video streams of 3 anchors | 640 x 360 + 1280 x 720 + 960 x 720 | 1,843,200 | FHD |
Audio/Video streams of 4 anchors | 640 x 360 + 1280 x 720 + 960 x 720 + 1920 x 1080 | 3,916,800 | 2K+ |
Fees calculation (total fees of recordings 1 to 4)
Billable Item (Recording Type) | Duration (Min) | Fees (USD) |
Audio | 250 | (250/1000) x 1.49 = 0.3725 |
HD | 59 | (59/1000) x 5.99 = 0.35341 |
FHD | 30 | (30/1000) x 13.49 = 0.4047 |
2K+ | 9 | (9/1000) x 53.99 = 0.48591 |
Total | - | 1.61652 ≈ 1.62 |
Recording Delivery
Recording delivery is a paid feature of TRTC. It allows you to send recording files generated by TRTC to a storage bucket you specify.
Billing Instructions
Billing method: Monthly pay-as-you-go.
Billing period: The billing is settled on a daily basis. The on-cloud recording fees for each day will be deducted from the billing statement on the following day. The detailed billing and invoicing time will be based on the actual billing statement. Fees each month are calculated and deducted the following month at the time of billing. The actual billing time may vary.
If a recording task produces multiple recording files, recording delivery fees will be incurred for each of them.
Note:
The recording delivery feature serves as a downstream service for both cloud-based and page-based recording. For detailed pricing information, please refer to Billing of On-Cloud Recording and Billing of Page Recording.
To ensure data security and reliability, TRTC saves recording files in Tencent Cloud VOD by default. This may incur VOD media storage fees and VOD playback acceleration fees.
If recording is enabled for a room, a recording robot will join the room as an audience member and will subscribe to the audio/video streams that need to be recorded. This will incur audio/video duration fees.
Billing Formula
Recording delivery fees = Recording file duration x Unit price (determined by the target storage and resolution)
Billing Price
The table below lists the unit costs of the recording delivery feature:
Billing Type | Price (USD/1,000 Min) | |
Deliver to Tencent Cloud storage | Audio | 0.02 |
| HD | 0.13 |
| FHD | 0.29 |
| 2K | 0.58 |
| 4K | 1.16 |
Deliver to third-party storage | Audio | 0.13 |
| HD | 0.82 |
| FHD | 1.72 |
| 2K | 3.6 |
| 4K | 7.19 |
Note:
The resolution type is determined by a video's total number of pixels. For example, if a video is 720 x 360 pixels, its resolution type will be HD because its total number of pixels is smaller than 1280 x 720.
As part of a special campaign launched by TRTC together with VOD, if you save recording files generated by TRTC to VOD, we will waive the recording delivery fees. If you save recording files to other storage services, for example, Tencent Cloud COS, recording delivery fees will be incurred.
Usage Calculation
TRTC calculates recording delivery usage by adding up the audio/video duration of each recording file generated by all TRTC applications under your account and charges them based on the resolution type.
Note: Monthly durations are calculated in seconds and then converted to minutes (rounded up to the nearest minute).
Video Duration
Video duration is the video duration of a recording file delivered by TRTC.
Resolution type | Output resolution |
HD | ≤ 1280 x 720 (inclusive) |
FHD | 1280 x 720 - 1920 x 1080 (inclusive) |
2K | 1920 x 1080 - 2560 x 1440 (inclusive) |
4K | 2560 x 1440 - 4096 x 2176 (inclusive) |
If a recording file contains both video and audio, only the video duration will be charged.
Durations of different resolution types are charged separately.
Audio Duration
Audio duration is the audio duration of a recording file delivered by TRTC.
Billing Examples
Audio-only Streams
Suppose three users communicated over audio for 10 minutes in a TRTC room. The call was recorded, and the recording file generated was delivered to a third-party storage service.
The room's recording delivery fee would be Unit price for delivering audio recording files to third-party storage x Recording file duration = 0.13 USD/1,000 minutes x (10 minutes ÷ 1,000) = 0.0013 USD.
Audio and Video Streams
Suppose users A, B and C were in a TRTC call for 10 minutes and the entire call was recorded. The output resolution was set to FHD, and the recording file generated was delivered to Tencent Cloud COS. The streams published by the users and their resolutions are as follows:
User | Stream published | Input Resolution | Output Resolution | Billing Type |
A | Audio only | - | FHD (1920 x 1080) | Recording delivery to Tencent Cloud - FHD |
B | Video + Audio | 640 x 360 | | |
C | Video only | 1920 x 1080 | | |
Analysis:
Recording delivery fees are charged based on the duration and resolution of the recording file delivered.
The room's recording delivery fee would be Unit price for delivering FHD recording files to Tencent Cloud x Recording file duration = 0.29 USD/1,000 minutes x (10 minutes ÷ 1,000) = 0.0029 USD.