AWS Elemental Announces 5 Services to Streamline Video Workflows

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced five AWS Elemental media services that are designed to simplify video offering creation and save development time. The five services are:

• MediaConvert: This formats, compresses, and transcodes on-demand video so it can be streamed to any device.

• MediaLive: This does the same for live video, preparing it for TV or device playback.

• MediaPackage: Since viewers expect advanced functionality with streamed content, this enhances live streams with features like the ability to start viewing from the beginning.

• MediaStore: This service delivers video saved in high-performance storage systems that are optimized for media.

• MediaTailor: This lets publishers insert tailored advertisements in their video streams.

By offering these media services, AWS hopes to let traditional broadcasters spend more time innovating and less time creating and running basic infrastructure, says Alex Dunlap, the company's general manager. He believes these services will create new opportunities for startups, government agencies, schools, and multinationals. The services integrate with AWS's offerings for content ingestion, delivery, monitoring, and artificial intelligence.

One company looking at AWS and these five services is BT, which needs to stream to both traditional set-top boxes and its next-generation video headend infrastructure.

“Rationalizing our on-premises converged headend and extending that infrastructure widely across the BT enterprise requires an all-in shift to the cloud,” says Ian Parr, director of TV and broadband infrastructure for BT. “The new AWS Elemental media services are a natural extension of media workflows to the cloud. The ease of use of these AWS console-based services for end-to-end workflows will provide a level of flexibility and efficiency that will be a game-changer for our industry while providing a flexible option that can coexist with legacy on-premises live and on-demand infrastructures deployments.”