AWS Elemental Launches Media Services

SEATTLE—Amazon Web Services has launched five new offerings within the AWS Elemental Media Services cloud portfolio to help customers build end to end workflows for both live and on-demand video with the professional features, image quality, and reliability needed to deliver premium video experiences to viewers across a multitude of devices.

The company is touting its new services as a way to give its customers more flexibility as they move from productions using specialized broadcast equipment and customized revenue models to cloud-based live productions that can provide personalized advertising on a “pay as you go” monetization arrangement scaled across multiple platforms. Its new services, the company said, simplify what were previously labor-intensive processes. Projects that once took months or years—such as standing up 24x7 live broadcast channels, converting a library of video-on-demand (VOD) assets for distribution, or streaming a high-profile live event—can now be completed in a fraction of the time with the new services, AWS Elemental said.

“For the better part of six decades, professional-grade video workflows were limited to a few major industry players who could afford to build and maintain customized infrastructure that would be updated only once or twice each decade,” said Alex Dunlap, General Manager at AWS Elemental. “These companies spent a great deal of time, money, and focus operating infrastructure with resources that could have been better spent creating great content and viewer experiences. We built AWS Elemental Media Services to let customers focus on delivering top-quality video reliably to any device, everywhere, without the undifferentiated heavy lifting of managing infrastructure. This not only helps traditional video providers innovate faster, but it also opens up new opportunities for startups, government agencies, schools, and multinational enterprises that, before today, had limited access to premium-quality video technology.”

AWS Elemental Media Services include the following individual services:

· AWS Elemental MediaConvert: Format and compress video-on-demand content for delivery to virtually any playback device, with high-quality video transcoding and broadcast-level features.

· AWS Elemental MediaLive: Encode broadcast-grade live video for televisions or connected devices. Quickly stand up broadcast channels or live events and deliver them reliably to your viewers.

· AWS Elemental MediaPackage: Prepare and protect live video streams for delivery to Internet devices with rich playback experience features such as start-over TV.

· AWS Elemental MediaStore: Deliver video from high-performance storage optimized for media.

· AWS Elemental MediaTailor: Insert targeted advertising into your video without sacrificing quality to increase viewer engagement and boost revenues.

Customers involved in the extensive private preview of AWS Elemental Media Services include BT, Pac-12 Networks, Amazon Prime Video, FOX Sports Australia, fuboTV, NINE in Australia, Spuul VOD in Singapore, cloud media services provider M2A Media, Cinépolis and Imagica.

Tom Butts

Tom has covered the broadcast technology market for the past 25 years, including three years handling member communications for the National Association of Broadcasters followed by a year as editor of Video Technology News and DTV Business executive newsletters for Phillips Publishing. In 1999 he launched digitalbroadcasting.com for internet B2B portal Verticalnet. He is also a charter member of the CTA's Academy of Digital TV Pioneers. Since 2001, he has been editor-in-chief of TV Tech (www.tvtech.com), the leading source of news and information on broadcast and related media technology and is a frequent contributor and moderator to the brand’s Tech Leadership events.