PORTLAND, Ore.—AWS Elemental MediaLive’s statistical multiplexing (Statmux) feature now supports MPEG-2 encoding.

According to the company, broadcasters can now use the AWS Cloud to perform MPEG-2 encoding to feed legacy devices with limited codec support, without needing to perform upgrades of their customer’s or partner’s decoding devices.

The MPEG-2 support means that broadcasters can now use MediaLive Statmux to reach the vast majority of devices that connect them to their customers, said AWS.

Statmux video quality has also been improved for all codecs. AVC and HEVC progressive video bitrates can be lowered by 5-8% and for HEVC interlaced channels, bitrates can be lowered by 25% versus previous levels. AWS said the improvement in HEVC interlaced behavior means MediaLive Statmux is more efficient for broadcasters that distribute content in SD or 1080i HD formats.

MediaLive Statmux also now provides inter-channel priority controls, enabling users to fine-tune the video quality of different channels without adjusting any channel configurations or restarting any channels.

PORTLAND, Ore.—AWS Elemental has announced that statistical multiplexing is now available with its MediaLive processing service.

Used in live broadcast workflows, statmuxing allocates bits in real time among multiple live video channels, instantly adjusting the bitrate of each channel in the statmux pool to make the best use of total available bandwidth and combining the encoded output of each into a single transport stream.

As a result, the network efficiency is maximized by optimizing the picture quality of a group of channels within a fixed total bandwidth, the company said.

AWS Elemental MediaLive with Statmux makes it possible for broadcasters to improve flexibility and avoid incurring the time and costs necessary to build an on-premise system with hardware encoders. The offering allows broadcasters and other content providers to manage video workflows and deliver content reliably with excellent picture quality, the company said.

Among the benefits of the offering are the flexibility of the cloud, which makes adding, removing and updating live channels simple; built-in resiliency; high video quality; operational efficiency; integrated Amazon CloudWatch to enable real-time monitoring of video metrics and multiplexer performance; and a unified headend.

More information is available on the company’s website.