AWS Media Services

The AWS media services are among their more recent offerings. Nevertheless, these are applications you may find critical to your cloud strategy. These may not be very familiar to you if media processing is not your thing. On the other hand, they are what you hope for if it is your focus.

Amazon Elastic Transcoder: Easy-to-use Scalable Media Transcoding

The first service we look at is the transcoder. It has a simple function of translating video media from one format to another. Fortunately, it has a free tier of twenty minutes of transcoding each month. Thus, you can "play around" with it and avoid fees. Once you get beyond the free threshold, it is priced based on the resolution and length of the video. There will also be storage costs on S3 as that is used for the input and output. It is quick and easy to use so may be the perfect solution for a one-off transcoding need.

Amazon Kinesis Video Streams: Process and Analyze Video Streams

This service is aimed at automatic storage, translation, analysis, cataloging, etc. of video streams. It is priced based on GB streamed and is perfect for services like Rekognition and other stream analysis tools. It may seem a bit much currently. However, this sort of functionality is becoming more popular in use every day as technology advances to make science fiction IT a reality.

AWS Elemental MediaConvert: Convert File-based Video Content

The MediaConvert service provides media conversion and processing for video on demand applications. It takes a source video and then transcodes, encrypts, and converts it to the desired formats. As with many of the other media services it uses S3 for its storage. On top of that is pricing based on the FPS level of the output.

AWS Elemental MediaLive: Convert Live Video Content

This service provides broadcast grade live streaming content. If you want to look as good as any organization streaming video, then take a look at this tool. The pricing is based on resolution and per hour of streaming so it is best suited for things like training and conference streams.

AWS Elemental MediaPackage: Video Origination and Packaging

Use this service to prepare and protect video for delivery to devices or players. It is priced by the GB ingested and is perfect for pay to view solutions and special offerings for your customers. You might even look at this as an alternative to a UDemy or similar platform to do it all on your own.

AWS Elemental MediaStore: Media Storage and Simple HTTP Origin

This service is tailored to store and deliver a video for live streaming. The pricing is based on GB optimized, and storage costs apply as well. When you want to provide a video without allowing a download of the entire file and otherwise protect your IP, this is the solution you are looking for.

AWS Elemental MediaTailor: Video Personalization and Monetization

We all like to make money. In the video world, the way to make money is often inserting advertising. This service provides a way to insert personalized ad videos into your streams. It is priced per one thousand inserts. It also offers some tools to help you in finding advertisers as well as push the ads. When you want to monetize your streaming videos, then this service is the one you want to look at.