On Demand Video Streaming with AWS Media Convert

AWS Elemental MediaConvert supports different output formats

• CMAF

• Apple HLS

• DASH ISO

• Microsoft Smooth Streaming

AWS Elemental MediaConvert provides output with different resolutions, we can change resolution or we can select auto as per our requirement.

Flow diagram of AWS Elemental MediaConvert

Why AWS Elemental MediaConvert?

AWS Elemental MediaConvert is a file-based video transcoding service with broadcast-grade features. It allows you to easily create video-on-demand (VOD) content for broadcast and multiscreen delivery at scale. The service combines advanced video and audio capabilities with a simple web services interface and pay-as-you-go pricing. With AWS Elemental MediaConvert, you can focus on delivering compelling media experiences without having to worry about the complexity of building and operating your own video processing infrastructure.

• It gives a comprehensive set of features to create engaging viewing experiences.
• Graphic overlays
• Content protection
• Multi-language audio
• Captioning support 
• It supports a broad range of video input and output formats
• AWS Elemental MediaConvert also supports processing and conversion of 4K and 8K resolution sources, and high dynamic range (HDR) video content including Dolby Vision.
• No hardware and software infrastructure is required.

AWS Elemental MediaConvert over Amazon Elastic Transcoder

Elastic Transcoder could not handle 4K video and only worked with static files stored in S3  whereas elemental media converter supports processing and conversion of 4K and 8K resolution sources, and high dynamic range (HDR) video content including Dolby Vision.

Elastic Transcoder lacked a lot in support of a bunch of codecs and output formats whereas the Media converter supports multiple input and output formats. Using MediaConvert, you also benefit from a flexible pricing structure, with on-demand Basic tier pricing starting at $0.0075 per minute, which is less than Elastic Transcoder.

Key Components

1. Jobs

• A job does the work of transcoding. Each job converts an input file into an output file.  
• Before you begin creating jobs, make sure that you know what your input files are and what they contain. Also, make sure that you know what files you would like to create as outputs and what format you would like them in.
• When you create a job, you specify the name of the file that you want to transcode, the names that you want MediaConvert to give to the finished output files, and several other settings.

2. Queues

• Queue allows you to manage the resources that are available to your account for parallel processing of jobs.
• Maximum 40 jobs will run parallel at a time.

3. Presets

• A preset is a saved group of encoding settings for a single output. 
• You can create many common outputs by simply selecting a system preset. You can also create your own custom presets, either by duplicating and modifying an existing preset or by creating one from scratch.
• When you create a job, you can specify a preset that you want to use, or you can individually specify your encoding settings.

4. Job templates

• A job template is a collection of presets or settings or any of the metadata and other job configuration that we want to reuse.
• We can create a job from job template by combining one or more inputs
• We need to define all the things in the template and use it again and again for different inputs.

Different Pricing

1. On-Demand pricing:

•  You pay only for what you use and there are no minimum fees. Charges are based on a simple fee per minute of video in each output.
• Short-term
•  On-demand pricing has two tiers: Basic, which is lower cost and supports a limited set of features, and Professional, which supports the full set of features. No long-term commitments or upfront payments are needed.

2. Reserved pricing

• Purchase one or more reserved transcode slots for a fixed monthly charge with a minimum 12-month commitment. 
• Each slot runs a single job at a time, with access to all available encoding features, and can process jobs continuously one after the other.
• Long-term

Implementation

Let’s start with a demo