M+E Connections

Amazon Web Services (AWS) made industrywide waves this week with several announcements, headlined by the launch of AWS for Media & Entertainment, an initiative geared toward making it easier for media and entertainment customers to discover, implement and deploy purpose-built AWS capabilities and partner solutions.

Additionally, AWS debuted Amazon Nimble Studio, a new suite of tools that enable customers to produce content entirely in the cloud, and create a functional creative studio in hours, remotely, with little in the way of capital expenditure.

“The new suite of Amazon Nimble Studio tools, combined with the power of AWS for Media & Entertainment services, gives customers access to onboard and collaborate with artists from anywhere in the world, and make, distribute and archive features and episodic series entirely in the cloud, eliminating the expense of a studio buildout,” AWS announced in a statement.

Lastly, AWS shared that it’s powering the global rollout of Disney+, with the growing Disney streaming services relying on AWS as its preferred public cloud infrastructure provider.

The service is now available in nearly 60 countries with more than 100 million subscribers, a mere 16 months after its launch.

AWS for M&E ‘reinvents’ the industry

Built specifically for content creators, rights holders, producers, broadcasters and distributors, AWS for Media & Entertainment features a host of new and existing services and solutions from AWS and its technology partners, aligning purpose-built cloud offerings — including nine AWS services, 11 AWS solutions, dedicated AWS appliances, and more than 400 AWS partner offerings —against specific M&E solution areas, including content production, media supply chain and archive, broadcast, D2C and streaming, and data science and analytics.

Eric Iverson, CTO of AWS, detailed every corner or the solution in a blog post, stressing how the initiative makes it easier for industry customers to select the right tools and partners for their workloads, accelerate production, and establishes dedicated AWS industry specialists and AWS professional services teams across each solution area. AWS partners such as Adobe, Deluxe, Dolby, Sony Media Cloud Services, Teradici and more are heavily involved in the initiative.

“The growth of the cloud changed how movies are made, how live news and sports are produced and distributed, and how we watch video today,” said Matt Garman, SVP of AWS sales and marketing. “And yet, we are still in the early stages of cloud transformation for media and entertainment. Customers continue to accelerate reinvention in areas like media supply chain, live streaming, and broadcasting. … With the launch of AWS for Media & Entertainment, customers can accelerate this transformation with a greater focus on solutions for their highest priority workloads.”

Jean-Christophe Morizur, senior director of pro products and solutions for Dolby, added: “The support of Dolby technologies on AWS is a critical component of how we meet the needs of our partners who are looking for flexible and scalable solutions to deliver their content. With more people than ever craving Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos experiences, especially within the streaming and live entertainment sectors, AWS helps our partners quickly and efficiently meet this demand.”

Iverson details how the solution enables creative studios to “spend less time rendering and more time collaborating using the most comprehensive set of cloud capabilities for content production” with support for rendering and virtual workstation workloads running industry standard applications from several companies, including Adobe. The service offers tutorials and guides to build a cloud-native creative studio and customers can launch video editing and graphics-intensive virtual workstations from most any location.

On the media supply chain and archive front, a AWS Content Analysis solution allows customers to reduce manual involvement in cataloguing archives, and generate metadata by combining the video transcribing capabilities of AWS Elemental MediaConvert with Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Transcribe, Amazon Translate and Amazon Comprehend.

For D2C and streaming services, AWS customers can deploy live streaming channels using a Live Streaming on AWS solution built with MediaLive, and deliver on-demand video workloads using a Video on Demand on AWS solution built around MediaConvert. Covering data science and analytics, M&E companies can ingest and analyse billions of audience events per day using Amazon EMR, and use its machine learning capabilities to segment audiences, forecast inventory, perform contextual analysis, and create personalised experiences and recommendations.

“Content producers across a range of industries are increasingly engaged with us about remote workflows and production flexibility. These conversations are driven by the demands for agile work environments that allow editors to work from anywhere. The pandemic has only accelerated these discussions,” said Tom Rosenstein, VP of business development for EditShare. “Working with AWS extends the benefits of our EFS media optimised file system from its on-premises origins to now run in the cloud, bringing the same high performance with added operational efficiency. Customers only pay for what they need without having to pre-plan purchases or have systems sit idle.”

Amazon Nimble Studio’s fast start

Amazon Nimble Studio becomes the latest offering in AWS’s portfolio of purpose-built media and entertainment services, covering AWS Elemental MediaPackage, AWS Elemental MediaConnect, AWS Elemental MediaLive, AWS Elemental MediaConvert, AWS Elemental MediaStore, AWS Elemental MediaTailor and Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS).

And it’s already gaining quite the customer following, with Anjekumi, CalState University, Evil Eye Pictures, Shomen Productions, Sinking Ship Entertainment and Spire Animation Studios all announcing at general availability launch that their building creative studios are using Amazon Nimble Studio.

The rendering-on-demand solution allows customers to quickly onboard and collaborate with artists from anywhere, produce content faster (and more cheaply), and requires no upfront fees or commitments, with customers only paying for the underlying AWS services used.

Simply put, Amazon Nimble Studio allows customers to create a new content production studio in hours, all using the cloud.

“Amazon Nimble Studio is going to change the way customers produce content using a cloud-based production pipeline,” said Kyle Roche, head of content production tech for AWS. “To date, studios struggle to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for creative content, which has driven an exponential increase in the computing power required to produce content — hastening obsolescence of workstations and straining on-premises storage and rendering capacity.

“We are excited to announce Amazon Nimble Studio, a transformational new service for the creative community built for the cloud to make it much faster, easier, and less expensive to produce the content that consumers want to watch.”

Disney’s AWS tech expansion

The AWS for Media & Entertainment and Amazon Nimble Studio announcements were paired with the news that The Walt Disney Co., which relies on AWS’s cloud infrastructure for its Disney+ expansion, would be using a further 50-plus AWS technologies going forward, including machine learning, database, storage, content delivery, serverless and analytics.

“Disney+ has completely reinvented what’s possible in content delivery by challenging convention and using cloud technology to build a streaming product from scratch that had never been launched and marketed before on such a global scale,” said Joe Inzerillo, EVP and CTO of D2C for The Walt Disney Company. “AWS has been our preferred cloud provider for years, and its proven global infrastructure and expansive suite of services has contributed meaningfully to the incredible success of Disney+.”

Carla Stratfold, VP of AWS global and strategic accounts at AWS, added: “Disney+ brings beloved characters and timeless stories to a global audience through world-class direct-to-consumer video services. Only AWS’s proven global infrastructure and unparalleled set of capabilities deliver the reliability, scalability, and breadth of functionality to power one of the world’s most exciting streaming services and its expansion around the world. We look forward to continuing to provide comprehensive cloud capabilities and expertise to The Walt Disney Company to help them reinvent streaming entertainment for Disney fans globally.”