AWS announces new M&E Customer Experience Center in New York City

Media and entertainment (M&E) customers continue to face challenges in creating more content, more quickly, and distributing it to more endpoints than ever before in their quest to delight viewers globally. Amazon Web Services (AWS), along with AWS Partners, have showcased the rapid evolution of M&E solutions for years at industry events like the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show and the International Broadcast Convention (IBC). Until now, AWS for M&E technology demonstrations were accessible in this way just a few weeks out of the year. Customers are more engaged than ever before; they want to have higher quality conversations regarding user experience and media tooling. These conversations are best supported by having an interconnected solution architecture for reference.

AWS built an M&E Customer Experience Center (CXC) area located in the AWS Builder Studio in New York City. The Builder Studio encompasses 8,000 square feet of showroom, collaboration space, and prototyping lab in the heart of Midtown Manhattan on 5th Avenue. The centerpiece of the Builder Studio is the Innovation Showroom, a space to give Partners and AWS builders an opportunity to showcase innovative products and tools, all built on AWS. The AWS Builder Studio has access to critical infrastructure hardware for builders, and AWS customers with active prototyping engagements are invited to use the workshop to build with AWS. In this new location, AWS M&E and Partners demonstrate an integrated end-to-end solution showcase for content production and live broadcast solutions.

Content creation and live cloud production showcase

AWS for M&E showcases two common use cases in the new CXC. The content creation demonstration centers on film and TV file-based production combined with a virtual production studio. The demonstration hosts a camera capturing live video and combining it with a virtual race track running in Unreal Engine, referred to as in-camera visual effects (ICVFX).

The content creation process starts during pre-production with the Virtual Art Department, comprising of 3D artists tasked with generating real-time assets within a virtual environment. This virtual set services as a backdrop on the actual set working in conjunction with cameras, lighting, and various peripherals to capture the performance. Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, RED Digital Cinema cameras and the LG Electronics’ OLED displays are synchronized and the recorded footage is seamlessly transferred directly into Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

Customers can step through the full creative process running in AWS: Video and sound editorial, compositing, color grading, quality control, and production management tools for storage, content movement, and dailies/collaboration workflows.

The content production showcase launched at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in 2023 with the support of industry-leading technologies from hardware and software Partners in film and TV production. The demonstration received recognition for meeting five of ten Movielabs 2030 Vision pillars and winning two NAB Best of Show awards. The AWS Builder Studio offers a permanent location where customers can dive deep into cloud-based content production and provides a location to innovate and improve the customer user experience.

The live cloud production showcase demonstrates how customers can use AWS hosted solutions to easily produce broadcast-quality live events, sports, and news. The lab features a multi-camera live production studio, from which UHD live feeds are delivered to AWS Elemental MediaConnect using AWS Elemental Link encoders. From feed acquisition to video/audio switching and graphics, and delivery of regionalized feeds to broadcasters, operators can control every step of the live production process from any location, reducing the travel costs, logistical complexity, and carbon footprint associated with producing a live event.

Using the Grabyo Producer Control Room solution, operators can produce a live show with dedicated video switching, audio switching, live replay, and monitoring stations without the need to be local to the production. Tagboard’s graphics solution allows producers to add rich, data-driven live graphics, and engage the audience through interactive features (live polls, surveys, shoulder content). Audience engagement is key to all live production, and the solution measures the impact of the production with views. The showcased solution is SaaS based, allowing customers to quickly deploy and find success with premium live production.

Scheduling a visit of the M&E Customer Experience Center will be available starting November 13th, please send an email to AWS-MediaEnt-CXC@amazon.com.

For more information about these technologies, please refer to the following links:

Adobe: https://www.adobe.com

Autodesk: https://www.autodesk.com

Blackmagic Design: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com

CloudSoda: https://www.cloudsoda.io

Colorfront: https://www.colorfront.com

Epic Games: https://www.epicgames.com

Grabyo: https://www.grabyo.com

HP Inc: https://www.hp.com

Intel: https://www.intel.com

Leostream: https://www.leostream.com

LG Electronics: https://www.lg.com