AWS for M&E Blog
F1® sets new standard in sports streaming with F1 TV Premium using AWS
Formula 1® (F1) celebrates their 75th year of racing in 2025 and, in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), continues to innovate and create the fan experience of the future. For the start of the 2025 race season, F1 launched a new streaming subscription tier called F1 TV Premium. This new tier is designed to create a rich and engaging experience catering to racing fans who value increased data access, higher quality video, and personalized viewing options.
F1 TV Premium subscribers can experience F1 Live and International coverage in up to UHD HDR, and on-board camera feeds in up to HD HDR. It also supports multiview on a range of devices and additional playback concurrency.
When the design of F1 TV Premium began, F1 kept several key tenets in mind. First, they wanted to use client-side technology to enable a completely flexible multiview experience instead of curating pre-created feed layouts with limited customization. Second, the new tier needed to work alongside their existing F1 TV subscription and support programs in a singular video workflow. They also wanted broad device support, to give viewers choices on where they could watch. Finally, F1 set a goal to provide server-side video synchronization between feeds, so that play head alignment on the client was not required.
The core services that F1 TV uses to power this new video workflow are AWS Media Services. This includes AWS Elemental MediaConnect, AWS Elemental MediaLive, and AWS Elemental MediaPackage plus Amazon CloudFront.
Figure 1: Screenshot of F1 TV Premium multiview experience.
Now, let’s do a deep-dive into F1 TV’s video workflow, focusing on F1’s three key prioritizes:
- Feed synchronization using timecode – how to keep multiple feeds in sync
- Predictable encoding and packaging – how videos arrive at the client and how will they be used
- Customizable multiview experience – how to maximize flexibility
Feed synchronization using timecode
F1 TV Premium users have access to 24 separate feeds—the main race broadcast and track feeds, plus on-board cameras from all 20 cars. One of the most important details in this workload is the feed synchronization. Fans watching the race must have a viewing experience where feeds are aligned so key race events (such as “lights out” or an overtake) will be trackable without spoiling anything or skipping the action across all the feeds.
To accomplish this, F1 makes sure feeds are visually aligned at the same timecode when they leave the F1 Media and Technology Centre. This is needed because each feed can take a different path through the production signal chain. For example, F1 TV Live and International feeds both go through a production chain where equipment and processing introduce some additional delay. On the other hand, feeds such as the on-board cameras and data/driver tracker channels take a different signal chain, with different amounts of delay. This makes visual alignment critical to ensure that there is a consistent timecode aligned across all 24 video feeds.
Figure 2: Path through Formula One’s Media and Technology Centre.
Predictable encoding and packaging
With the timecode present and all feeds aligned, F1 then uses AWS Media Services to build the video workflow. The workflow facilitates a consistent timecode in contribution feeds with epoch locking and Common Media Application Format (CMAF) Ingest output from MediaLive to MediaPackage. The results are regular segmentation cadences anchored on Unix epoch time. This provides stateless synchronization of packagers based on the source timecode. This also helps enable cross-region failover and Media Quality-Aware Resiliency, along with frame accurate alignment for segments in multiple channels in one region.
It is important to use the same Group of Pictures (GOPs) and Frames Per Second (FPS) configurations across all channels to make sure this cadence is also consistent. MediaLive channels are configured to use embedded timecode, epoch locking, and the input source clock to align channels.
Even with content that is contextually different, as in Figure 3, when timecodes and encode configurations are aligned across multiple channels the videos stay in sync. This includes individual channel synchronization from the contribution feed timecode and also timecode alignment across all channels.
Figure 3: Aligned timecodes at source.
With this configuration, F1 TV Premium viewers can enjoy all the action in the race perfectly synchronized from different feeds, no matter what’s happening on the track.
Customizable multiview experience
The final step in this workflow is to configure MediaLive to allow the F1 TV client to produce a multiview experience. This is done with a feature of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) called tile encoding. With tile encoding enabled, MediaLive can generate a series of independent and extractable sections of a larger video resolution, which the decoder can use to decode any combination of tiles across any bitrate and resolution. This allows an F1 TV Premium user to configure any combination of videos, like driver battles, or a layout optimized for mobile viewing.
HEVC tile settings in MediaLive consist of width, height, padding, and tree block size. There are also additional settings to disable both motion vector temporal predictor and over picture boundaries. By using these settings, MediaLive validates that all rendition outputs are encoded with the same tile configuration. The result is that F1 clients can do bit-stream rewriting and merging to enable the multiview experience.
The tile encoding settings can be found in the “Codec details” of the MediaLive configuration. Note, this option is only available on the HEVC codec type.
Figure 4: Example architecture showing F1’s customizable multiview experience.
Conclusion
We discussed how F1 built a new workflow for delivering a multiview experience for race fans using AWS Media Services. First, F1 makes sure timecodes are aligned across all 24 feeds to synchronize the video leaving their Media and Technology Centre. Epoch locking, embedded timecode, and CMAF Ingest between AWS Elemental MediaLive and AWS Elemental MediaPackage are then used to provide predictable packaging. Finally, F1 configures HEVC with tile encoding so the viewer can customize how they want to watch the action unfold.
This collaboration between F1 and AWS shows how AWS Media Services provide the building blocks to create new ways for fans to experience live sports.
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