AWS for M&E Blog

IBC 2024: A show for the books

The International Broadcasting Convention (IBC), held annually each fall in Amsterdam, provides a forum for forging new connections, reconnecting with old friends, and prompting productive conversations about the media and entertainment (M&E) industry, as well as topics like AI, sustainability, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Amazon Web Services (AWS) participated in IBC 2024 with more than 45,000 attendees representing 170 countries and over 1,350 exhibitors.

The overarching theme on the AWS stand, which hosted 45 demos and featured 60+ AWS Partners, was the role of the cloud and generative AI in enabling the convergence happening across the entertainment world and how customers are using technology to expand into new areas and create new opportunities. Demonstrations on the AWS stand highlighted critical workloads for creating, delivering, and monetizing content, more than half of which leveraged AWS generative AI tools. Recordings of many of these demos are now available to watch here.

Among the demos in the booth, AWS showcased a dedicated generative AI pod featuring Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Q, as well as an interactive editing and color-grading suite that mirrored a real-world edit bay with surfaces, audio, and screens. Additionally, AWS hosted a Builder Zone, where attendees could experiment with AWS Elemental Media Services; AWS storage services (Amazon S3, Amazon S3 Glacier, Amazon FSx); AWS for Games tools, such as Amazon GameLift; and AWS generative AI services. Additional show highlights included:

New partner collaborations, service updates, and more from AWS

  • Cloud Native Agile Production (CNAP) project: The new open-source initiative aimed at accelerating the creation and delivery of media during live production made its debut at IBC. AWS is developing CNAP in collaboration with the BBC research and development (R&D) team, Sky, and AWS Partners, including Adobe and CuttingRoom. As more news, sports, and entertainment productions pursue development of ancillary content for live programming, CNAP’s interoperable framework will provide a single virtual store for live content that makes it easier to migrate production to the cloud. Creators can then easily work with their preferred toolsets to rapidly create video highlight clips and packages for integration into live content, social sharing, and other applications.
  • AWS Elemental MediaLive Anywhere lets customers run live video encoding on their on-premises hardware. With MediaLive Anywhere, customers can take advantage of the centralized configuration, control, and monitoring capabilities of AWS Elemental MediaLive while processing live video on premises close to video sources and outputs. Customers can use it to deploy the same broadcast-grade video encoding engine used in MediaLive on their own hardware. MediaLive Anywhere supports various hardware configurations and can ingest video from multicast, SDI, and standard internet-based transport protocols. It provides a consistent set of APIs, channel profiles, logs, and monitoring metrics across a customer’s cloud and on-premises live video workflows.
  • Partner collaborations with Accedo, AJA Video Systems, Ateme, Brightcove, IMAX, Telestream, Quickplay, and several others were on full display on the AWS stand and IBC Innovation Village, which AWS sponsored in collaboration with NVIDIA. Visitors to the Innovation Zone were able to explore demo pods, view theater presentations featuring AWS customers and partners, and see a workflow illustrating the production of live and pre-recorded 8K and immersive content using the cloud. Another Innovation Zone highlight was “Sir Martian,” an animatronic robot that used conversational AI and drew pictures. AWS and NVIDIA also sponsored the AI Tech Zone, an area dedicated to shining the spotlight on AI thought leaders, solution providers, and creators.

Accolades for AWS technologies

  • AWS also secured a spot in Streaming Media’s list of 100 top companies in the streaming media universe, while its work with the National Hockey League (NHL), Verizon, Zixi, Vizrt, and Evertz to produce a 5G and Edge compute framework for assembly, control, and delivery of live broadcast earned IBC Innovation Award recognition.

Congratulations to all the teams and partners who worked to make these award wins possible and to our customers who challenge us to think outside the box!

AWS thought leaders drive conversations around key industry topics 

  • The annual AWS Women in M&E mixer kicked off the first night of the show with a discussion about women leaders rewriting the rules in media and entertainment.
  • AWS IBC Showcase Theater sessions examined a range of timely topics, from generative AI to monetization, live cloud production, sports, immersive experiences, and games, and included insights from customers like NBCUniversal, Formula 1, and Sky. The following sessions are now available to watch on demand:
    • Who Moved My Production: Hear from ITV, AWS, Adobe, and EditCloud on how cloud technology is revolutionizing the way storytellers collaborate, and access and use creative tools, among other advantages.
    • Beyond Content Creation: Revolutionizing M&E with Generative AI: NVIDIA Global M&E Industry Manager Rick Champagne leads a conversation with NHL SVP of Technology Grant Nodine and AWS Global Sports Leader of Strategic Business Development Julie Souza on best practices for selecting, adopting, and deploying generative AI technologies into media infrastructure.
    • AI-powered Localization, Compliance, and the New Rules of Engagement: Explore how advancements in synthetic voice technology, language models, and intelligent automation support the localization landscape in a panel moderated by AWS Global Director of Media & Entertainment, Games, and Sports Steph Lone and panelists from Paramount, Deepdub, and Spherex.
    • No Margin for Error: IMAX and AWS Spin Up NBA Finals Livestream in 21 Days: Join IMAX Chief Product Officer Abdul Rehman; IMAX GM & SVP, Streaming and Consumer Technology, Vikram Arumilli; and Chris Blandy, AWS Director of Strategic Business Development for M&E, Games, and Sports, as they detail how IMAX StreamSmart and AWS delivered a virtually flawless livestream of the NBA Finals to 70-foot IMAX screens in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Our gratitude goes out to all our customers, partners, and AWS team members who made IBC 2024 one for the books. Have follow-up questions? Reach out to an AWS for M&E representative and follow AWS for M&E on LinkedIn to stay up-to date with our latest developments.

Lisa Epstein

Lisa Epstein

Lisa Epstein is a Senior Industry Marketing Manager at Amazon Web Services.