Insys cloud video recorder: Launch a cloud-based DVR service on AWS

Authored by Piotr Czekała, Co-Founder and CTO of Insys Video Technologies. The content and opinions in this post are those of the third-party author and AWS is not responsible for the content or accuracy of this post.

Governments, public agencies, educational institutions, and other non-media organizations have a need to stream live events and record video content for their end users to stream later. There is a popular misconception that streaming live events, and particularly recording live events for on-demand streaming, is too technically complex for non-media organizations, or that the upfront capital costs and time to build such a streaming solution are cost prohibitive. The reality is, launching a live streaming solution with the ability to create video files for later on demand viewing does not have to be complicated, time-consuming, or require a lot of upfront capital investment.

Insys Cloud Video Recorder from Insys Video Technologies simplifies the process for recording virtually unlimited live video streams, storing them in the cloud, and distributing them to nearly any video playback device. Insys Cloud Video Recorder enables customers to analyze and catalog the recordings and stream the content whenever and wherever viewers want. Other key features include advance scheduling of recordings, automated audio transcription, and automatic identification of recognizable people such as politicians within recorded content.

Customer Needs and Challenges

Insys Cloud Video Recorder is an ideal solution for companies or organizations that want to record any live stream, store it in the cloud, and share via the Internet. This solution supports three primary customer use cases:

Government: for government or public agencies that need to record, archive, and publish live streams from city council meetings, legislative sessions, public hearings, or judicial proceedings.

Education: for educational institutions, universities, student associations, or even study groups that want to archive and publish lectures or any type of educational events, including academic conferences, inauguration ceremonies, or matriculation ceremonies.

Live Events: for event organizers who want to stream any live event, such as a concert or a sporting event, conference, workshop, or other presentations in order to share it to viewers via the Internet.

With Insys Cloud Video Recorder, media and non-media customers can quickly launch a recording solution tailored to their needs. Insys Cloud Video Recorder eliminates the high upfront CAPEX cost of hardware for recording and archiving live video, while reducing the complexity of adding live video recording into existing workflows. Since Insys Cloud Video Recorder is a fully managed SaaS solution, customers can record a live stream and distribute it to users.

Insys Cloud Video Recorder delivers limitless scalability, from one to millions of users, recordings, or hours of stored content. Content may optionally be processed by machine learning tools such as Amazon Transcribe, Amazon Rekognition, and Amazon SageMaker.

Solution Architecture

For the video layer, the Insys Cloud Video Recorder solution uses the entire family of AWS Elemental Media Services. Customers use AWS Elemental MediaLive to ingest and encode live video streams and produce adaptive bit rate (ABR) outputs. AWS Elemental MediaPackage prepares HLS and MPEG-DASH outputs for streaming to multiscreen devices, and optionally encrypts content using Insys Multi DRM, while also creating recorded outputs from live streams. Recorded content is kept on Amazon S3 for highly scalable storage. Customers may also use AWS Elemental MediaConvert to create existing video assets and transcode them into the desired output formats for end users to download.

In addition to AWS Elemental Media Services, customers can leverage machine learning using Amazon Rekognition to create automated metadata of people, objects, scenes, or activities present in the recordings and Amazon Transcribe to create automated speech-to-text transcriptions that can be added to recordings.

On top of the video stack, Insys Cloud Video Recorder provides a flexible API and administration panel GUI that runs on scalable cloud components, such as Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Amazon DynamoDB, and serverless components using AWS Lambda.

Customer Benefits

Customers value the ability to quickly start recording and archiving live streams, with automated storage of recordings in Amazon S3. Customers also appreciate the flexibility to quickly and easily convert content to multiple formats and store it on the AWS cloud.

Key benefits:

• Start recording immediately
• Virtually “unlimited” scalability (from one to millions of users, recordings, or hours of stored content)
• Monthly subscription – pay only for actual consumption
• Reduce OPEX costs for support and maintenance
• Avoid costly upfront CAPEX investment (encoders, NAS storage, servers etc.)
• Re-use recorded content to create a new revenue stream
• Increase user loyalty and customer base through an innovative live and live-to-VOD service

Conclusion

Whether you are a media company that understands video processing and streaming or a non-media entity that just needs a simple, flexible, and cost-effective solution for streaming live content and recording it for later online viewing, Insys Cloud Video Recorder gives you a quick, flexible, economical option to record video content in the cloud. Recordings are analyzed, cataloged, and archived at any scale. Your end users can stream live events or view recorded content whenever and wherever they want. Insys Cloud Video Recorder leverages AWS services to bring live and on-demand streaming video to media and non-media content owners alike in one easy-to-use, highly scalable solution.

To learn more about the technical features of Insys Cloud Video Recorder, watch this technical webinar.

Insys Video Technologies is an AWS Select Consulting Partner. To learn more about our OTT white label solutions and Insys Cloud Video Recorder, or to arrange a demo or schedule a proof of concept, contact office@insysvt.com.

About Insys Video Technologies

WE DO OTT! Our technology for recorded and live channel streaming and video on demand works with AWS Media Services and AWS Elemental appliances and software. Customers can use ready to launch in the cloud, end-to-end white label OTT solutions from Insys Video Technologies and go to market within a maximum of seven days. We can also help integrate AWS Media Services with online video platforms. Insys Video Technologies is based in Switzerland and Poland.s3