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Migrating workflows from Amazon Elastic Transcoder to AWS Elemental MediaConvert

As media content continues to grow in complexity and volume, many organizations find themselves seeking more scalable and cost-effective transcoding solutions. To combat these challenges consider Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elemental MediaConvert (MediaConvert), a powerful service that addresses the evolving needs of video processing professionals.

If you’re currently using Amazon Elastic Transcoder (Elastic Transcoder), you’ll be interested to know that this service will be discontinued on November 13 2025. After this date, you will no longer be able to access the Amazon Elastic Transcoder console or Amazon Elastic Transcoder resources. Now, let’s explore the advantages of migrating to AWS Elemental MediaConvert and review some practical tips to make your transition smoother.

Why you should migrate

MediaConvert provides a comprehensive suite of file-based video transcoding features that address the needs of a majority of use cases. MediaConvert is optimized to improve scalability, which allows you to process more files in parallel.

AWS Elemental MediaConvert offers the following features:

  • Video resolutions up to 8K and frame rates up to 120 FPS
  • Broad codec support for inputs and outputs, including HEVC, Apple ProRes, AV1, and Dolby Audio (in addition to MPEG-2 and AVC) and Dolby Atmos
  • Create Common Media Application Format (CMAF) fragmented MP4 (fMP4) HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) and DASH video outputs that allow creation of a single file format using the AVC or HEVC codecs and fMP4 segments, packaged and delivered as multiple adaptive streaming technologies to serve different devices
  • IMF (Interoperable Master Format) package ingest, with JPEG-2000 video, up to 10-bit UHD format, with IMSC1 text captions
  • Better input control, including defining multiple audio selectors to configure a multi-track output, selecting a single video stream out of a Multiple Program Transport Stream, and enabling de-blocking filter features
  • More output control over advanced codec parameters to enable features for speed versus quality, and support for multi-pass encoding and Quality-Defined Variable Bitrate (QVBR) to enable bandwidth and storage cost savings
  • DRM and encryption support including Google Widevine, Microsoft PlayReady, Apple FairPlay, and integration with AWS Elemental Partners for turnkey solutions
  • Wide range of caption and subtitle capabilities
  • HDR (High Dynamic Range) support, including HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma) and Dolby Vision
  • Robust image processing features such as noise reduction, color correction, cropping, image insertion, and time code burn-in, frame rate conversion using InSync FrameFormer
  • Advanced features such as ad avail blanking, ad insertion using ESAM, Nielsen configuration, audio normalization, and many more
  • Video features: Video Generator, Video Overlays, Video Padding, Video Rotation, Video Scaling
  • MediaConvert supports a wide range of captions conversion

Using MediaConvert, you also benefit from a flexible pricing structure, with on-demand pricing that provides two tiers—Basic and Professional. With on-demand pricing you are charged for each minute of content output down to the second with no round-ups. MediaConvert on-demand rate discounts increase as your usage increases.

If you have steady transcoding requirements, MediaConvert also provides reserved pricing. With reserved pricing you purchase one or more transcoding slots, each billed at a monthly rate with a 12-month commitment, providing unlimited transcoding for one job at a time for each slot with MediaConvert.

Customers can choose from on-demand pricing, reserved pricing, or a combination of the two depending on workload and video transcoding requirements.

Consideration questions

You’re considering AWS Elemental MediaConvert, so let’s start with some basic questions.

Does MediaConvert support my input and output formats?
MediaConvert now has feature parity with Elastic Transcoder. You can find details on supported inputs and outputs by reviewing the MediaConvert documentation.

Does MediaConvert support my workload throughput requirements?
You can find details by looking at the AWS Service Limits page, and you can always request increases on these limits. To do so, go to the AWS Support Center (within the AWS Console) and create a case.

What are the differences between pipelines and queues?
Amazon Elastic Transcoder uses pipelines to manage transcoding jobs. When you create a job, you specify the pipeline that you want to submit the job to. Pipelines are closely tied to an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket that you specify. Queues in AWS Elemental MediaConvert are similar to pipelines. The number of concurrent jobs processed in a given queue is determined based on the number of queues in your account. However, one of the key differences is that queues are not tied to a specific S3 bucket. This means you can submit jobs that reference input files in different S3 buckets to the same queue. For more information, see Working with Queues in the AWS Elemental MediaConvert documentation.

What are presets and what are templates?
Both Elastic Transcoder and MediaConvert use presets as a way to save specific encoding parameters for an output. With Elastic Transcoder, you always have to specify a preset for each output, and this preset cannot be overridden. With MediaConvert, you have the ability to create jobs using a preset and then override any encoding parameters through an API, to include one-off changes for a transcode.

For even more flexibility, you can also choose to specify all the encoding parameters explicitly as part of your job request without using any presets. To make things even more convenient, MediaConvert introduced job templates, used to save a complete job configuration including input parameters, output group settings, and outputs. Job templates can be referenced when you create a new job, drastically reducing the job settings that have to be configured, and allowing you to use the same template for multiple jobs. MediaConvert includes a variety of system presets and job templates by default, or you can create your own to fit your custom workflow.

How do I get notified about my job status?
Notifications in Amazon Elastic Transcoder are configured when pipelines are created using Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS). By contrast, AWS Elemental MediaConvert uses Amazon CloudWatch events to signal changes in job status. The CloudWatch Events can be tied to many services including Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), AWS Systems Manager automation tasks, Amazon EventBridge and even AWS Lambda and low code workflows with MediaConvert leveraging Step Functions.

Using Amazon CloudWatch event filter patterns, you can customize your notification and post processing workflows for each job. One example is filtering a job based off user metadata and the job complete status, triggering a Lambda function to start a post-processing workflow. For more information about Amazon CloudWatch Events in AWS Elemental MediaConvert, see Using CloudWatch Events to Monitor AWS Elemental MediaConvert Jobs in the documentation.

Practical tips to make your transition smoother

Ready to start your Elastic Transcoder to MediaConvert Migration? Here are several things to consider when migrating to MediaConvert.

Migrate your settings using this new guide and script:
We’ve made a script that will convert Amazon Elastic Transcoder presets to AWS Elemental MediaConvert presets. Follow the instructions and download the script from GitHub to try this out. Also, make sure to check out the many new system presets and templates that are provided in AWS Elemental MediaConvert.

HLS player version:
In Elastic Transcoder, you select the playlist version upon job creation. In MediaConvert, the HLS version will change as you enable features that require a specific version (according to the HLS Pantos Specification). You can see what features enable which version in the AWS Elemental MediaConvert documentation.

SDK and API support:
MediaConvert is incorporated into many different AWS SDKs. This allows you to automate and monitor your transcoding workflows. Check out the documentation for some “getting started” examples.

Workflow orchestration:
MediaConvert uses CloudWatch Events to trigger workflow automation. You can use these events with Amazon EventBridge to create post-processing workflows. To see some examples and get a jump start on building a custom workflow, check out the MediaConvert Workshop.

The Video on Demand on AWS solution is deployed using an Amazon CloudFormation template. The template automatically provisions MediaConvert along with other services, building a scalable, distributed, and customizable video-on-demand workflow on AWS within minutes.

Encryption and DRM support:
MediaConvert supports several industry standard Digital Rights Management and encryption technologies, such as Google Widevine, Apple FairPlay, and Microsoft PlayReady. For more information, check out the using encryption documentation. MediaConvert integrates with several partners that can provide key management solutions, or you can check out the SPEKE V2 Reference Server posted to GitHub to start on your very own solution.

See how one of AWS customers migrated from Elastic Transcoder to MediaConvert and achieved cost savings on encoding, storage and CDN bandwidth utilization: How Motive optimized video costs with MediaConvert.

Conclusion

Media organizations are always seeking more scalable and cost-effective transcoding solutions. Moving to AWS Elemental MediaConvert is great solution offering a myriad of features to streamline and enhance media productions.

To help customers migrate from Elastic transcoder to MediaConvert we have the following list of AWS Partners.

Plan and make this migration as soon as possible to avoid outages on your video transcoding workflows since the date of November 13, 2025 is fast-approaching for the Elastic Transcoder service to be discontinued. Use this discussion to help you migrate quickly and smoothly from Elastic Transcode to MediaConvert.

Contact an AWS Representative to know how we can help accelerate your business.

Further reading 

Nuno Quental

Nuno Quental

Nuno Quental is a Senior Solutions Architect for AWS Elemental.