Unlocking new efficiencies for high-quality video delivery via the cloud

Guest post by Anupama Anantharaman | VP Product Marketing and Business Development for Interra

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.

The media environment today is in a constant state of change. Broadcast and video streaming technologies are evolving rapidly and new device types are emerging on a frequent basis. Video infrastructure is being adapted to respond to those changes.

While there are exciting new revenue opportunities available for video providers, there is also increased complexity related to video delivery and an increased chance for error. Video providers need a solid strategy for checking content quality and monitoring content at every point in the workflow. They also need to be agile. We’re seeing a growing number of pay TV operators, broadcasters, and over-the-top (OTT) providers relying on cloud-based workflows to reliably deliver premium live and on-demand video content to consumers.

Keeping in mind the challenges that video providers face — in terms of delivering high-quality, error-free content in an efficient, fast, and cost-effective manner — Interra Systems recently worked closely with AWS Elemental to streamline this process. Interra Systems’ end-to-end quality control (QC) and monitoring systems are now interoperable with AWS Elemental Media Services, including AWS Elemental MediaConvert, AWS Elemental MediaLive, and AWS Elemental MediaPackage.

What does AWS Elemental bring to the table?

AWS Elemental Media Services offer pay-as-you-go pricing, which is important because it makes it easy for video providers to ingest, process, package, and deliver video content at scale. AWS Elemental MediaConvert offers video providers a video transcoding service with broadcast-grade features, allowing for the easy creation of video-on-demand (VOD) content for broadcast and multiscreen delivery at scale. AWS Elemental MediaLive is a broadcast-grade live video processing service and works in combination with AWS Elemental MediaPackage for content origination, just-in-time packaging, and encryption.

Interra Systems solves video quality issues throughout the entire delivery chain.

From a quality perspective, comprehensive QC during the content preparation stage is essential. With video files coming from a wide range of sources for transcoding and packaging processing, there is a chance for video and audio quality errors in the source. Operators need to check the format, look for the presence of video artifacts, and check for baseband issues. If quality issues are not corrected during the content preparation phase, they will continue down the delivery chain and lead to a poor end-viewer quality of experience (QoE).

AWS Elemental solutions used with Interra Systems’ BATON® QC and ORION™-OTT monitoring solutions enable end-to-end video quality assurance by providing comprehensive quality of service (QoS) and QoE measurements. ORION-OTT is a complete monitoring solution that checks content integrity and the related network performance of adaptive bitrate content. The solution also supports passive monitoring of the origin server performance and the service on end-user devices to understand recurrent issues and their causes.

BATON is a premium, next-generation hybrid QC platform available both on-premises and in the cloud, which supports a wide range of media formats and offers comprehensive quality checks, including extensive data verification, audio language detection, photo sensitive epilepsy (PSE) correction, and loudness detection and correction. Featuring a scalable architecture, BATON lets users expand their BATON set up as their QC needs grow, offering solutions designed to improve business continuity even if some of the hardware components break down.

What does all this mean for you?

Ultimately, interoperability between Interra Systems and AWS Elemental solutions means that video providers can reliably distribute premium live and on-demand content to consumers by leveraging cloud technology with the utmost efficiency, speed, and cost savings. Customers can reduce operating costs using a pay-as-you-go pricing model while eliminating the management of complex video infrastructure. By taking advantage of cloud-based monitoring from Interra and video processing using AWS Media Services, today’s broadcasters and video service providers can launch new services quickly, while ensuring content quality at every point in the workflow.