Amazon Interactive Video Service Features

Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS) is a managed live video solution that is designed to be quick and easy to set up and let you build interactive experiences and applications with low-latency live video.

Key features

Set Up New Live Video Streams in Minutes

Live streaming made simple
Amazon Interactive Video Service provides all the components needed for a low-latency live video streaming solution. You send a live video stream from an encoder or encoding software to the ingest point with the provided stream key. Then, use the playback URL with the player SDK and watch the live streams on websites, and iOS and Android applications.

Optimized for Live Video Streaming

Ingest, transcode, and distribute over managed infrastructure
Get video to Amazon IVS, and distribute live streams across a global network optimized for low latency. To improve quality of service when sending video, Amazon IVS detects the optimal network paths from the streamer’s location and intelligently selects the best endpoint to receive the input video stream. Live streams are delivered to audiences in seconds via a content pipeline designed end-to-end for live video.

Stream Chat and Timed Metadata APIs

Build engaging audience experiences

Create community relationships with your audience using scalable stream chat APIs to build chat rooms to accompany your live streaming video. Use a simple REST API to inject metadata into a stream and an event-based interface within the Amazon IVS player SDK to retrieve the metadata for clients to build graphics, polls, and other synchronized components such as live sports scores and e-commerce functionality.

Multi-Platform Broadcast SDK

Send live video from web, iOS, and Android devices

Use iOS and Android applications to send live video to Amazon IVS with the mobile broadcast SDK and send direct from a browser using the web broadcast SDK. Websites and applications using the SDK can access the device camera, microphone, screen sources, or use custom audio and video sources. Streams sent from devices will use optimized encoder settings and network congestion handling.

Multi-Platform Player SDK

Playback on web, iOS, and Android platforms
Provide a low-latency experience for web, iOS, and Android with the Amazon IVS player SDK (the web SDK integrates with Video.js). The player SDK is designed for Amazon IVS live video streams and includes support for chunked streaming and an adaptive bitrate switching algorithm. The switching algorithm allows for optimal performance and low latency without trade-offs in quality of service or video quality. You can also restrict video playlists for your streams by channel and viewer using playback authorization.

Collaborative Live Streams

Combine video and audio from multiple hosts into one live stream

Use a virtual resource called a stage to enable hosts to exchange audio and video in real time, then broadcast that stage to an Amazon IVS channel to reach a larger audience. You can also build applications where audience members can be brought “on stage” to contribute to the live conversation.

Record Live Streams for Use as Video-On-Demand

Save live video outputs to Amazon S3 for archiving and on-demand playback
You can configure Amazon IVS to record live video to an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket. Video streams are saved as video files, and can be used to create video-on-demand content with AWS Elemental MediaConvert, or streamed directly as VOD.

Playback on Different Devices and Networks

Pre-configured adaptive bitrate transcoding
With a standard channel, Amazon IVS converts the incoming live video stream to a range of video resolutions and bitrates. This adaptive bitrate (ABR) stream provides an improved quality of experience and quality of service across different devices and network conditions.

Frustration-Free Scale

Automatic scale for size of audience and number of channels
Cover one, or hundreds of events at a moment’s notice. Built on the same live streaming technology that powers Twitch, Amazon IVS channels take just seconds to start streaming live video, and the service scales to deliver streams to millions of concurrent viewers.

Cost-Effective

Pay-as-you-go pricing
Amazon IVS provides simple, pay-as-you-go pricing based on hours of video sent to the service (input), and hours of video delivered to your audiences (output). For more details, visit the Amazon IVS Pricing Page.