Latin America. Amazon Web Services, AWS, launched Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS), a new fully managed service that makes it easy to set up live interactive video streams for a web or mobile app in just a few minutes.
Amazon IVS uses the same technology that powers Twitch, one of the world's most popular live streaming services with nearly 10 billion hours of video watched in 2019, providing customers with live content with latency (the time it takes for video to pass from camera to viewer) that can be less than three seconds (significantly less than the 20-30 second latencies common with streaming. of online video today).
Customers can easily set up and stream live videos through their own website or mobile app, with scalable delivery supporting millions of concurrent viewers globally. With the Amazon IVS SDK and APIs, customers can also create interactive features in their live streams, such as virtual chat spaces, votes and polls, moderated Q&A sessions, and synchronized promotional items.
No additional charges or upfront commitments are required to use Amazon IVS, and customers pay only for video input to Amazon IVS and video output delivered to viewers.
Online audiences are increasingly turning to mobile and web apps for live video in sports, entertainment, education, and work. Today's viewers require higher-resolution content and smooth video playback without buffering or delays, no matter where they are or what device or app they're using. Viewers also expect greater interactivity in the live stream, so they can interact with those experiences (and others they see) as events unfold, not moments after they happen.
Setting up infrastructure to keep pace with consumer demand for live video is complex, time-consuming, and expensive. Today, it takes months for customers to create interactive applications with video workflows for content ingestion, processing, and distribution, and then they still need to configure transcoders for adaptive bitrate format transmission to support multiple device types, select appropriate transmission protocols, configure content delivery networks (CDNs), and integrate video players. Even after all this work, live-streamed interactive content still requires minimal latency for a good user experience.
However, traditional video streaming requires the video to be produced in various resolutions and divided into segments for delivery. The viewer's video player then stores multiple segments in one buffer so that the playback resolution can be changed depending on the viewer's network and device to optimize the quality of service, all of which creates a lot of additional latency. This can mean that viewers experience latencies of 20-30 seconds, making it impossible for content creators to interact live with their audiences without sacrificing quality of service.
Amazon IVS eliminates the cost and complexity associated with setting up live and interactive video streams, allowing customers to focus on creating engaging experiences for their viewers.
