On Demand Streaming for Businesses

Setting up a private YouTube channel is not always viable for business. Especially larger business that want to take control of their assets. This is where on demand streaming for businesses aims to fill the void.

It’s a rather simple proof of concept web app with a detailed cloud solution that leverages AWS’s Elemental MediaConvert. It takes source a video and converts them into multiple streaming formats.

The Application

The app doesn’t really do anything special. Of course all the typical features you’d expect exist. This includes a user framework, admin panel, a favourite videos section and a like/dislike feature. The app focuses on delivering content to the users in a streamlined fashion. Needless to say, a Netflix based user interface is that experience. Simple yet effective. However the UI is designed, we need to decide how to play the video. HTML5 cannot play HLS/DASH streams by itself. One library stands out as a candidate.

Video JS

For playback we use the popular Video JS library. An open source library capable of streaming popular formats such as HLS and DASH. Furthermore, the app creates a signed URL for CloudFront that video JS uses. Overall this library is quite good and has mostly everything that is needed. It’s free and open source to boot. In fact, only a little bit a JavaScript is truly needed for a basic setup.

The Cloud Solution

On demand streaming for business can be achieved in a variety of ways. Without a doubt, the simplest is Elemental MediaConvert. AWS provides an out-of-the-box solution that leverages multiple other AWS cloud services. In particular, Amazon S3, CloudFront, Lambda and SNS.

Basically how it works is an admin uploads a video then the cloud solution takes over. Next, the solutions triggers a lambda function to convert the media and store into a destination S3 bucket. An AWS CloudFront distribution provides global distribution of the transcoded content.

In general, any cloud provider should be up to the task. Though Amazon’s pre-built solutions really makes things easier. Not to mention it’s the most cost effective solution. All things considered, I usually opt for AWS for my clients.

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