AWS, BBC, Adobe, and others introduce open source framework for fast-turnaround media workflows at IBC 2024

At the 2024 International Broadcasting Convention (IBC), Amazon Web Services (AWS) will unveil the Cloud Native Agile Production (CNAP) project, an open-source initiative aimed at accelerating the creation and delivery of media during live production. Developed in collaboration with BBC’s research and development (R&D) team, Sky, and AWS Partners, including Adobe and CuttingRoom, CNAP debuts as more news, sports, and entertainment productions look to develop ancillary content for live programming. CNAP’s interoperable framework provides a single virtual store for live content, making it easier to migrate production to the cloud so that creators can work with their preferred toolsets to rapidly create video highlights clips and packages for integration into live content, social sharing, and other applications.

AWS will spotlight an end-to-end CNAP workflow at IBC on the AWS Stand (5.C90). The demonstration includes partner technologies from Adobe, CuttingRoom, Drastic Technologies, Techex, and Vizrt, which collectively support essential fast-turnaround media workflows demands spanning low-latency video ingest through to playout, file import/export, and web-based and craft editing. The project will be highlighted at the live panel, Reinventing fast-turnaround news and sports workflows for the cloud, in the Innovation Village on Sunday, September 15 at 11:15 AM.

“By providing an open interoperable approach to fast turnaround media workflows, the Cloud Native Agile Production project is breaking down workflow silos, bringing the technology to support live broadcast and streaming, social media publishing, archive/record, VOD streaming, and more into one cloud-native environment. This convergence unlocks incredible new efficiencies, flexibility, and operational benefits for content providers,” explained Chris Blandy, Director of Strategic Business Development for Media & Entertainment, Games and Sports at AWS. “We’re thrilled to collaborate with our customers and partners on this project, which will ultimately help content providers produce content in the cloud for fast turnaround workflows while also extending growth opportunities for AWS Partners.”

Cloud Native Agile Production  

For the project, BBC R&D provided its open-source Time Addressable Media Store (TAMS) specification, which is publicly available on github, and stores, queries, and accesses segmented media over HTTP. AWS then began building on top of the modern open, API-driven architecture to ensure AWS customers and partners could leverage the CNAP framework to deploy custom TAMS implementations in AWS.

Presenting a cost-efficient alternative to the lift-and-shift, file-centric workflows deployed today, CNAP limits time spent processing content. It supports a serverless, chunked media store approach with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) providing the underlying storage layer. Amazon S3 enables a ‘store once, use many’ approach to repurposing media, so simple edits can be expressed as a metadata ‘publish’ rather than a new asset or exported file. This strategy reduces storage duplication, time spent processing storage, and the volume of space required for the same workload.

“Based on our experience and the data we’ve collected, the costs related to running an ingest 24/7 with the Cloud Native Agile Production project are impressively low,” explained Chris Swan, Industry Specialist Solutions Architect for Content Production at AWS. “Running a workflow on CNAP for three months costs the same as running a similar workflow on incumbent solutions for only a week.”

“Many M&E customers still run operations on premises and want to move into the cloud but require seamless interoperability between their preferred creative toolsets and AWS services. The Cloud Native Agile Production project introduces a solution with a cloud-native framework that enables industry-standard tools to work better together,” Blandy added. “Maintaining an open, interoperable approach is key to making progress on this front. The more AWS customers and partners that lean into this project, the higher the level of interoperability we can achieve so customers can work with a broader range of tools, which benefits the entire industry.”

“The Cloud Native Agile Production project is an exciting framework designed to optimize rapid media workflows in the cloud, and a significant milestone in promoting cloud adoption and enhancing workflow efficiencies,” shared Simon Williams, Vice President, Digital Media Strategic Development, Emerging Solutions and Partnerships at Adobe. “Adobe Premiere Pro is now the first desktop video editing software capable of directly accessing, playing, and editing growing video files on Amazon S3 – and we’re excited about the new capabilities and workflow efficiencies this will unlock for customers.”

Cloud Native Agile Production proof-of-concept workflow on display at IBC

The AWS CNAP demo at IBC provides an end-to-end workflow from ingest, through editing content, to gallery playback through a vision mixer. The tx darwin live media processing platform from Techex ingests feeds from the nearby Newsroom in the Cloud demo, including a live camera on the stand. Once registered in the open source implementation of the TAMS store, the chunked media is stored on Amazon S3, and a React web application hosted on AWS Amplify visualizes the content.

All content in the TAMS store is accessible to view and edit via the CuttingRoom video editing platform web user interface. A Drastic Technologies plugin then enables content editing on a virtualized Adobe Premiere Pro workstation. Using a Vizrt Vectar Vision Mixer, content from the store can be played back and mixed with live feeds. Showcasing the different ways that TAMS store content can be distributed, the demo also illustrates a TAMS store content stream to a mock news site.

A look at Cloud Native Agile Production’s beginnings and its future roadmap

CNAP originated out of an alignment between the BBC and AWS on the BBC’s TAMS chunked media store concept. As the two companies collaborated, they realized that the TAMS store framework could solve a larger industry challenge and set out to build CNAP with the help of multiple AWS teams. The goal was to build an open-source implementation to deploy the TAMS store in AWS, enlist partners to join the effort in April 2024, and demo an end-to-end workflow at IBC.

Prior to IBC, AWS and BBC R&D held a special event to brief partners on the project and ideate what an end-to-end IBC demo might look like. They encouraged participants to experiment with the API during a hackathon, which resulted in new capabilities such as the ability to import existing media from TAMS into the CuttingRoom web-based editing tool. “The Cloud Native Agile Production project is the answer to standardizing what we already are doing, making interoperability so much easier and cost-effective for us, partners and customers,” explained CuttingRoom CEO and Co-Founder Helge Høibraaten.

CNAP is still in early development, and the team behind it is exploring how they might apply live AI analysis to the workflow in the future, in addition to other improvements. John Biltcliffe, Senior Solutions Architect for Media & Entertainment, Games, and Sports at AWS, explained just how important partner collaborations will be to CNAP’s continued evolution, “Embarking on a long-term project like CNAP, with so many stakeholders, requires time, attention to detail, and strategic communication. We’re grateful to BBC and Sky and all of our partners on the project thus far, as well as the many AWS teams who have helped us realize our vision. With IBC around the corner, we look forward to demonstrating the possibilities of CNAP to the community and gathering even more input to continue advancing the project in the greater interest of the M&E industry.”

To see CNAP in action, check out AWS’s open source implementation of TAMs on github and view the the full schedule of AWS activities at IBC 2024 here.