Amazon CloudFront Streaming

Amazon CloudFront, the easy-to-use content delivery service, now supports the ability to stream audio and video files. Traditionally, world-class streaming has been out of reach of many customers — running streaming servers was technically complex, and customers had to negotiate long-term contracts with minimum commitments in order to have access to the global streaming infrastructure needed to give high performance.

We’ve designed Amazon CloudFront to make streaming accessible for anyone with media content. Streaming with Amazon CloudFront is exceptionally easy: with only a few clicks on the AWS Management Console or a simple API call, you’ll be able to stream your content using a worldwide network of edge locations running Adobe’s Flash® Media Server. And, like all AWS services, Amazon CloudFront streaming requires no up-front commitments or long-term contracts. There are no additional charges for streaming with Amazon CloudFront; you simply pay normal rates for the data that you transfer using the service.

Amazon CloudFront Functionality

Amazon CloudFront has a simple, web services interface that lets you get started in minutes. In Amazon CloudFront, your objects are organized into distributions. A distribution specifies the location of the original version of your objects. A distribution has a unique CloudFront.net domain name (e.g. abc123.cloudfront.net) that you can use to reference your objects through the network of edge locations. If you wish, you can also map your own domain name (e.g. images.example.com) to your distribution. You can create distributions to either download your content using the HTTP protocol, or stream your content using the RTMP protocol.

To use Amazon CloudFront, you:

Store the original versions of your files in an Amazon S3 bucket.

Create a distribution to register that bucket with Amazon CloudFront through a simple API call.

Use your distribution’s domain name in your web pages, media player, or application. When end users request an object using this domain name, they are automatically routed to the nearest edge location for high performance delivery of your content.

Pay only for the data transfer and requests that you actually use.

Visit theAmazon CloudFront page to learn more.