Amazon recently launched the Kinesis service to make working with real-time streaming data easy in the Amazon Web Service cloud. It collects processes and analyzes streaming data in real-time and helps to get insights. The user is also allowed to choose the tools that are suited and required for this application. It can process streaming data at any scale cost-effectively.
Benefits of Amazon Kinesis Video Streams
Amazon Kinesis allows processing the streaming data in real time. The user thus will be able to derive insights in very less time and need not wait for hours or days for the insights.
Once chosen, Amazon Kinesis manages and runs the streaming applications on its own, and the user needs to manage any infrastructure.
It can handle any amount of streaming data. It also processed data very quickly and can handle data from thousands of sources.
It is easy to stream videos from connected devices to Amazon web services securely. Machine learning, analytics, and processing of the data can be done.
Amazon Kinesis Capabilities
Amazon Kinesis is a suite of tools. Using the tools makes it easy to capture process and analyze streaming data. There are components in Kinesis, and these are the Kinesis video streams, Kinesis data streams, Kinesis Data Firehose and Kinesis Data Analytics.
Common Use cases of Kinesis Video Streams:
Kinesis Video Streams can be used to build computer vision enabled machine language applications. These applications are being used in –
Smart homes – to stream video from devices such as webcams and home surveillance systems to Amazon Web Service. Different smart home applications such as climate control systems, security solutions can be built using the streams.
Smart cities – video data from cameras at traffic lights, parking lots, shopping malls can be captured, and these video streams can be used to analyze to solve traffic problems, crime, etc.
Industrial automation – kinesis video streams are also useful for industrial automation. Video streams can collect data such as LIDAR signals, temperature profiles, and depth data from equipment. This data can be analyzed using Apache MxNEt or Open CV for industrial automation.
Amazon Kinesis Video Streams Features
Amazon Kinesis Video Streams is a video ingestion and storage service that processes, ingests and stores video securely for applications such as industrial automation, smart cities, machine learning and many more.
The user is provided with SDKs that can be installed on the devices to stream video to Amazon Web Service.
Durable Storage:
The underlying data store for Kinesis video streams is the Amazon S3. The user need not worry about the data as it is stored reliably and durable.
Data can be stored either for a limited period or indefinitely. Stream retention period can be changed at any time.
Kinesis Video Stream APIs:
This offers APIs to retrieve data from streams frame-by-frame. It can be used for batch processing.
Video Stream Parser Library:
This is a set of tools that can be used in Java applications to consume MKV data in the video stream. The tools in this library are Streaming MKv Reader, Fragment Metadata Visitor, Output Segment Merger, MergeGelMediaOutput.
It library also shows how to use the tools. To use Parser Library, the Code has to be downloaded and configured, written and examined and they run and verify the code.
Video Playback in Console:
H.264 encoded video data in the streams are automatically transcoded into MPEG4 in Kinesis video Streams. It can then be playback in AWS management console. Enter the time to rewind or skip the video stream.
Amazon Kinesis Pricing
Amazon Kinesis Video Pricing is based on the volume of data the user ingests, stores and consumed through the service. There are no minimum fees or upfront costs.
Prices may slightly vary based on the location. Pricing information is available on the official website for US East (N.Virginia), US West(Oregon) EU (Ireland), EU (Frankfurt) and Asia Pacific (Tokyo).
The pricing for data ingested per GB into Kinesis Video Streams is $0.00850, per GB data consumed from Kinesis Video Streams costs $0.00850 and price for data storing on Kinesis Video Streams (per GB month data storage) is $0.02300.
Kinesis video streams charge for media data successfully received.
Getting Started with Amazon Kinesis Video Streams
The first step to getting started with Amazon Kinesis Video Streams is to sign up for Amazon Web Service account.
The user can get access to AWS free tiers and gain free hands-on experience with the services.
A free account can be created with AWS.
The next step is to review the getting started guide.
Set up the AWS account and create an administrator and then create Kinesis Video Streams.
New users can read the Amazon Kinesis Video Streams: How it Works? Guide before starting to use the service.
There are different topics in this guide that includes Set up an AWS account and Create Administrator, Create Kinesis Video Stream and What’s Next.
The third step to get started with Amazon Kinesis Video Streams is to start building Video-enabled apps.
There is a tutorial that shows how to do this. Follow the step by step guide carefully and create the video stream.
Give a name to the video stream and check the Use default setting option.
Conclusion
After reading all the information available on the official website, When you are ready to get started signup, and if you have more questions you can contact them for more information regarding Kinesis Video Streams.
