Amazon CloudFront | Streaming

Question 1

Does CloudFront support gzip compression?

Streaming

Amazon CloudFront | Networking & Content Delivery

Answer 1

Yes, CloudFront will automatically compress your text or binary data. To use the feature, simply specify within your cache behavior settings that you would like CloudFront to compress objects automatically and ensure that your client adds Accept-Encoding: gzip in the request header (most modern web browser do this by default)..For more information on this feature, please refer to our developer guide.

Question 2

What is streaming? Why would I want to stream my content?

Streaming

Amazon CloudFront | Networking & Content Delivery

Answer 2

Generally, streaming refers to delivering audio and video to end users on the internet without having to download the media file prior to playback. The protocols used for streaming include proprietary ones such as Adobe’s Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) and those that use HTTP for delivery such as Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), Adobe’s HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) and Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming. These protocols are different than the delivery of web pages and other content because streaming protocols deliver content in real time – the viewers watch the bytes as they are delivered. Streaming content has several potential benefits for you and your end-users:

Streaming can give viewers more control over their viewing experience. For instance, it is easier for a viewer to seek forward in a video using streaming than using traditional download delivery.

Streaming can give you more control over your content, as no file remains on the viewer’s computer when they finish watching a video.

Streaming can help you reduce your costs, as it only delivers portions of a media file that the viewers actually watch. In contrast, with traditional downloads, frequently the whole media file will be downloaded by the viewers, even if they only watch a portion of the file.

Question 3

Does Amazon CloudFront support on-demand streaming protocols?

Streaming

Amazon CloudFront | Networking & Content Delivery

Answer 3

Yes, Amazon CloudFront provides you with multiple options to deliver on-demand content. If you have media files that have been converted to either HLS format or Microsoft Smooth Streaming format prior to storing in Amazon S3 (or a custom origin), you can use an Amazon CloudFront web distribution to stream in that format without having to run any media servers. In addition you can also run a third party streaming server (e.g. Wowza Media Server available on AWS Marketplace) on Amazon EC2 which can convert a media file to the required HTTP streaming format. This server can then be designated as the origin for an Amazon CloudFront web distribution. Another option, if you want to stream using RTMP, is to store your media files on Amazon S3 and use it as the origin for an Amazon CloudFront RTMP distribution.