Although CNAP is still in development, future enhancements are being explored, including live AI analysis within the workflow.
At the 2024 International Broadcasting Convention (IBC), Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced the Cloud Native Agile Production (CNAP) project, an open-source initiative designed to streamline the creation and delivery of media during live production. Developed in collaboration with BBC’s R&D team, Sky and AWS partners like Adobe and CuttingRoom, CNAP aims to help productions create supplemental content for live programming more efficiently. Its interoperable framework centralises live content in a virtual store, simplifying the migration of production to the cloud and enabling creators to rapidly produce video highlights and packages for integration into live broadcasts and social media.
AWS showcased CNAP’s end-to-end workflow at IBC, featuring partner technologies from Adobe, CuttingRoom, Drastic Technologies, Techex and Vizrt. These tools address the demand for fast-turnaround media workflows, covering everything from low-latency video ingest to playout, file import/export, and web-based editing.
Chris Blandy, Director of Strategic Business Development for Media & Entertainment, Games and Sports at AWS, said: “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. 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.”
BBC R&D contributed its open-source Time Addressable Media Store (TAMS) specification, which AWS has integrated into the CNAP framework, allowing users to deploy custom TAMS implementations in AWS. CNAP offers a cost-effective alternative to current file-centric workflows by utilising a serverless, chunked media store with Amazon S3 as the underlying storage. This approach reduces storage duplication, processing time, and space, enabling quicker and more efficient media production.
Chris Swan, Industry Specialist Solutions Architect for Content Production at AWS, commented: “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. Running a workflow on CNAP for three months costs the same as running a similar workflow on incumbent solutions for only a week.”
Blandy added: “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. 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.”
Simon Williams, Vice President of Digital Media Strategic Development, Emerging Solutions and Partnerships at Adobe, stated: “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. 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.”
AWS demonstrated an end-to-end Cloud Native Agile Production (CNAP) workflow, from content ingest to editing and gallery playback via a vision mixer. Techex’s tx darwin live media processing platform ingested feeds, including a live camera from the “Newsroom in the Cloud” demo, registering the chunked media in the Time Addressable Media Store (TAMS). This media was stored on Amazon S3, while a React web application hosted on AWS Amplify visualized the content.
CuttingRoom’s web-based video editing platform accessed and edited the TAMS content, with additional editing capabilities enabled through a Drastic Technologies plugin that supported virtualised Adobe Premiere Pro workstations. Playback and mixing were managed via the Vizrt Vectar Vision Mixer, showcasing the ability to combine stored content with live feeds. The demo also highlighted how TAMS store content could be streamed to a mock news site, showcasing various distribution methods.
CNAP originated from a collaboration between the BBC and AWS around the BBC’s TAMS chunked media store concept. As they worked together, they realised CNAP could address a broader industry challenge, leading to the development of an open-source framework deployed on AWS. Partners joined the initiative in April 2024, and the end-to-end workflow was showcased at IBC.
Ahead of the event, AWS and BBC R&D hosted a special session for partners to brainstorm and test the CNAP API, leading to new functionalities such as importing existing media from TAMS into CuttingRoom’s 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.”
