Cost example 1

Cost example 1 covers a use case of approximately 1,000 viewers viewing a live event for about one hour with a SD-540p encoding profile selected in the CloudFormation template. This cost example is based on the following factors:

• Pricing Region: US-East-1, assuming standard pricing (no free-tier or discounts).

• Viewers consume the highest bitrate: While bitrate consumption is a mix of all the streams, we used the highest bitrate in the calculation to show the upper cost range. Additionally, the Quality-Defined Variable Bitrate (QVBR) and variable video complexity can result in an output bandwidth that is 10-50% lower in price than the estimate provided in Table 1.

• 99% cache/hit ratio between the content delivery network (CDN) and Amazon S3.

Note

Storage of the test player is not included in this cost estimate.

Table 1 summarizes the total pricing for the live streaming event. Tables 2 through 4 breaks down the cost for each AWS service.

Table 1: Cost breakdown for 1,000 viewers for a one-hour live event

AWS service	Function	Cost per hour [USD]
AWS Elemental MediaLive	Input and outputs for channel	$1.71
Amazon S3	Storage	$0.01
	Requests	$0.04
Amazon CloudFront	Distribution	$67.24
	Total:	$69.00

AWS Elemental MediaLive pricing

Table 2 breaks down the MediaLive pricing which assumes HD AVC input and SD AVC outputs with less than 10 Mbps bitrate and less than 30 frames per second (fps) frame rate.

Table 2: MediaLive pricing

Input / output	Cost per hour [USD]
HD Input (AVC 10-20Mbps)	$0.294
Output 1 SD (512x288, 400k)	$0.354
Output 2 SD (640x360, 800k)	$0.354
Output 3 SD (768x432, 1,200k)	$0.354
Output 4 SD (960x540, 1,800k)	$0.354
Total:	$1.71

Amazon S3 pricing

Amazon S3 charges $0.023 per Gigabyte (GB) per month for the first 50 Terabytes (TB) stored in the bucket. The volume of storage billed in a month is based on the average storage used throughout the month. This can be determined by size of objects and how long they are stored. For this example, 21 segments for 4 bitrates are stored at all times. The cost of storage per hour is as follows:

1. Add the bitrate of all streams in Kbps:

   • 400k + 800k + 1,200k + 1,800k = 4,200 Kbps

2. Calculate size of four-second segment (for all bitrates combined):

   • 4,200 Kbps * 4 seconds = 16,800 Kb

3. Total size of segments stored at a time:

   • 16,800 Kb * 21 segments = 352,800 Kb

4. Total Kb-hour usage:

   • 352,800 Kb * 1 hour storage = 352,800 Kb-hours

5. Convert to GB-months:

   • 352,800 Kb-hours / 8 bits per byte / 1,000,000 Kb per GB / 744 hours in month = 0.00006 GB-months

0.00006 GB-months * $0.023 = $0.000001 per hour of storage

The cost will continue to accumulate per hour as long as the objects are not removed from the bucket. Cost of storage is billed monthly.

Table 3: Amazon S3 storage pricing

Input / output	Kbps
Output 1 SD (512x288, 400k)	400
Output 2 SD (640x360, 800k)	800
Output 3 SD (768x432, 1,200k)	1,200
Output 4 SD (960x540, 1,800k)	1,800
Total Kbps:	4,200
Compute total Kb stored 4200 kbps * 4 seconds * 21 segments	352,800 Kb
GB-month usage for one hour	0.00006 GB
Cost (GB/hour *$0.023)	$0.000001/hour

Amazon S3 charges $0.005 per 1,000 requests for PUT, COPY, POST, and LIST requests. This example has four input streams, so the number of requests can be approximated by the following:

1. Calculate the number of segments:

   • 3,600 seconds of content / 4 second segments = 900 segments

   • 900 segments * 4 input streams = 3,600 segments

2. Calculate the number of manifest updates:

   • 4 input streams * 3,600 seconds of content / updates every 4 seconds = 3,600 manifest updates

3. Add total segments to total manifest updates to get the number of PUT requests:

   • 3,600 + 3,600 = 7,200 PUT requests per hour

Table 4: Amazon S3 request pricing

Request	Quantity
PUT ts segments	3,600
PUT manifest files	3,600
Total requests:	7,200
Cost (total requests/1000 * $0.005)	$0.036/hour

Data transfers from S3 to Amazon CloudFront are free of charge.

Viewer traffic pricing

The cost estimate for viewer traffic assumes that all viewers get the highest bitrate for the one-hour live streaming event.

Table 5: Viewer traffic pricing

AWS service	Function	Cost per hour [USD]
Amazon CloudFront	Average Mbps per viewer	1.8
	Total MB per second (1,000 x 1.8 / 8)	225
	Total egress per hour ( 225 / 1,024 x 60 x 60 )	791 GB/hour
	Total (791 GB * $0.085):	$67.24