Ravnur Makes AMS Replacement Simple
What is Ravnur Media Services?
Ravnur Media Services is a replacement for Azure Media Services VOD encoding and streaming functionality. It is a set of Azure services and resources that are deployed to your Azure tenant as a managed application from the Azure Marketplace. It has an API that mirrors the AMS API which means that you can use the existing Azure SDKs to work with RMS. It supports multi-tenancy, making it ideal for replacing multiple AMS accounts.
RMS does not include live streaming features. If you would like to replace AMS live streaming, please consider the Ravnur Live Streaming platform which delivers more features than AMS, together with an easy-to-use admin portal and public and private live streaming portals.
Ravnur Media Services is a PaaS media service engineered specifically to mimic and replace Azure Media Services. It runs in your Azure and is managed by Ravnur, analogous to how Microsoft manages Azure Media Services.
Who can benefit from Ravnur Media Services?
RMS is a private application that runs completely in your own Azure tenant and is used only by you. It is not a metered service (i.e. upload one 10 minute video and pay a fee for that 10 minute video) running in an environment outside of your control. As such, it gives you flexibility, control, visibility and, for customers with moderate to heavy video workloads, it can be less expensive than AMS. RMS allows you to address data sovereignty and third party data sub-processor issues, control encoding and streaming parameters and integrates with your lower environments for dev and testing purposes. If you have any of these requirements, then RMS may be right for you:
- Have moderate to heavy encoding requirements
- Must use multiple storage accounts in different regions to address data sovereignty
- Have multiple AMS accounts that you want to migrate to a single RMS instance
- Cannot use third party sub-processors because of existing customer agreements
- Want to keep everything in house and under your own control
How much does RMS cost?
Ravnur charges a monthly subscription for RMS that begins at $499/month. In addition to this monthly subscription fee, there are Azure fixed costs and variable costs. Azure fixed costs are services and resources that run 24/7 such as Azure Front Door, streaming servers and VM disks. Azure variable costs are incurred from usage (e.g. encoding). The total monthly costs therefore are comprised of the Ravnur subscription fee and the Azure fixed and variable costs.
Example 1: The monthly cost of RMS in the idle state (i.e. no usage).
| Ravnur subscription fee | Azure fixed costs | Azure variable costs | Total monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| $499 | $120 | $0 | $619 |
Example 2: The monthly cost of RMS when you upload 5000 minutes of HD video for encoding into ABR sets.
| Ravnur subscription fee | Azure fixed costs | Azure variable costs | Total monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| $499 | $120 | $24.13 | $643.13 |
The Azure Media Services cost for encoding 5000 input minutes of 1080p video into an adaptive bitrate set (2 HD, 3 SD versions) is $618.75. Please refer to the Azure Pricing Calculator for more info.
How do RMS encoding costs compare to AMS?
With RMS, encoding cost is strictly based on server time. If it takes 10 minutes to encode a video, then the cost is 10 minutes of server time. This is generally an order of magnitude cheaper than AMS.
Azure Media Services has low fixed costs, basically just the streaming server is needed. All other costs are usage-based. The cost of encoding is where AMS recoups its costs and makes its money. AMS encoding is a metered billing service that uses a formula that converts input minutes to output minutes based on multipliers for resolution and codec, and then charges a per minute fee based on the calculated output minutes.
Let’s compare the encoding cost for a 30 minute 1080p video (H.264/AAC, 30fps). We’ll apply the Standard Adaptive Bitrate preset that creates a set of files (2 HD, 3 SD) to AMS and RMS so that both services will produce five 30 minute videos as the adaptive bitrate set.
| Azure Media Services | Ravnur Media Services | Difference |
|---|---|---|
| $3.71 | $0.15 | -94% |
Calculations
RMS. The default VM used by RMS is the D8pds_v5 which costs approximately $0.38 per hour. Testing shows that creating the full adaptive bitrate set requires about 80% of the video’s duration. Therefore, the cost is 30min*80%*$0.38/hr*1hr/60min= $0.152.
AMS. AMS creates two HD files (1080p and 720p) and HD files have a multiplier of 2.25. It also creates 3 SD files (480p, 360p, 240p) that have a multiplier of 1.25. The cost per output minute is $0.015. Therefore, the AMS cost is 2(30min*2.25*$0.015) + 3(30min*1.25*$0.015)=$3.7125
Let’s look at an all-up comparison of RMS and AMS. As we did in the previous example, we’ll look at the costs when uploading 5000 minutes of HD video during the month.
| Service | Subscription fee | Fixed costs | Encoding costs | Total monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Azure Media Services | none | $64.50 | $618.75 | $683.25 |
| Ravnur Media Services | $499 | $120 | $24.13 | $643.13 |
Looking at the total costs we can see that the economic breakpoint is at approximately 4650 input minutes per month, and beyond that amount of video, RMS becomes increasingly attractive.
What are the streaming and storage costs?
Streaming and storage costs are essentially the same as with AMS. The streaming server is approximately $75/month, whereas the AMS streaming endpoint is $64.50. The Azure CDN costs do not change. Azure storage costs do not change.
More Frequently Asked Questions
1. How closely does your API’s architecture mirror that of AMS in terms of request/response patterns, URL structures, and data models?
We’ve simplified AMS replacement by designing the Ravnur Media Services (RMS) API as a 100% mirror of the AMS API structure. This has the additional benefit of allowing you to continue using the Azure SDK. The endpoints include Assets, Jobs, Streaming Locators, Streaming Endpoints, Custom Transforms and Content Key Policies. RMS also emits the same events as AMS if you use Event Grid.
2. Do I need to re-encode all my videos?
No, you do not need to re-encode any videos. RMS will work with existing AMS assets without any issues.
3. Do I need to change the streaming URL or streaming locator?
RMS can use the existing streaming locator. The streaming URL will need to be changed, but you need to change only the host. For example, if you have a streaming URL like this:
https://ams1.streaming.media.azure.net/5197ca71-3edc-42b0-adff-12570b48b4e4/video_3500000.ism/manifest(format=m3u8-cmaf)
you would need to change ams1.streaming.media.azure.net to the RMS host. The RMS host domain can be customized to use your domain.
4. Do I need to change the streaming URL or streaming locator if I’m using a CDN?
No, all you need to change is your CDN origin so that it uses the RMS streaming domain and not AMS. If you use the default AMS streaming domain (streaming.media.azure.net), you will have to change that because Microsoft will not support that domain after the AMS retirement.
5. Do I need to make code changes in my application to use the RMS API?
Yes, but just a little bit. If you are using the Microsoft Azure SDK, you just need to tell the SDK to connect to RMS instead of AMS. We provide code samples in the RMS documentation here: https://github.com/Ravnur-Inc/ams-api-replacement-demo-app . If you have your own implementation, you need to change only the host from AMS to RMS.
6. What streaming protocols do you support?
RMS supports HLS and MPEG-DASH.
7. What encoding formats and codecs do you support?
RMS encoding supports a wide range of codecs and containers and can accept the same codecs and containers as AMS. If you have a need to encode an unsupported codec/container, we’ll add it.
The standard output asset is h.264/AAC in an mp4 container; however, you can also encode to h.265 if you’d like.
8. Can I use custom encoding presets similar to what I had in AMS?
Yes, RMS supports custom transforms.
9. How would you migrate the streaming functionality for my current AMS assets?
When you initially configure the RMS deployment, the migration wizard will ask for information about your current AMS and storage accounts. Once RMS connects, it will import all of the streaming locators and asset information from AMS, and it will use the existing storage account as the source and destination for video streaming and encoding.
10. Do you provide any migration tools for transitioning from AMS to your platform?
Yes, migration is an automated process. After you provide the AMS and storage account information, RMS will automatically import all assets, and they will become available for streaming by RMS.
11. Where is the media content stored, and can it integrate seamlessly with my current storage account?
All media content is stored in your existing Azure Storage Account, following the existing AMS structure. No data copying is required. If you use multiple storage accounts for an AMS account, RMS supports that was well. All you need to do is register the primary and secondary accounts and they will continue to function in the same way.
12. How does your platform handle API authentication? Is it similar to the way AMS handles it?
We use JWT bearer token authentication, like AMS. RMS will not require Azure Active Directory service principal or Managed Identity.
13. Is there a sandbox or testing environment where I can verify the compatibility before going live?
Yes. Ravnur can set up a free testing environment for you where you can run a POC. We also have developed a console application to help you test the API, and it’s available here: https://github.com/Ravnur-Inc/ams-api-replacement-demo-app. You can also use the Azure Media Services Explorer for RMS (get it here).
14. How does your platform scale with increased demand?
The RMS application is engineered to scale both streaming and encoding to meet the demands of your users and viewers. The encoding management application monitors queues and jobs to ensure that jobs are efficiently allocated, and provisions encoders as needed. Streaming demand is managed by a combination of CDN and auto-scaling triggered by egress bandwidth and CPU monitoring
15. How is pricing structured for encoding, streaming, storage, and any additional features?
The RMS application is deployed to your Azure tenant from the Azure Marketplace as a managed application. This means that Ravnur manages the RMS application and the Azure services that provision the application. There is a fixed cost for support and updates, and there is a variable cost for Azure services.
Fixed cost. Support of the application and Azure environment, and regular upgrades for the RMS encoding and streaming solution begins at $499/month. This can be paid for from your Azure commitment, or added to your Azure monthly invoice as a marketplace charge.
Variable cost. Because RMS runs in your Azure tenant, all encoding, streaming and storage costs accrue to your Azure expense. Ravnur does not markup Azure costs. While idle, RMS minimizes Azure costs by deallocating encoding VMs and downscaling streaming servers.
16. Are there any additional or hidden costs I should be aware of?
If you use DRM (Widevine, PlayReady, FairPlay), you will need to pay for DRM licenses. We partner with EZDRM for DRM licenses.
17. Do you support Encryption and DRM?
We support AES-128 encryption natively, and we use EZDRM for multi-DRM support.
