What is Amazon Kinesis Video Streams?
Amazon Kinesis Video Streams is a fully managed service that enables secure capture, storage, and processing of video and media data from connected devices for analytics and machine learning. The service is designed to handle a large number of concurrent video streams and manages the infrastructure for ingestion, storage, and delivery.
The service solves the complex challenge of video infrastructure: developers do not need to manage media servers, storage systems, or scaling, and instead focus on processing and analyzing the video data. Kinesis Video Streams provides SDKs for common devices and platforms, as well as an Edge Agent for local recording with scheduled cloud upload.
The integration with AWS ML services is particularly valuable: video streams can be routed directly to Amazon Rekognition Video for image and object recognition, to popular ML frameworks such as TensorFlow or OpenCV, or to custom processing pipelines.
Core Features
- WebRTC Support: Bidirectional real-time communication between browsers, mobile apps, and devices, with optional cloud recording
- Hot and Warm Storage: Two storage tiers optimized for real-time access and cost-efficient long-term retention respectively
- HLS Playback: Built-in HTTP Live Streaming output for live and on-demand playback in standard players
- ML Integration: Connection to Rekognition Video and image extraction APIs for computer vision pipelines
- Encryption: Encryption of video data in transit (TLS) and at rest (KMS)
- Edge Agent: Local recording on edge devices with controllable upload to the cloud
Typical Use Cases
Video Surveillance and Analysis: Organizations use Kinesis Video Streams to capture camera feeds from buildings, production facilities, or public areas and evaluate them with AI-powered analysis for anomaly detection or people counting.
Computer Vision Applications: Developers build computer vision pipelines on Kinesis Video Streams that detect objects, classify activities, or perform quality inspections in manufacturing.
Live Video Streaming: WebRTC support enables real-time video communication for applications such as telemedicine, remote inspections, or smart home monitoring with low latency.
Benefits
- Fully managed video infrastructure without server management
- Scales from individual streams to a very large number of concurrent sources
- Seamless integration with AWS ML services for intelligent video analysis
- WebRTC support for real-time communication scenarios
- Flexible storage tiers for different access and cost requirements
Integration with innFactory
As an AWS Reseller, innFactory supports you with Amazon Kinesis Video Streams: from video pipeline architecture and ML service integration to developing real-time analysis applications and WebRTC solutions.
Typical Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Amazon Kinesis Video Streams?
Amazon Kinesis Video Streams is a managed AWS service for securely capturing, storing, and processing video and media data from millions of connected devices, for use cases such as analytics, machine learning, and playback.
What formats and transmission methods are supported?
The service processes video codecs such as H.264 and H.265, offers WebRTC for bidirectional real-time communication, and delivers content via HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). Data can be ingested from cameras, smartphones, drones, and other devices.
What does Kinesis Video Streams cost?
Billing is usage-based on data ingested, stored (hot or warm storage), and consumed, measured in GB. WebRTC features incur additional charges for signaling channels, signaling messages, and TURN streaming minutes. There are no minimum fees or upfront costs.
How does the service integrate with AI/ML?
Kinesis Video Streams connects directly with Amazon Rekognition Video and popular ML frameworks such as TensorFlow or OpenCV. Image extraction APIs make individual frames available to machine learning pipelines.
Note: All product information on this page has been compiled with care, but is provided without guarantee and may be outdated or incomplete. Cloud services evolve rapidly — features, pricing, SLAs, and availability change frequently. Authoritative and up-to-date information can only be found on the official product page of AWS (official documentation). This page does not represent an offer by AWS.