Possible to stream videos using Amazon S3/CloudFront with HTML5 player?

Question

I want to use an HTML5 video player and stream videos. Is this possible with S3/CloudFront? I understand Amazon uses the RTMP streaming protocol and HTML5\'s video

Answer 1

Something I have done successfully recently is to use the Video.js HTML5 player (open source) video player, with videos hosted on S3. Basically you just upload your video into your S3 bucket, then the code on the page looks something like this (after including the Video.js CSS and JS files into your page):

poster is just the still image to display on the video player while the video is loading or not playing. As for the tags, you can link as many or as few of these as you have videos for. More formats just means better support across different platforms (e.g. some vanilla Linux distributions may not play MP4 etc.).

See the Video.js quick start guide here.

When deciding whether to use S3 or CloudFront: IMHO S3 is more appropriate for video in general because the cost is cheaper when you're storing a lot of data (because CloudFront distributes copies of everything to all of its edge servers, although you can limit that somewhat via options). Some people do prefer CloudFront though due to the speed, although remember CloudFront is intended primarily as a content delivery network where super fast response times are required (e.g. for site graphics, stylesheets, JS files etc.), so it's a trade-off depending on your needs. If your videos are all very small then you may find CloudFront actually is appropriate for your needs.

For analysing costs more definitively you can use Amazon's monthly cost calculator.