Amazon Elastic Transcoder vs. AWS CloudFormation

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Elastic Transcoder
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
The Amazon Elastic Transcoder from AWS is a cloud-based media transcoding service available to AWS users which is priced on the volume of media transcoded by minute and the media's resolution. The service is scalable and anticipates transcoding of very large files or high volumes of files.
$0
per minute
AWS CloudFormation
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
AWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators a way to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, provisioning and updating them in a predictable fashion. Use AWS CloudFormation’s sample templates or create templates to describe the AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters, required to run an application. Users don’t need to figure out the order for provisioning AWS services or the subtleties of making those dependencies work.…
$0
Pricing
Amazon Elastic TranscoderAWS CloudFormation
Editions & Modules
Audio Only
$0.0045
per minute
Less than 720p
$0.015
per minute
720p and above
$0.03
per minute
Free Tier - 1,000 Handler Operations per Month per Account
$0.00
Handler Operation
$0.0009
per handler operation
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Elastic TranscoderAWS CloudFormation
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAmazon Elastic Transcoder offers a monthly free usage tier. The free tier consists of: 20 minutes of free audio-only output per month, 20 minutes of free SD output per month and 10 minutes of free HD output per month. Once you exceed the number of minutes in this free usage tier, you will be charged at the prevailing rates.There is no additional charge for using AWS CloudFormation with resource providers in the following namespaces: AWS::*, Alexa::*, and Custom::*. In this case you pay for AWS resources (such as Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing load balancers, etc.) created using AWS CloudFormation as if you created them manually. You only pay for what you use, as you use it; there are no minimum fees and no required upfront commitments. When you use resource providers with AWS CloudFormation outside the namespaces mentioned above, you incur charges per handler operation. Handler operations are create, update, delete, read, or list actions on a resource.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Elastic TranscoderAWS CloudFormation
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Amazon Elastic TranscoderAWS CloudFormation
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Elastic Transcoder
9.2
3 Ratings
12% above category average
AWS CloudFormation
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.53 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates9.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools9.53 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support9.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation9.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon Elastic TranscoderAWS CloudFormation
Small Businesses
Akamai Cloud Computing
Akamai Cloud Computing
Score 9.0 out of 10
HashiCorp Terraform
HashiCorp Terraform
Score 8.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
Ansible
Ansible
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
Ansible
Ansible
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Elastic TranscoderAWS CloudFormation
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(3 ratings)
7.6
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Elastic TranscoderAWS CloudFormation
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
It is well suited in a large setting where people use different file formats and various apps to record and transfer their audio or video files across devices. In such scenarios, the transcoder would of real help to eliminate the hassle of converting the files into desired formats for viewing or doing some other analysis.
The transcoder would not be of much use if all the files have the same format and does not need any conversion from their source file formats. It would prove costly and not useful if it's just an additional step that is of no particular use
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Amazon AWS
AWS CloudFormation is well suited for scenarios where all of your resources need to be provisioned on AWS but it is not suited for hybrid cloud deployments. It's very easy for someone new to learn. The level of customization offered as part of the template specifically for AWS services is great. There is also a UI tool where we can drag and drop the services we want and it generates an yaml file which is very easy to use. The visibility of stacks and its resources and one place where we can track and identify the issues in deployment is great.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Works at scale, you can can transcode a high number of videos at the same time.
  • Supports a good number of formats.
  • Good integration with AWS S3 and other AWS Services.
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Amazon AWS
  • SaaS
  • Paas
  • Iaas
  • On promises
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • Amazon Elastic Transcoder requires a fair amount of setup.
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Amazon AWS
  • Error Description upon Failure Needs to be Improved.
  • Slow to create, delete or update.
  • Need to delete resources manually. It can ask before starting deletion whether to skip those resources or delete them.
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Support Rating
Amazon AWS
Support for Amazon Elastic Transcoder is the same as any other service within AWS. If you are familiar with AWS, it is easy to start using Elastic Transcoder
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Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Amazon Elastic Transcoder is in a league of its own when compared to other alternatives in the market. The most noticeable competitor would be either Microsoft or Adobe or Google. When I had a chance to compare Azure products and Amazon products, the difference is obvious and the experience provided by both the products are very different in terms of user experience and interaction with the application. The cost and availability also were taken into consideration when choosing between the two shortlisted choices. So we went with Amazon's product as it is widely used and has support and maintenance which is basically better than the competition.
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Amazon AWS
We didn't look into anything else as Cloudformation was "built-in" for AWS, it just kind of made sense to go with that. Terraform was something that we briefly looked into Terraform but decides to stick with Cloudformation because our task was relatively "simple". Apparently if it's a bit more complex, Terraform might be the way to go.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Less time for integration with this service if you are already in AWS stack
  • No real time transcoding is a negative
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Amazon AWS
  • It has a positive ROI
  • Less time inverted in bugs
  • More stable source code
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ScreenShots

AWS CloudFormation Screenshots

Screenshot of CloudFormation - How it works overviewScreenshot of CloudFormation - High level how it worksScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template exampleScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template inputs overview