At TrackIt, we have experienced a growing number of content creators looking for an easy to use and simple VOD solution they can implement to start sharing their content with users.

As of September 2019, there was no offering currently available in the AWS marketplace that serves as a full-package plug-and-play VOD solution. Recognizing the need, TrackIt has developed and shared a clean and simple VOD workflow that can be quickly deployed on AWS with minimal technical expertise.

Challenges For Content Creators

1. Limited Control Over Video Content

When using AWS, content creators typically choose to store their video content in S3 buckets. Unfortunately this provides very little control over the content related to the video. For example, a content creator can easily add tags but cannot add more (video metadata) information about the video such as location, name of the video creator, etc.

2. Potential Security Risks

In order to allow viewers to access the videos from a website, content creators will often implement one of two scenarios:

1. Make the S3 bucket public: In this case everyone can access all of the content - including private videos.
2. Add specific policies to the bucket: This approach is prone to mistakes in configuration that expose the content creators to possible security breaches.

As a result, using these approaches for a website to provide viewers with access to video content risks opening backdoor access into their AWS accounts.