Media
PDX– AI That Replaced AWS Media2Cloud at 70% Lower Cost — With Full Pipeline Control
AI-powered media analysis | VOD & digital distribution | On-premises deployment
The Problem
- Video analysis costs scaled with every file processed — entirely dependent on AWS per-minute charges
- No control over the AI models in use; limited to standard AWS offerings
- Sensitive video content transiting third-party cloud infrastructure with no on-premises alternative
- Processing speeds didn’t meet operational requirements at scale
- Zero flexibility to extend or customise detection capabilities for specific media workflows
Our Solutions
- Built a proprietary AI-powered media analysis platform as a full AWS Media2Cloud replacement
- Fully on-premises deployment — all video content stays within PDX’s own infrastructure
- Custom AI models purpose-built for their specific video analysis requirements
- Outputs remain compatible with existing downstream workflows — no disruption to current operations
- Switched from unpredictable per-minute cloud billing to a fixed infrastructure cost model
Metric
Before
After
Processing cost
15-min video processing time
Data control
AI model flexibility
Cost predictability
AWS per-minute charges
Slower than required
Third-party cloud
AWS standard only
Variable cloud billing
70–80% lower
2–3 minutes
Fully on-premises
Custom models, full control
Fixed infrastructure
Metric
- Processing cost
- 15-min video processing time
- Data control
- AI model flexibility
- Cost predictability
Before
- AWS per-minute charges
- Slower than required
- Third-party cloud
- AWS standard only
- Variable cloud billing
After
- 70–80% lower
- 2–3 minutes
- Fully on-premises
- Custom models, full control
- Fixed infrastructure
Why It Works
- Cloud video analysis costs scale with every file processed — that’s a structural problem, not a pricing negotiation. The only way to fix it is to move the workload off the cloud entirely, which requires building something AWS doesn’t sell you.
- The platform works because the AI models were built for PDX’s specific content types, not adapted from general-purpose detection libraries. Domain-specific models outperform general ones. That’s not a claim — it’s why the benchmarks exist.
- For security and compliance stakeholders, on-premises is the answer to a question that cloud vendors can never fully resolve: where does the data go? With this architecture, the answer is nowhere it wasn’t already.