For years, our team at Sardius Media has been in the trenches of live broadcasting. We've supported professional broadcasts reaching millions of viewers. When the stakes are that high, you need encoding gear that doesn't flinch. That's why AWS Elemental Live became our gold standard for clients who needed broadcast-quality reliability.
So when AWS launched Elemental MediaLive Anywhere, we paid attention.
The promise was compelling: the same encoding quality that powers NFL games and Olympic broadcasts, now accessible at a significantly lower price point. For organizations that couldn't justify the traditional Elemental Live investment, this was potentially a significant shift in what's possible.
But there was a catch…
AWS Needed Partners to Fill the Gaps
Unlike AWS Elemental Live, MediaLive Anywhere doesn't come as a turnkey appliance. AWS built the software, but they stopped there. They needed partners to provide the hardware, the integration layers, and the automation that would make this a viable alternative for broadcasters.
Because of our longstanding partnership with AWS Elemental Live, Sardius made the decision to invest in building out the complete solution. We knew our clients needed this more accessible pathway to enterprise-grade encoding.
What we didn't fully anticipate was just how much work that would require.
What It Actually Takes to Bring EMLA to Market
Building a production-ready AWS Elemental MediaLive Anywhere solution isn't simply a matter of purchasing hardware and installing software. Here's what our team discovered through months of development:
Operating System Prerequisites
Your Linux host must meet AWS's specific OS requirements. We learned that using the wrong version of Red Hat, or any incompatible OS, creates cascading problems that often don't surface until you're deep into configuration.
Driver Compatibility Standard
Aja drivers from their website won't work. You need AWS-specific Aja drivers, and discovering this after you've built your system means starting over.
Hardware Form Factor Matching
Capture cards must be compatible with your hardware form factor. You can't just grab any SDI card and expect it to work with your chosen chassis. We've tested specific combinations so you don't have to learn this the hard way.
Workflow Configuration Sequencing
The AWS console has a strict configuration sequence. Miss a step or do things out of order, and you'll spend hours troubleshooting issues that shouldn't exist.
CPU Prioritization
Through live deployment feedback, we learned that CPU capabilities matter more than RAM for most encoder use cases. This isn't obvious when you're speccing hardware from a data sheet.
Firewall Considerations
Certain internal firewall configurations simply won't work. This is the kind of detail that can derail a deployment right before a critical event.
The Time Investment Is Real
When we prepared our encoding infrastructure for Gather25, we were getting ready to broadcast to over 7 million viewers across a 25-hour global event. We spent months on research and development. Pipeline development, selecting encoders, process documentation, and testing all take time when you're building something that has to work flawlessly at scale.
That investment wasn't wasted. It means every broadcaster who works with us now benefits from those discoveries without repeating our learning curve.
What This Means for Broadcasters Like You
We've done the work of bringing all the pieces together. We pre-configured hardware, tested driver combinations, documented pipelines, and integrated with our Sardius Control Panel for additional workflow management.
If You're a Broadcaster, That Means…
You get a solution backed by training, documentation, and support from a team that has spent decades in live production environments. Whether you're delivering sports coverage, corporate events, concerts, conferences, or regular weekly programming, the technical foundation is the same. No need to research hardware specs or troubleshoot compatibility issues on your own.
If You're an AWS Partner, That Means…
We're happy to help you shortcut the time it takes to get to market. We can reconfigure our systems to align with your clients' independent AWS accounts and help you offer a complete solution. No more pointing customers toward software they'll struggle to deploy. There's no reason for you to repeat the months we've already invested.
Benefiting From What We Learned the Hard Way
AWS Elemental MediaLive Anywhere represents a genuine opportunity to bring broadcast-quality encoding to organizations that previously couldn't access it. But the software alone isn't the solution. The complete package requires hardware integration, automation, and expertise that AWS intentionally left to partners.
Sardius has stepped into that partnership gap. We’ve made that investment so you don’t have to.
If you're exploring EMLA and want to talk through your specific situation, we're always glad to share what we've learned. Reach out, and we can figure out together whether this is the right fit for your broadcast vision and needs.
