Last checked October 6, 2026 against the public pages listed under Sources. Each statement about MediaConvert describes what those pages say on that date and goes no further; AWS prices and quotas vary by region and change, so check the current pricing page, and if anything here is out of date, please tell us and we will correct it. AWS Elemental MediaConvert, Amazon S3 and Amazon Transcribe are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates; Video Piper is not affiliated with AWS.
A product and a building block
MediaConvert is described by AWS as "a file-based video processing service." Its documentation is organised around jobs (each "converts an input file into an output file or files"), presets and job templates for reuse, and queues "to manage the resources that are available to your account for parallel processing of jobs." Its getting-started guide has you note an input location in Amazon S3 or at an HTTP or HTTPS URL and an Amazon S3 destination, specify an IAM role, and track job status with Amazon EventBridge.
Video Piper is a hosted video API: pre-signed multipart uploads or URL import, transcoding to web-ready MP4 up to 4K (and HLS on Pro and Scale), status and webhooks, signed playback links, an embeddable player, API keys with plans and usage metering, and recorder and editor web components.
At a glance
| Capability | Video Piper | What AWS's MediaConvert pages say |
|---|---|---|
| Output codecs and containers | H.264 video and AAC audio, as MP4 and HLS. | A table of containers and codecs including AV1, AVC (H.264), HEVC (H.265), VP8, VP9, Apple ProRes, MPEG-2, XAVC, WebM and MXF. |
| Maximum quality | Up to 4K (Pro and Scale). | The product page describes preparing "4K HDR videos for over-the-top (OTT) delivery." |
| Adaptive streaming packaging | HLS (CMAF) on Pro and Scale. | CMAF DASH, CMAF HLS, DASH, HLS and Microsoft Smooth Streaming. |
| Trim | Frame-accurate trim during the encode, with no extra processing time. | Input clips with starting and ending timecodes in HH:MM:SS:FF format. |
| Stitch | Edit API from finished videos: up to 50 clips with cuts, crossfades and fades, and an editor component. | Up to 150 inputs in a job, stitched "in the order that you add them"; AWS calls this "basic input clipping and stitching." |
| Overlays and redaction | Blur or black-bar regions with keyframe tracking (Pro and Scale). | An image inserter that overlays still or motion images for a set duration, with fades and adjustable opacity. |
| Captions | Speech to text on Pro and Scale: WebVTT, SRT and plain text. | Captions conversion workflows from captions in the video container or in sidecar files; Amazon Transcribe can be used to generate captions. |
| DRM | No. Signed links and allowed domains only. | Content encryption and DRM using SPEKE. |
What Video Piper offers
- A finished API. A first request needs an API key and a file. Uploads, status, webhooks, playback links and plans are included.
- Browser components. The recorder and editor components, and an embeddable player, work with one-use tokens so your key never reaches a page.
- Redaction and speech-to-text captions are request fields. Redaction takes up to 20 regions per video with keyframes; captions are WebVTT, SRT and plain text.
What MediaConvert documents
- Codec, container and packaging breadth, including "professional broadcast codecs that support increased bit depth and HDR content creation."
- Content encryption and DRM, where DRM systems provide keys to MediaConvert using SPEKE.
- Control and scale: queues, job templates and reserved pricing. AWS's quotas page lists 2,000 concurrent jobs per account in us-east-1, us-west-2 and eu-west-1, and 1,000 in each other supported Region.
- Captions conversion: AWS says MediaConvert "supports a wide range of captions conversion workflows," with reference tables for which input and output formats each container supports.
Where Video Piper falls short
Video Piper produces H.264 and AAC output only, so it is not a broadcast transcoder. It does not offer DRM (playback links are signed and domain-limited, which is not DRM), it does not offer live streaming through its API, and it does not provide viewer analytics.
How pricing differs
MediaConvert on-demand pricing is per normalized minute of output, in two tiers: Basic, which the pricing page says is "intended for simple web distribution use cases with limited AVC, VP8, and VP9 outputs," and Professional. Multipliers depend on resolution, frame rate and codec; for example, Basic-tier AVC single-pass HD at up to 30 fps is 2x. The page's worked example, in US East (Ohio), bills the first 100,000 normalized Basic-tier minutes at $0.0075 each. Rate discounts increase with monthly usage, and reserved pricing is a fixed monthly rate per transcode slot with a minimum 12-month commitment.
Video Piper sells monthly plans: Free ($0, 30 processing minutes, up to 720p), Starter ($49, 400 minutes, up to 1080p), Pro ($199, 1,500 minutes, up to 4K) and Scale ($699, 6,000 minutes, up to 4K), each with included storage and delivery. Beyond a paid plan, usage is $0.09 per processing minute, $0.15 per GB-month of storage and $0.55 per GB of delivery. 1440p counts double and 4K counts four times.
A per-minute transcoding rate is not directly comparable with a plan that includes uploads, storage, delivery and features. Include the cost of everything you would build and run around a transcoding service before comparing totals.
Which should you choose?
Choose MediaConvert if you need the codecs, packaging or DRM it documents, or want transcoding jobs that run in your own AWS account with an IAM role you control. Choose Video Piper if you want to add upload, record, edit, redact, caption and playback to a product as one API. The free plan is enough to see how a request looks.
Sources
Read on October 6, 2026. Figures are those shown on each page on that date and may have changed.
- What is MediaConvert: docs.aws.amazon.com/mediaconvert/latest/ug/what-is
- Getting started: docs.aws.amazon.com/mediaconvert/latest/ug/getting-started
- Codecs and containers: docs.aws.amazon.com/mediaconvert/latest/ug/reference-codecs-containers
- Inputs, clipping and stitching: docs.aws.amazon.com/mediaconvert/latest/ug/specifying-inputs
- Image overlays: docs.aws.amazon.com/mediaconvert/latest/ug/graphic-overlay
- Captions: including-captions and captions-support-tables
- Encryption and DRM: docs.aws.amazon.com/mediaconvert/latest/ug/implementing-digital-rights-management-drm
- Service quotas: docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/mediaconvert
- Pricing: aws.amazon.com/mediaconvert/pricing
- Product page: aws.amazon.com/mediaconvert
- Video Piper claims: this site's pricing and documentation.
Frequently asked questions
How does MediaConvert fit with Video Piper?
They sit at different levels. AWS's getting-started guide has MediaConvert read input from Amazon S3, HTTP or HTTPS, write output to Amazon S3, run with an IAM role you create, and report job status through Amazon EventBridge. Video Piper provides uploads, accounts and keys, playback links, webhooks and web components along with encoding.
What does MediaConvert document that Video Piper does not offer?
AWS documents output codecs and containers including AV1, HEVC, VP9, Apple ProRes, XAVC and MXF, 4K HDR, DASH, CMAF and Microsoft Smooth Streaming packaging, DRM through SPEKE, and captions conversion workflows. Video Piper produces H.264 and AAC output only and does not offer DRM.
Which has speech-to-text captions?
Video Piper generates captions from speech on Pro and Scale. MediaConvert's captions guide says you can use Amazon Transcribe with MediaConvert to generate captions and include them in your output.