# Amazon Elastic Transcoder Reviews **Vendor:** Amazon Web Services (AWS) **Category:** [Other Video Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/other-video) **Average Rating:** 4.2/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 20 ## About Amazon Elastic Transcoder Amazon Elastic Transcoder is a cloud-based media transcoding service that enables developers and businesses to convert video and audio files into formats optimized for various devices, including smartphones, tablets, and PCs. By leveraging Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure, it simplifies the process of media conversion without the need to manage complex hardware or software. Key Features and Functionality: - Transcoding Pipelines: Manage and run multiple transcoding workflows in parallel, allowing for efficient processing of large volumes of media files. - Transcoding Jobs: Convert a single input file into multiple output formats within a single job, supporting up to 30 different formats per job. - System and Custom Presets: Utilize predefined presets optimized for various devices, or create custom presets tailored to specific requirements. - Automatic Video Bitrate Optimization: Adjust the bitrate automatically to optimize the visual quality of transcoded output. - Thumbnail Generation and Watermarking: Generate thumbnails and overlay images on videos to enhance content presentation and branding. - Captions Support: Add, remove, or preserve captions during the transcoding process to ensure accessibility. - Encryption and Protection: Support for encrypted HLS streams and integration with DRM systems like Microsoft PlayReady to secure content. - Clip Generation and Stitching: Create clips from source media or stitch multiple clips together to produce a single output file. Primary Value and User Solutions: Amazon Elastic Transcoder addresses the complexities associated with media file conversion by providing a scalable, cost-effective, and easy-to-use solution. It eliminates the need for managing transcoding software and infrastructure, allowing users to focus on content creation and delivery. The service's integration with other AWS offerings, such as Amazon S3 for storage and Amazon SNS for notifications, streamlines workflows and enhances operational efficiency. By supporting a wide range of input and output formats, along with features like automatic bitrate optimization and preset configurations, it ensures high-quality media playback across diverse devices and platforms. Please note that AWS has announced the discontinuation of Amazon Elastic Transcoder, effective November 13, 2025. Users are encouraged to migrate to AWS Elemental MediaConvert, which offers a comprehensive suite of advanced transcoding features and on-demand pricing. ## Amazon Elastic Transcoder Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **customizable templates** of Amazon Elastic Transcoder, enabling tailored settings for specific transcoding needs. (1 reviews) - Users praise the **easy setup** of Amazon Elastic Transcoder, facilitating seamless integration with S3 and CloudFront. (1 reviews) - Users value the **format support** of Amazon Elastic Transcoder, enabling hassle-free, pay-as-you-go video processing. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **free services** of Amazon Elastic Transcoder, enhancing workflow and cost-efficiency in video management. (1 reviews) - Users find Amazon Elastic Transcoder to be a **reliable and efficient tool** that enhances their video processing workflow. (1 reviews) - Integrations (1 reviews) - Reliability (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **simplicity of pay-as-you-go** with Amazon Elastic Transcoder, eliminating format worries effortlessly. (1 reviews) - Speed (1 reviews) - Time Management (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the service **expensive** , especially considering it runs on older, outdated technology. (1 reviews) - Users find **limited customization options** tedious and outdated, making the setup process less efficient and frustrating. (1 reviews) - Users find the **limited options** and outdated presets of Amazon Elastic Transcoder to be frustrating and cumbersome. (1 reviews) - Users report **performance issues** , including inconsistent processing times and outdated presets, affecting their overall experience with the service. (1 reviews) - Users find the **cumbersome interface design** of Amazon Elastic Transcoder lacking compared to newer AWS services. (1 reviews) - Software Bugs (1 reviews) - User Difficulty (1 reviews) ## Amazon Elastic Transcoder Reviews ### 1. Excellent Video Transcoding Solution **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 19, 2026 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** For our video pipeline, Amazon Elastic Transcoder has truly transformed our workflow. The service manages large-scale transcoding with ease and has proven to be extremely reliable. Setting up and integrating with S3 and CloudFront was straightforward, which allowed our entire pipeline to operate seamlessly. The pricing model also makes sense, as you only pay for the actual transcoding, helping us keep costs predictable. The preset templates cover most popular formats, and when we need something more specific, creating custom settings is simple. We consistently achieve fast processing speeds and high-quality output. What I value most is the "set it and forget it" aspect. Once configured, it runs quietly and reliably in the background. Overall, this service is an essential tool that delivers real value for anyone managing video content on AWS. **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** The preset options seem a bit outdated, and setting up custom presets can be a tedious process. The documentation, particularly for advanced configurations, could be more straightforward. During peak hours, processing times can be inconsistent, and there is no real-time progress tracking available. The user interface feels cumbersome, especially when compared to more recent AWS services. Additionally, the error messages provided when jobs fail are often not very informative. If you require support for modern codecs or advanced features, you may want to consider AWS MediaConvert instead. While this service accomplishes its tasks, it definitely feels like it is starting to show its age. **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Amazon Elastic Transcoder has addressed several major challenges in our video operations. First, its multi-format compatibility means we no longer have to manually convert videos for different platforms and devices. With just one source file, we can automatically generate versions suitable for smart TVs, mobile devices, and web use. Second, the service takes care of infrastructure management, so we are free from the burden of maintaining transcoding servers, handling updates, or planning for capacity and scaling during peak times. Third, the pay-per-use pricing model is much more cost-effective than maintaining dedicated transcoding servers, as we only pay for what we use. Fourth, the automated workflows have saved our team a significant amount of time, since transcoding begins automatically after uploading to S3, requiring no manual intervention. Finally, the scalability of the service allows us to process thousands of videos simultaneously without any drop in performance. ### 2. Convenient Pay-As-You-Go, But Outdated and Can Get Expensive **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mohammad B. | Division Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 14, 2025 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** The easy way to pay as you go and don’t have t worry about formats etc. **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** Older tech and outdated. It can also become costly **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Making and maintaining my audios files helps with format also ### 3. Affordable, flexible transcoding with a solid API **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 13, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** Amazon's transcoder is one of their simplest-to-use products but it packs a solid technical punch. It does require some knowledge to configure just right, but there are some sensible defaults as well, so you don't need to dive too deeply into the details if you don't want to. And the integration with S3 makes it super easy to get assets in and out of the transcoder. **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** The UI can be a little confusing to use at times; if you don't use a default all the way through, sometimes it can take a few test-runs to get your settings dialed in right. **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our business involves transcoding video for display using HLS, and the transcoder supports both current versions of HLS, plus helpful features like watermarking. ### 4. Great for transcoding via cloud vs desktop **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Paul S. | Simrin Phull, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** Easy to use in terms of transcoding in various formats and sending it out to team collaborators **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** Price could be better. It’s pretty expensive for me but gets the job done **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Transcoding via desktop is time consuming and uses up a lot of system power. Also you have to transcode more than once for collaborators who use different devices. Amazon Elastic Transcoder takes care of all of this in the cloud, thus not having to rey in your own system resources. It’s also quick and easy to make different versions for different devices ### 5. A great time saver **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tendai Francis Z. | Software Engineer, Marketing and Advertising, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** I like that you can create pre-defined templates for transcoding that can be attached to an SNS which notifies the transcoder to kick off. **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** There's not much not to like. The only thing I would like to see is maybe a more intuitive way to make connections between the transcoder template and the queue. **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** We handle thousands of video uploads from users and need to present them in both a way that is guaranteed to show in most browsers and is also a reasonable size for downloading. ### 6. Video encoding fully integrated into your AWS workflow **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dan D. | Full Stack Developer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 12, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** I like that Elastic Transcoder is fully integrated into our AWS workflow. And it's FAST. The same AWS credentials I use for S3 work for Elastic Transcoder, so there is less configuration you have to keep track of. Also, it supports all the essential codecs including MP4, WMV, and WEBM. **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** I don't like that Elastic Transcoder doesn't support adaptive bit rate (ABR) encoding. Apple requires HLS when we serve clips from our iOS app. We use AWS MediaEncode also to build our ABR profiles. The problem is we need both services to get everything we need.. **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are using Amazon Elastic Transcoder to encode our clips into a variety of resolutions and bitrates. The primary benefits we have realized are speed and quality of encodes. ### 7. Makes switching easy **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shawna O. | Cashier Customer Service, Warehousing, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** I like that it's easy to convert media files and view them on any device. This makes running from meeting to meeting so much easier. **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** There is absolutely nothing that I dislike about using this transcoder service. **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am solving the business problems of only being able to see clients in one place and being able to move what I need to multiple devices. ### 8. Really Helped Our Development Team **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John S. | Founder & Creative Director, Design, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** It is extremely scalable, very easy to use and a cost effective for our development division. It is integrated into our AWS workflow and it is super fast! **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** The UI is slightly confusing, but not a deal breaker. **Recommendations to others considering Amazon Elastic Transcoder:** Try it out first.. See if it is right for your team. **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** We utilize it to encode many video clips. Streamlines the process. ### 9. Amazon Review **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lateefah B. | Recruitment Coordinator in Global Recruitment, HR, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** The effectiveness of this software so far from what I have heard. They use this system a lot in the labs which include the many technicians. **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** I have not worked with the system enough to know if it works or not. When the company implemented , I was moving to a different area of the business. **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** n/a ### 10. Works well with other AWS suites **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jordan M. | Associate Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 15, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** It is about as easy as it comes in terms of finding the best way to get files from the media library and onto the cloud. **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** The only thing I can think of that I dislike is the cost involved. **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Migrating quality media files and having them transcoded. Having everything in one place with AWS is convenient. ### 11. Streaming on demand **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 07, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** The best part of this is integration with other services with in Amazon not much efforts to start consuming the service and its fast, have verity of formats support and secure, I love the way it works **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** Bit complex to use for new comers so need extensive training to use it. few formats are yet to be added in upcoming releases. **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Internal presentations and advertisement on dealer portal ### 12. review **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Wholesale | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** i like the low cost per minute for each job **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** Some aws regions are limited for the time **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** It provides video transcoding for ads ### 13. Usability & security **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** the ease at which it is used. First time user can easily navigate through it without much difficulty. It is also cost effective **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** The software is really likable and i have not encountered any dislike so far **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Converting videos to other formats that can be watch using all common media players in all windows and apple platforms. More customer turnout. ### 14. Transcoding videos from any format **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** By setting up Elastic Cache I saved a client thousands of dollars per month as they were running a cluster of EC2 instances before. Now they pay on demand when new videos are uploaded to a bucket and we do not have to manage any underlying infrastructure. **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** Nothing. It is a great service wether you use it for live streaming or transcoding videos and storing them back in a bucket. **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Transcoding videos of different format into a standard ### 15. AWS transcoder **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** It’s highly scalable and easy to use and cost effective way for users and developers. **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** It aspects all media transcoding process for you transparently and autommatically. **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** The business problem is tune performance and we over come by using transcoder such that we no need to do administrative software and scale hardware. ### 16. Amazon Elastic Transcoder **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Semiconductors | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** It is very easy to use and learn. Easy for my business to convert to my business laptop and phones. Playback is also very clear and quality is impeccable **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** It does take a little longer for certain audio file conversions. **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Mainly for presentations and meetings with upper management to show visualization on an easy secure format ### 17. Easy and worth it **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Networking | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 11, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** It is very scalable, simple to use and a cost effective! **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** Sometimes the transcoding if media files can be faulty but other than that I have no complaints. **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easily transcoding and uploading files to other media devices without hassle! ### 18. Best Media Transcoding **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Accounting | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** Very easy to use especially for those people who loves working remotely. **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** None really. I cannot think of what I dislike so far **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** It was easier to play back on our files than before ### 19. Recommend! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** It's very easy to use and at a low cost! **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** The transcoding of files isn't always very smooth, but for the most part it works really well. **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Having all files in one place. ### 20. easy to use, helpful with the system presets **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 30, 2017 **What do you like best about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** the ease of use and that for the parts you don't know, they have all the documentation readily available **What do you dislike about Amazon Elastic Transcoder?** the flow of functions with the UI, can be quite deterring at times **What problems is Amazon Elastic Transcoder solving and how is that benefiting you?** video content delivery over dash - [View Amazon Elastic Transcoder pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-elastic-transcoder/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-21+14%3A04%3A12+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=18f9eba9-2fe5-4d99-9d64-854386722eeb&secure%5Btoken%5D=1d2698faac788c0ea2df7953902c96300899718e5299fbae4dc10a869da2012c&format=llm_user) ## Top Amazon Elastic Transcoder Alternatives - [Handbrake](https://www.g2.com/products/handbrake/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (153 reviews) - [VideoLan](https://www.g2.com/products/videolan/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (624 reviews) - [Konvey](https://www.g2.com/products/jerry-nweke-konvey/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (159 reviews)