Getting Started with MediaConvert Using the API

To get set up to use the AWS Elemental MediaConvert API

1. Set up permissions:

   • Permissions that the AWS Elemental MediaConvert service can assume on your behalf. These allow access to your Amazon S3 buckets and to Amazon API Gateway. For instructions, see Set Up IAM Permissions in the AWS Elemental MediaConvert User Guide.

   • Your Signature Version 4 authentication for the requests that you send to Amazon. When you use the Amazon Command Line Interface (Amazon CLI) or one of the Amazon SDKs, these tools automatically sign the requests for you with the access key and secret key that you specify in your client configuration.

2. Set up S3 file locations.

   The service reads your input files from and saves your output files to Amazon S3 buckets. For instructions on creating these buckets, see Create Storage for Files in the AWS Elemental MediaConvert User Guide.

3. Request your endpoint.

   Send a POST request with an empty body to the following endpoint, replacing <region> with the name of your Region. Usually, this is the Region where you store your input and output files. This Region must match the Region that you set up in your client configuration:

   https://mediaconvert.<region>.amazonaws.com/2017-08-29/endpoints

   For example, for the Region ap-southeast-2, the endpoint is the following:

   https://mediaconvert.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/2017-08-29/endpoints

   For a full list of MediaConvert public endpoints, see AWS Elemental MediaConvert Regions and Endpoints.

   For information about MediaConvert FIPS endpoints, see FIPS Endpoints.

   The service returns an endpoint similar to "https://abcd1234.mediaconvert.us-west-1.amazonaws.com". The first eight digits after "https://" are an alphanumeric combination. The Region matches the regional endpoint that you send the request to. This is the endpoint to use for your transcoding requests.

   Important

   If you request your endpoint programmatically, do so only once in your application. Don't make a request to the public endpoint each time that you make a request to MediaConvert. Otherwise, you will reach the throttle maximum on the public API endpoint.

4. Send your transcoding requests.

   Using the endpoint that you received from your POST request, send your requests to manage transcoding jobs, queues, job templates, and presets. For more information, see the following:

   • For information about setting up your transcoding job, see the Creating Your Job Specification topic of this guide.

   • For general information about how the MediaConvert resources (jobs, queues, job templates, and output presets) work, see the AWS Elemental MediaConvert User Guide.

   • For information about interacting programmatically with each resource type, see the Resources topic of this guide.

   • For detailed information about each transcoding setting, see the Properties topic of the Jobs resource chapter of this guide. You might find it easiest to navigate to a particular setting in the Properties topic by following the links in the Schemas section.

   • To prevent duplicate jobs from being created, use client request tokens. For more information see Ensuring idempotency.

   Tip

   If you use Postman to send your requests, you can optionally copy and import the preconfigured AWS Elemental MediaConvert Postman Collection Files.