Migrating Video Transcoding and Distribution to AWS for EvolveYou

Overview

EvolveYou, a premier fitness app for women, delivers high-quality on-demand video workouts to its global community. Seeking to optimize costs, the company partnered with Lambert Labs to migrate its video infrastructure from Vimeo to a native AWS pipeline: AWS Elemental MediaConvert and AWS Lambda to automate the transcoding of source files into multiple high-definition formats and Amazon CloudFront for global delivery. This transition has delivered substantial cost savings while ensuring a robust, seamless media experience for members worldwide.

Lambert Labs played an
invaluable role in our migration from Vimeo to AWS.
Boris Felix, Director of Engineering, EvolveYou

Opportunity / Customer Challenge

EvolveYou, a premier fitness app for women, delivers high-quality, on-demand workout content to a global community. As the platform’s media library expanded, the company faced a significant hurdle: its reliance on premium third-party services like Vimeo for video hosting and distribution. In the case of Vimeo, the service became increasingly expensive and rigid as the user base scaled, leading EvolveYou to pay for features and functionality that they did not need.

A critical technical requirement was ensuring that high-resolution source files could be reliably streamed to users regardless of their device, location, or network conditions. To provide a truly seamless experience, EvolveYou needed a robust transcoding process to generate multiple resolutions and bitrates. This adaptive approach ensures that whether a member is training via a high-speed home connection or on a limited mobile data plan, they receive the best possible playback quality without buffering.

The opportunity was to build a production-ready, automated video pipeline on AWS to optimize costs by focusing on the key aspects of their video streaming and delivery. The challenge lay in migrating from a third-party ecosystem to a custom, cloud-native solution – utilizing Elemental MediaConvert and CloudFront – that could handle high-volume transcoding and global delivery with the low latency and high reliability EvolveYou members expect.

Solution

To replace the existing third-party solution on Vimeo, we implemented a serverless, production-ready video-on-demand (VOD) pipeline on AWS. The core of the AWS solution is an event-driven transcoding engine. When a source video file is uploaded to an Amazon S3 input bucket, it automatically triggers a Lambda function. This function coordinates the integration with MediaConvert, which processes the high-resolution source file into multiple formats, resolutions, and bitrates. This adaptive bitrate streaming approach ensures that EvolveYou members receive an optimal viewing experience.

Once transcoding is complete, the optimized output files are stored in an output S3 bucket. To ensure high-performance delivery to a worldwide audience, CloudFront is utilized as a Content Delivery Network (CDN). By caching content at edge locations closer to the end users, CloudFront significantly reduces latency and improves playback stability.

Lambert Labs played an invaluable role in our migration journey, allowing us to rapidly and successfully migrate all of our video transcoding and streaming to AWS. (Boris Felix, Director of Engineering, EvolveYou)

Outcome

The migration has delivered significant results for EvolveYou, successfully transitioning their video content from a high-cost third-party provider to a streamlined, in-house pipeline. By replacing Vimeo, the company has achieved substantial cost optimization, eliminating premium subscription fees in favor of a pay-as-you-go cloud model.

The serverless nature of the pipeline means the platform can handle sudden surges in traffic without manual intervention or infrastructure management. A robust foundation for future growth has been established, allowing EvolveYou to focus on delivering world-class fitness content rather than managing low level infrastructure. The new, leaner architecture allows EvolveYou to focus on the core components of their video streaming and delivery, improving cost-value ratio and reducing hidden dependencies. Don’t just take our word for it – see EvolveYou’s Director of Engineering Boris Felix’s LinkedIn post here.

AWS offers a compelling alternative for organizations streaming high-definition content at scale compared to more traditional third-party providers. EvolveYou now has total control over their video distribution and global user experience. (George Lambert, Founder & CEO, Lambert Labs)

About EvolveYou

EvolveYou is a premier fitness and wellness app designed to empower women globally on their health and fitness journeys. The platform provides its community with a comprehensive library of high-quality, on-demand workout content led by world-class trainers. By combining expert-led physical training with tools for tracking progress and building healthy habits, EvolveYou has established itself as a leader in the digital fitness space.