Not NAB season, but still Vegas 🇺🇸

We’re used to seeing Las Vegas in April when NAB brings sunshine, iced coffees and a week of live production demos. Going back in December felt a little different. The desert was colder, the queues were longer and the hoodies stayed firmly on. But AWS re:Invent brought the same energy we love: big ideas, bold workflows and thousands of people trying to build what comes next.

This year, we teamed up with our partners at Tagboard to power a series of live shows directly from the show floor. What we built together was fast, lightweight, cloud-native and deceptively robust. It was also one of the clearest demonstrations yet of just how far modern production workflows have evolved.

Let’s break down how we ran the studio and share a few snippets from the live output

🎥 Building a live studio inside re:Invent

To bring the conversations to life, we set up a pop-up interview space on the show floor. Presenters and guests were right in the centre of the event. The control room wasn’t. It ran entirely in the cloud, with Tagboard and Grabyo operators working and managing everything through a cloud workflow.

Despite being physically removed from the show floor, the experience was seamless. Our three-person crew directed, switched, clipped and published everything in real time from the cloud. They happened to be operating on site, but they could just as easily have been doing it from London, New York or anywhere with a decent connection. That ability to run a full production without racks of hardware or a large on-site team is exactly what makes cloud workflows so effective for events like re:Invent.

The workflow that made it possible

Once the studio was up and running on the show floor, everything else happened through the cloud. Here’s how the workflow came together and how we handled video transport, switching, graphics, vertical outputs and live clipping.

PTZ cameras streamed over SRT

Our PTZs sent clean, stable feeds over SRT into AWS Elemental MediaConnect. Embedded audio travelled with the video, which kept the whole setup simple and reliable. No converters. No patching headaches. No dragging cable runs across the expo hall. Just lightweight contribution into the cloud.

Grabyo for live switching, multi-format output and clipping

Inside AWS’ Cloud architecture, Grabyo Producer became the control room. From there we handled:

• Camera switching
• Real-time production of the horizontal show (16:9)
• A separate vertical show (9:16) running in parallel
• Audio mixing for both shows, with mix minus feeds for ISO records
• Mix effects, including picture-in-picture layouts and video playback
• Instant clipping for social
• Automatic archiving to Amazon S3

The dual-output workflow is something we’re seeing more teams embrace. Instead of taking a horizontal show and trying to make it work on mobile, we created a native vertical format with its own framing, timing and visual identity. You’ll see the difference clearly in the examples further down.

Tagboard powering graphics and on-set displays

Tagboard’s HTML graphics slotted straight into Grabyo, which meant we could easily manage:

• Lower thirds
• Animated elements
• Social pulls
• Live polls
• Custom layouts for the on-set screen

Everything rendered with the same polish you’d expect from a traditional graphics system, just without any hardware or extra operators on site.

Zoom bridge for comms

With the control room running remotely in the cloud, comms needed to be dependable. A simple Zoom bridge kept presenters, crew and the director connected. It wasn’t complicated, but it worked exactly as we needed it to.

Audio configuration

Audio was kept intentionally simple. Each show had its own basic mix, and we built a mix minus for each ISO record so everything stayed clean and easy to work with downstream. All embedded audio from the PTZs travelled through the cloud in sync, which meant we didn’t need any additional on-site sound engineering.

Horizontal and vertical: two productions from one setup

One of the most interesting parts of this workflow is how easily we produced two very different live shows from the same camera inputs.

• The horizontal show followed a more traditional structure, with a director-led rhythm and a familiar broadcast feel.
• The vertical show was built for feeds. Faster pacing, tighter framing and graphics optimised for portrait viewing. It looked and felt like social content because it was designed that way from the start.

Both shows ran simultaneously, from the same interface, with the same crew. And both were powered entirely in the cloud. This is where cloud production really proves itself. You’re not stretching a single output across every platform. You’re creating formats that fit their audience without doubling your resources.

What you’ll see in the upcoming video 👇

To make this workflow easier to visualise, we’ll be including a few short examples throughout the blog.

1. Horizontal show output

A clip showing:

• Switching and pacing
• Graphics integration
• Presenter interactions
• Overall production polish
• Audio clarity

2. Vertical show output

A contrasting example with:

• Native vertical framing
• Clean portrait graphics
• Social-first pacing
• How the same interview feels completely different in 9:16

3. Full workflow walkthrough

This video will give a complete behind-the-scenes look at the pipeline, including:

• SRT transport and routing
• MediaConnect contribution
• How Grabyo and Tagboard work together
• Real-time clipping
• Cloud switching
• Output delivery into S3

Why re:Invent was the perfect stage

AWS re:Invent brings together people who want to build, test and rethink workflows. Running a cloud-native production directly from the show floor gave us a chance to demonstrate what modern teams value most:

• Fast setup
• Flexible, mobile workflows
• Smaller on-site crews
• Lower infrastructure cost
• Multi-format outputs
• Seamless integration with cloud-native partners

It didn’t just power four days of content. It showed what scalable, production-ready cloud workflows look like for sports teams, leagues, broadcasters, brands and agencies that need to move quickly.

Closing thoughts 💭

The colder Vegas didn’t slow us down. If anything, it just made the coffee stops more necessary.

What we built with Tagboard at AWS re:Invent was a clear example of production that meets audiences where they are. Horizontal for long-form viewing. Vertical for discovery and social. Cloud-based for speed, flexibility and simplicity. It’s an efficient, collaborative model, and it’s ready for the next event.

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