You can now use Amazon Elastic Transcoder to stitch together two or more input clips to create a longer clip in the desired output format(s). You can do this by specifying multiple inputs when creating a transcode job on Amazon Elastic Transcoder. Clips are stitched together in the order that they are specified in the job request. For each input, you can specify a Start Time and a Duration, which allows you to stitch together only the parts of each input that you want included in the output. You can leverage clip stitching to create highlight clips or add bumpers and trailers to your videos as part of the transcode process.
Trusted Advisor enables automated actions and custom notifications
You can now create configurable, rule-based events for notifications and automated actions based on AWS Trusted Advisor’s library of best-practice checks using Amazon CloudWatch Events. With this new integration, you can now more easily build workflows and processes that are triggered by the status of individual Trusted Advisor checks.
Amazon EMR now supports Auto Scaling and configurable scale down behavior
You can now configure policies to automatically add (scale out) and terminate (scale in) nodes in your Amazon EMR cluster. Amazon EMR can programmatically scale out applications like Apache Spark and Apache Hive to utilize additional nodes for increased performance and scale in the number of nodes in your cluster to save costs when utilization is low. Your cluster can scale based on Amazon CloudWatch metrics provided by Amazon EMR , including YARN utilization metrics.
Introducing the AWS Serverless Application Model
The AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM, previously known as Project Flourish) extends AWS CloudFormation to provide a simplified way of defining the Amazon API Gateway APIs, AWS Lambda functions, and Amazon DynamoDB tables needed by your serverless application.
AWS Lambda Supports Environment Variables
You can now set environment variables for your Lambda functions, making it easy for you to configure your code for development, test, and production without having to change the function’s implementation. You can provide key-value pairs as part of your function configuration and access them easily within your function code at execution time simply by reading environment variables. You can easily create and modify environment variables from the AWS Lambda Console, CLI or SDKs.
Informatica Big Data Management and PowerCenter on the AWS Cloud: Quick Start Reference Deployments
These latest Quick Starts automatically deploy two products from Informatica, Big Data Management and PowerCenter, on the AWS Cloud. Informatica is an advanced AWS technology partner that provides data integration software and services. The Quick Starts were created by AWS solutions architects in partnership with the Informatica Big Data Management and PowerCenter teams, to integrate solutions and services from both companies.
Amazon Redshift introduces multibyte (UTF-8) character support for database object names and updated ODBC/JDBC
You can now use multibyte (UTF-8) characters in Amazon Redshift table, column, and other database object names. For more information, see Names and Identifiers in the Amazon Redshift Database Developer Guide. To support this new feature, we have updated the Amazon Redshift ODBC and JDBC drivers. The driver updates include support for multibyte characters and other enhancements. For details, see Amazon Redshift JDBC Release Notes and Amazon Redshift ODBC Release Notes .
Amazon WorkSpaces now allows you to access your virtual cloud desktop using Chrome and Firefox
You can now access your Amazon WorkSpaces through Chrome and Firefox web browsers, using a new feature called Amazon WorkSpaces Web Access. Web Access establishes a secure connection to your Amazon WorkSpace from the browser, giving you safe access to your cloud desktop from almost anywhere you can connect to the public internet, all without having to install a client.
AWS CloudFormation Supports AWS Serverless Application Model, AWS Lambda Environment Variables, and New CLI Commands
You can now provision and manage resources for AWS Lambda-based applications using AWS CloudFormation and the AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM). SAM helps you more effectively model, package, and deploy “serverless” applications which use services like AWS Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon API Gateway. SAM is a specification for describing Lambda-based applications and offers a syntax designed specifically for expressing serverless resources. Learn more about SAM here.
Three-month trial aims to reduce arsenic contamination of India’s groundwater
AdEdge India has built and started up its first arsenic treatment system as a demonstration plant in India…