Formula 1® (F1) celebrates their 75th Year of racing in 2025 and, in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), continues to innovate and create the experience of fans of the future. For the start of the 2025 racing season, F1 launched a new streaming subscription level called F1 TV Premium. This new level is designed to create a rich and engaging experience which is aimed at racing fans who appreciate increased data access, better quality video and personalized visualization options.
F1 TV Premium subscribers can experience live and international F1 coverage to UHD HDR, and on -board cameras feed on HDR HDR. It also supports multiVIEW on a range of devices and additional reading competition.
When the conception of F1 TV Premium began, F1 has kept in mind several key principles. First of all, they wanted to use the technology on the customer side to allow a completely flexible multi-commentary experience instead of organizing pre-created flow provisions with limited personalization. Second, the new level had to operate alongside their existing F1 TV subscription and support programs in a singular video workflow. They also wanted a large device support, to give choices of viewers on the place they could look at. Finally, F1 set a goal to provide video synchronization on the server side between the flows, so that the alignment of the head with the customer was not necessary.
The basic services that F1 TV uses to feed this new video workflow are AWS Media Services. This includes AWS Elemental Mediaconnect, AWS Elemental Medialive and AWS Elemental MediaPackage Plus Amazon Cloudfront.
Figure 1: screenshot of F1 TV Premium MultiVIEW EXPEROW.
Now let’s do a deep dive in the F1 TV video workflow, focusing on the three main F1 priorities:
- Food synchronization using timecode – How to keep several flows in synchronization
- Predictable coding and packaging – How the videos arrive at the customer and how will they be used
- Customizable multi -time experience – How to maximize flexibility
Food synchronization using timecode
Premium F1 TV users have access to 24 separate flows: the main race and track flows, as well as on -board cameras from the 20 cars. One of the most important details of this workload is food synchronization. Fans who watch the race must have a visualization experience where flows are aligned so that key race events (such as “Lights Out” or overtaking) are traquable without spoiling anything or skipping action on all flows.
To do this, F1 ensures that the flows are visually aligned with the same Time code when they leave the F1 Media and Technology Center. This is necessary because each flow can take a different path through the production signal chain. For example, F1 TV Live and International Feeds go through a production chain where equipment and treatment introduce an additional time. On the other hand, foods such as on -board cameras and data / pilot monitoring channels take a different signal chain, with different quantities of delay. This makes the visual alignment essential to guarantee a coherent timecode aligned with 24 video flows.
Figure 2: Way through the center of the media and technological formula of the one formula.
Predictable coding and packaging
With the present timecode and all the aligned flows, F1 then uses AWS Media Services to create the video workflow. The workflow facilitates a coherent time code in contribution flows with the locking of the time and the format of the application of the common media (CMAF) ingest the medial exit to MediaPackage. The results are regular segmentation rates anchored on the time of the UNIX era. This provides synchronization without condition of the packaging according to the source timecode. This also makes it possible to allow cross -cuttings and conscious resilience of the quality of the media, as well as the precise alignment of the frame for segments in several channels in a region.
It is important to use the same image group (GOPS) and configurations per second (FPS) on all channels to ensure that this rate is also consistent. The medial channels are configured to use the Téchedded Timode code, the locking of the time and the input source clock to align the channels.
Even with content that is contextually different, as in Figure 3, when Timecodes and coding configurations are aligned on several channels, the videos remain in synchronization. This includes synchronization of individual channels from the TimeCode feed code of contribution and also the alignment of the code on all channels.
Figure 3: Timecodes lined up at the source.
With this configuration, F1 TV premium viewers can take advantage of the entire action of the perfectly synchronized race from different flows, regardless of what is happening on the track.
Customizable multi -time experience
The last stage of this workflow is to configure Medialive to allow the F1 television customer to produce a multi-commentary experience. This is done with a characteristic of high -efficiency video coding (HEVC) called tile coding. With the coding of activated tiles, Medialative can generate a series of independent and extractable sections of a larger video resolution, which the decoder can use to decode any combination of tiles through any binary flow and resolution. This allows an F1 TV Premium user to configure any combination of videos, such as drivers battles, or an optimized layout for mobile visualization.
The HEVC tile settings in the medial are made up of width, height, padding and shaft block size. There are also additional parameters to deactivate both the temporal predictor of the movement vector and the limits of the image. Using these parameters, medialative validates that all rendering outputs are coded with the same tile configuration. The result is that F1 customers can rewrite and fusion of bits to activate multi-commentary experience.
The tile coding settings can be found in the “codec details” of the medial configuration. Note, this option is only available on the type of HEVC codec.
Figure 4: Example of architecture showing the customizable multi-income experience of F1.
Conclusion
We discussed how F1 has built a new workflow to provide a multi-commentary experience for racing fans using AWS media services. First, F1 ensures that Timecodes is aligned with 24 flows to synchronize the video by leaving their media and technology center. The locking of the eras, the integrated time code and the ingestion of CMAF between AWS Elemental Medialive and AWS Elemental MediaPackage are then used to provide predictable packaging. Finally, F1 configures HEVC with the coding of the tiles so that the viewer can personalize the way they want to look at the action unfold.
This collaboration between F1 and AWS shows how AWS media services provide the constituent elements to create new ways for fans to live live sports.
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