Building a Live Stream Infrastructure on AWS

A few days ago, Netflix made history by streaming the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards live for the first time. This marked a major shift in how award shows and other large-scale events are broadcasted, proving that live streaming is no longer just for sports and gaming—it's now a mainstream entertainment medium. This got me thinking: What does it take to build a scalable, high-quality live streaming architecture?

In this blog, I’ll break down how AWS provides a robust solution for live streaming, using a combination of services like AWS Elemental MediaLive, MediaPackage, Amazon S3, and CloudFront to ensure seamless content delivery. Now, have in mind - these services are purpose built by AWS to serve such media usecases.

Whether you're streaming a major award show, a corporate event, or even a personal live broadcast, understanding the building blocks of AWS live streaming can help you create a reliable and scalable streaming experience.

Let’s dive into how each AWS service plays a role in making this happen.

Architecture

This architecture is for Live Streaming on AWS, leveraging various AWS services to efficiently deliver video content to end-user devices. Here's a detailed breakdown of the services involved and the overall workflow:

1. Video Source

• This represents the camera or any other video capture device that provides the live video feed. It acts as the input source for the streaming process.

2. AWS Elemental Link

• Role: AWS Elemental Link is a device that connects the video source (like a camera or production equipment) to AWS Elemental MediaLive.

• Function: It encodes and streams the video content to AWS, ensuring high-quality transmission. Link supports standard video inputs and outputs that can easily be connected to production systems.

• Benefit: It provides a reliable and scalable way to ingest live video streams, bridging the gap between the on-premise hardware and AWS cloud services.

3. AWS Elemental MediaLive

• Role: MediaLive is a broadcast-grade live video processing service. It ingests the video from Elemental Link and processes it to create the live stream.

• Function: It transcodes the video into different formats for various devices and resolutions. MediaLive is capable of adaptive bitrate streaming, ensuring the best quality video delivery under varying network conditions.

• Benefit: AWS Elemental MediaLive is highly scalable, ensuring that the stream can reach a wide audience without degrading the quality. It also integrates with other AWS services to enhance performance and security.

4. AWS Elemental MediaPackage

• Role: MediaPackage is used to create live streaming packages, enabling the stream to be formatted and delivered across multiple devices and platforms.

• Function: It packages the content delivered by MediaLive into formats like HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) and DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) for device compatibility. MediaPackage also supports features like encryption and DRM (Digital Rights Management).

• Benefit: This service helps deliver high-quality video to devices regardless of their platform, and ensures smooth, secure, and efficient streaming. It allows for failover strategies, ensuring reliability.

5. Amazon S3

• Role: Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is used to store the video files, including both live and archived content.

• Function: MediaPackage stores the processed live streams in S3, ensuring that the video content is secure, scalable, and easily accessible for future use or playback.

• Benefit: S3 provides durable and low-latency storage, making it a reliable place for hosting video content for both live and on-demand applications.

6. Amazon CloudFront

• Role: CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) that accelerates the delivery of content to end-user devices.

• Function: CloudFront caches content from Amazon S3, ensuring that the live video feed is quickly delivered to users regardless of their geographical location.

• Benefit: CloudFront helps reduce latency by delivering content from the closest edge location to the user. It optimizes the delivery of media content, ensuring seamless streaming across various devices.

7. End User Devices

• Role: These are the devices used by the viewers to watch the live stream.

• Function: End-user devices like smartphones, tablets, desktops, and smart TVs consume the live stream via their respective media players or apps.

• Benefit: CloudFront ensures that the video stream is optimized for these devices, regardless of the bandwidth or device specifications.

How This Architecture Works

1. Capture & Transmission: The video source captures the live feed, and AWS Elemental Link encodes and sends this video stream to MediaLive.

2. Processing & Transcoding: MediaLive processes the incoming stream, converting it into different formats and resolutions for adaptive streaming.

3. Packaging & Security: MediaPackage formats the video into compatible packages (HLS/DASH) for delivery across different platforms, while also providing encryption and security features.

4. Storage: Processed streams are stored in Amazon S3 for archival purposes.

5. Distribution: CloudFront delivers the video to end-user devices with low latency, ensuring a smooth viewing experience for a global audience.

Key Benefits of This Architecture

• Scalability: AWS services like MediaLive, MediaPackage, and CloudFront automatically scale based on viewer demand, providing a reliable service even during high traffic.

• Global Reach: CloudFront’s edge locations ensure that the video stream is delivered to users worldwide with minimal latency.

• Security: Encryption and access control are built into the architecture, ensuring that content is secure both in transit and at rest.

• Cost Efficiency: This setup leverages the pay-as-you-go pricing model, which means you only pay for the services you use, making it cost-effective for both small and large-scale live streaming events.

That’s it! We just figured how to reliable live stream via the AWS managed infrastructure and services to end-user devices.