Getting started with live-to-VOD content delivery in MediaPackage - AWS Elemental MediaPackage
PrerequisitesStep 1: Access MediaPackageStep 2: Ingest live contentStep 3: Extract a VOD asset(Optional) Step 4: Output VOD content(Optional) Step 5: Monitor MediaPackage activityStep 6: Clean up

Getting started with live-to-VOD content delivery in MediaPackage

This Getting Started tutorial shows you how to use the AWS Elemental MediaPackage console to create a live-to-VOD (video on demand) asset and make it available for playback.

To deliver live-to-VOD content, you do these three main things:

  • Ingest a live HLS content stream into MediaPackage

  • Extract a VOD asset from the stream

  • Make the asset available for playback

    Note

    You're not required to use MediaPackage to deliver your live-to-VOD asset to viewers. This tutorial is meant as an illustration of how you can use MediaPackage to complete the live-to-VOD workflow.

The following sections are a guided tutorial for becoming familiar with these three things and other supporting actions.

Prerequisites

Before you can use AWS Elemental MediaPackage, you need an AWS account and the appropriate permissions to access, view, and edit MediaPackage components. Make sure that your system administrator has completed the following steps in Setting up MediaPackage, and then return to this tutorial:

Step 1: Access MediaPackage

Using your IAM credentials, sign in to the AWS Elemental MediaPackage console: 

https://console.aws.amazon.com/mediapackage/

Step 2: Ingest live content

To ingest a live content stream into AWS Elemental MediaPackage and extract a video on demand (VOD) asset from it, create a channel and endpoint. The channel is the entry point to MediaPackage, and the endpoint provides MediaPackage access to the stream so that it can extract the VOD asset. The following sections describe how to use the MediaPackage console to create a channel and endpoint.

Create a channel

The channel is the first component in MediaPackage. It represents the input to MediaPackage for incoming live content from an encoder such as AWS Elemental MediaLive.

MediaPackage does not require that you supply any customer data. There are no fields in channels where there is an expectation that you will provide customer data.

To create a channel

  1. On the MediaPackage Channels page, choose Create channel.

  2. For ID, enter a name that describes the channel, such as channelHLS1. The ID is the primary identifier for the channel, and must be unique for your account in the AWS Region. Supported characters are letters, numbers, underscores (_), and dashes (-). You can't use spaces in the ID.

  3. Keep the defaults for the remaining fields, and then choose Create.

    MediaPackage displays the new channel's details page.

  4. On the details page for the channel, note the values for URL, Username, and Password. If you're using input redundancy, you need this information for both input URLs. If you're sending only one stream to the channel, you can note the information for either input URL.

    MediaPackage securely generates the WebDAV user names and passwords when it creates the channel. If you need to change these credentials, see Rotating credentials on an input URL.

    Provide the information from these fields to the person in charge of the upstream encoder. In the stream configuration in the encoder, this person must enter the destination as the input URL, and the WebDAV credentials as the channel's user name and password. The upstream encoder must use digest authentication and push WebDAV over HTTPS to MediaPackage, and include these credentials. If you're using input redundancy, the input streams to this channel must have identical encoder settings. For more information about setting up source streams for input redundancy, see Live input redundancy AWS Elemental MediaPackage processing flow.

Create an endpoint

The endpoint is attached to a channel, and represents the output of the live content. When you create a harvest job to extract a VOD asset from the live content, you have to indicate what endpoint you're extracting from. You can harvest assets from clear (unencrypted) or encrypted HLS and DASH endpoints, and the endpoint must have a startover window defined. If you have only encrypted endpoints, see the Creating live-to-VOD assets with AWS Elemental MediaPackage feature reference.

MediaPackage does not require that you supply any customer data. There are no fields in endpoints where there is an expectation that you will provide customer data.

To create an endpoint

  1. On the Channels page, choose the channel that the endpoint will be associated with.

  2. On the details page for the channel, under Origin endpoints, choose Manage endpoints.

  3. For ID, enter a name that describes the endpoint, such as HLSendpoint1. The ID is the primary identifier for the endpoint, and must be unique for your account in the AWS Region. Supported characters are letters, numbers, underscores (_), and dashes (-). You can't use spaces in the ID.

  4. Keep the defaults for the remaining fields, and then choose Save.

    MediaPackage displays the channel's details page, including the endpoint that you just created.

  5. On the details page for the channel, note the value in the URL field for the endpoint. Provide this information to the person in charge of the downstream device (CDN or player). In the downstream device, this person must enter the request destination as the endpoint's URL.

Step 3: Extract a VOD asset

To extract a live-to-VOD asset from a live content stream, create a harvest job. The harvest job identifies what endpoint the asset is being harvested from, the start and end of the asset, and where MediaPackage saves the asset after it's been harvested.

To create a harvest job

  1. On the Harvest jobs page, choose Create harvest job.

  2. For ID, enter a name that describes the harvest job, such as gamehighlights. The ID is the primary identifier for the job. You can reuse the ID after the harvest job expires from your account. Supported characters are letters, numbers, underscores (_), and dashes (-). You can't use spaces in the ID.

  3. For Origin endpoint, select the endpoint for the live content stream that you're extracting a VOD asset from. The endpoint must serve clear (unencrypted) or encrypted DASH or HLS content. If you want to extract from encrypted live content, see Creating live-to-VOD assets with AWS Elemental MediaPackage.

  4. For Date and time format, keep the default.

  5. For When the live-to-VOD asset begins and When the live-to-VOD asset ends, enter the start and end dates and times for the extracted VOD asset. We recommend that the start time be after the live stream has started and before the current time ("now"). The end time must be in the past.

    Note

    "Now" is the current time according to the EXT-X-PROGRAM-DATE-TIME, when it's present in the source content from the encoder. Therefore, we recommend that the upstream encoder provides an EXT-X-PROGRAM-DATE-TIME tag in the source.

  6. For IAM role ARN, enter the IAM role that allows MediaPackage to write your live-to-VOD asset to your Amazon S3 bucket. For help with the role, see Allowing AWS Elemental MediaPackage to access other AWS services.

  7. For Amazon S3 bucket name, select the Amazon S3 bucket where you want MediaPackage to store the live-to-VOD asset.

  8. For Manifest key, enter the path in the Amazon S3 bucket and identifier for the parent manifest for the live-to-VOD asset. MediaPackage creates a directory based on the path that you enter.

    Important

    The manifest key must be unique. When you use the same manifest key for multiple harvest jobs, the newest playlist for the asset overwrites existing playlists. The only time you should reuse a manifest key is when you are harvesting the same content, such as if there was a problem with a previous harvest of the content.

  9. Choose Create.

When MediaPackage processes the harvest job, it sends a CloudWatch event when the job fails or succeeds. The event includes the details of the harvest job. If the job fails, the event includes information about why. This information is available only in the CloudWatch event. For example events, see Harvest job notification events.

(Optional) Step 4: Output VOD content

To use MediaPackage to make the live-to-VOD asset available for playback, create a packaging group, packaging configuration, and asset resource. The asset ingests the live-to-VOD asset from the Amazon S3 bucket. A packaging group holds one or more packaging configurations, which define the output format and settings.

Create a packaging group

A packaging group holds one or more packaging configurations. The packaging configurations enable you to define what kind of VOD outputs you want. To apply these output definitions, associate a packaging group to multiple assets.

You have 15 pieces of source content. You want to serve them all as DASH, HLS, and encrypted HLS outputs. To do this, you define one packaging group with DASH, HLS, and encrypted HLS packaging configurations. You then associate that group to the asset resources that represent these pieces of content. You don't have to create new configurations for each asset.

MediaPackage doesn't require that you supply any customer data. There are no fields in packaging groups where there is an expectation that you will provide customer data.

To create a packaging group

  1. On the Packaging groups page, choose Create group.

  2. For ID, enter a name that describes the group, such as gamehighlights. The ID is the primary identifier for the group, and must be unique for your account in this AWS Region. Supported characters are letters, numbers, underscores (_), and dashes (-). You can't use spaces in the ID.

  3. Choose Create.

Create a packaging configuration

A packaging configuration specifies how the output manifest is configured, such as stream selection limitations and ordering.

MediaPackage does not require that you supply any customer data. There are no fields in packaging configurations where there is an expectation that you will provide customer data.

To create a packaging configuration

  1. On the Packaging groups page, choose the group that you just created.

  2. On the details page for the packaging group, under Packaging configurations choose Manage configurations.

  3. On the Manage packaging configurations page, choose Add, and then choose New configuration.

  4. For ID, enter a name that describes the configuration, such as hls_highlights. The ID is the primary identifier for the configuration, and must be unique for your account in this AWS Region. Supported characters are letters, numbers, underscores (_), and dashes (-). You can't use spaces in the ID.

  5. Keep the defaults for the remaining fields, and then choose Save.

Create an asset

An asset resource is how AWS Elemental MediaPackage ingests, packages, and serves VOD content. The asset is associated with one or more packaging configurations. Downstream devices send playback requests to specific packaging configurations on the asset.

MediaPackage doesn't require customer data from you, so assets don't include those fields.

To create an asset and ingest source content

  1. From your Amazon S3 buckets, determine what file you're using as source content. Make note of the following:

    • The name of the Amazon S3 bucket where the file is stored

    • The full path for the file, such as S3://bucket/path/source-file-name

    • The IAM role that allows MediaPackage to read from Amazon S3

  2. On the MediaPackage console, go to the Assets page, and then choose Ingest assets.

  3. For Amazon S3 bucket name, choose the bucket where your source content is stored.

  4. For IAM role, choose Use existing role and select the IAM role that allows MediaPackage to read from Amazon S3.

  5. For Filename, enter the full path to either the .smil manifest (MP4) or the .m3u8 parent playlist (HLS) within your Amazon S3 bucket, including the name of the source content. For example, if your content is called lion_movie.m3u8 and is in a subdirectory called thursday_night in a bucket called movies, you would enter the following in the Filename field:

    thursday_night/lion_movie.m3u8

    You don't need to enter the bucket name because you chose it in Amazon S3 bucket name field.

  6. For Packaging group, choose the group that you created in Create a packaging group.

  7. Choose Ingest assets.

Provide playback URLs

After creating the asset resource, AWS Elemental MediaPackage prepares to serve the packaged manifests to viewers. This happens in the background and might take some time depending on the size and complexity of the source content, but is usually less than a few minutes. The URLs of the manifests are available immediately on the asset's details page, but content is not yet available for playback.

After the processing for each manifest is complete, MediaPackage sends an Amazon CloudWatch event to your account.

On the asset, MediaPackage provides a URL for each packaging configuration. This URL is how downstream devices (CDN or playback device) request VOD content from MediaPackage.

To get playback URLs

  1. On the MediaPackage console, go to the Assets page and choose the ID of the asset that you created in Step 4: Create an asset.

  2. On the asset's detail page, get the URL for each packaging configuration.

  3. Provide the URLs to the person in charge of the downstream device (CDN or player). In the downstream device, this person must enter the request destination as the URL from the corresponding packaging configuration.

Each URL is stable. It never changes during the lifetime of the combination of this asset and packaging configuration. Provide the URL to the person in charge of the downstream device (CDN or player). In the downstream device, this person must use the asset's URL as the request destination.

(Optional) Step 5: Monitor MediaPackage activity

Use Amazon CloudWatch to track MediaPackage activity, such as the counts of bytes that MediaPackage has received and sent, response times, and request counts. Metrics are grouped first by the service namespace, and then by the various dimension combinations within each namespace.

To view metrics using the CloudWatch console

  1. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Metrics.

  3. Under All metrics, choose the AWS/MediaPackage namespace.

  4. Select the metric dimension to view the metrics (for example, choose channel to view metrics per channel).

For a list of MediaPackage metrics, see Monitoring AWS Elemental MediaPackage with Amazon CloudWatch metrics.

Step 6: Clean up

To avoid incurring extra charges, delete the resources that you're no longer using.

Note

Harvest jobs automatically expire off your account and can't be manually deleted.

Delete live resources

When you're done ingesting, serving, and harvesting from live content, delete the channel and endpoint. You must delete all endpoints on a channel before you can delete the channel.

To delete an endpoint

  1. On the MediaPackage Channels page, choose the channel that the endpoint is associated with.

  2. On the details page for the channel, under Origin endpoints, select the origin endpoint that you want to delete.

  3. Select Delete.

  4. In the Delete endpoints confirmation dialog box, choose Delete.

To delete a channel

  1. On the Channels page, choose the channel you want to delete.

  2. Choose Delete.

  3. In the Channel delete confirmation dialog box, choose Delete.

    MediaPackage removes the channel and all associated endpoints.

Delete VOD resources

When you're done ingesting and serving VOD content, delete the extra resources. If you want to make a specific output unavailable, delete the packaging configuration from the packaging group. If you want to make an asset no longer available for playback from any outputs, delete the asset.

To delete an asset

  1. On the MediaPackage console, go to the Assets page, and then choose the ID of the asset.

  2. On the asset's details page, choose Delete.

  3. In the confirmation dialog box, choose Delete.

To delete a packaging configuration

  1. On the MediaPackage console, go to the Packaging groups page.

  2. Choose the ID of the group that has the configuration that you want to delete.

  3. On the packaging group's details page, in the Packaging configurations section, locate the configuration and choose its ID.

  4. On the packaging configuration's details page, choose Delete.

  5. In the confirmation dialog box, choose Delete.