How live-to-VOD works - AWS Elemental MediaPackage

How live-to-VOD works

In the processing flow for live-to-VOD (video on demand) content, AWS Elemental MediaPackage extracts a clip of video from a live content stream. MediaPackage saves this clip as a live-to-VOD asset in Amazon S3. You can use the VOD content processing functionality in MediaPackage to deliver the asset to playback devices, or you can use a VOD encoding service that supports HLS or DASH inputs.

Here's an overview of the main steps:

  1. You create a channel and endpoint to ingest a live stream and package it for HLS or DASH output. The endpoint must meet the requirements outlined in Live-to-VOD requirements.

  2. You create a harvest job, which defines the live-to-VOD asset that you're extracting from the live stream. The asset must also meet the requirements outlined in Live-to-VOD Requirements.

  3. MediaPackage harvests the timeframe that you indicated in the harvest job. The asset is segment-accurate. This means that if you have a 6-second segment, and the harvest job has a start time of three seconds into the segment, the asset will start three seconds earlier, at the start of the segment.

    After MediaPackage harvests the asset, it saves the asset in the Amazon S3 bucket that you indicated in the harvest job. MediaPackage creates a directory within that bucket and names the parent manifest based on the information that you provided in the Manifest key on the harvest job. For example, if the manifest key is thursdaynight/highlights/index.m3u8, MediaPackage creates a thursdaynight/highlights directory in your Amazon S3 bucket and names the parent manifest index.m3u8.

    MediaPackage creates a CloudWatch event when the harvest job completes or fails. For information about events for harvest jobs, see Harvest job notification events.

    MediaPackage keeps a read-only reference of the job on your account for 90 days. After 90 days, MediaPackage deletes the record of the job from your account. At this time, if your workflow requires it, you can reuse the identifier from harvest job.

  4. At this point, the live-to-VOD functionality in MediaPackage is complete. The live-to-VOD asset is in your Amazon S3 bucket, and you can do with it what your workflow requires. For example, you can use the VOD functionality in MediaPackage or an encoding service to make the asset available for playback.

Important

Create a new MediaPackage channel to harvest content from when there is a change to the stream in the upstream encoder (such as changes to the stream name, type, or codec). If you don't use a new channel and the start and end times of the harvest job span the change, the harvest could behave in unexpected ways.