Features of AWS Elemental MediaPackage - AWS Elemental MediaPackage

Features of AWS Elemental MediaPackage

MediaPackage supports the following features:

Accessibility support

MediaPackage supports audio and subtitles accessibility signaling for HLS, CMAF, and DASH VOD assets that are created from an HLS source.

  • Audio accessibility signaling supports functionality like Descriptive Voice Services (DVS) to help make media accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired. For example, an audio track might be used to provide an audio description of the scene.

  • Subtitles accessibility signaling helps make media accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. For example, a subtitles track might be used to provide description of music and sound effects in the video.

To enable players to provide accessibility signaling, MediaPackage passes through the EXT-X-MEDIA tag and attributes from the source playlist.

Important

The EXT-X-MEDIA tag must include a CHARACTERISTICS attribute with an appropriate value for accessibility signalling to work.

  • For audio accessibility, the value must be public.accessibility.describes-video.

  • For subtitles accessibility, the value must include one or both of public.accessibility.describes-music-and-sound and public.accessibility.transcribes-spoken-dialog.

Example EXT-X-MEDIA tag with accessibility caption attribute

#EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=SUBTITLES,GROUP-ID="captions-group",NAME="accessibility-captions1",LANGUAGE="eng", CHARACTERISTICS="public.accessibility.describes-spoken-dialog,public.accessibility.describes-music-and-sound",AUTOSELECT=YES,DEFAULT=YES,URI="caption-accessibility-eng.m3u8"

Allow listing

Allow listing is available with only live workflows in MediaPackage.

MediaPackage supports restricting network access to the endpoint. To take advantage of this feature, you must enter the allowed IP addresses on the endpoint. For more information about adding allow listing information, see Access control settings fields.

Audio

MediaPackage supports multi-language audio inputs and the following audio codecs:

  • AAC stereo

  • Dolby AC3 and E-AC3 (Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital+)

MediaPackage accepts these codecs from the input source and passes them through to the output stream.

Important

MediaPackage doesn't support audio-only inputs. The stream configuration from the encoder must include at least one video track.

Captions

Your embedded source captions can be CEA-608 captions, CEA-708 captions, or both CEA-608 and CEA-708. MediaPackage will pass through these captions in the media segments on HLS, CMAF, and DASH endpoints, and generate the appropriate manifest signaling.

Important

Your input HLS playlist must include captions signaling tags. If not present, MediaPackage will not be able to generate the corresponding output manifest signaling.

CDN Authorization

MediaPackage supports content delivery network (CDN) authorization. For information, see CDN authorization in AWS Elemental MediaPackage.

DRM

MediaPackage supports content protection through digital rights management (DRM). For information, see Content encryption and DRM in AWS Elemental MediaPackage.

HLS Rendition Groups

MediaPackage supports rendition groups for incoming and outgoing HLS content. For information about output rendition groups, see Rendition groups reference in AWS Elemental MediaPackage.

Live to VOD

Use the harvest job resource to extract a live-to-VOD (video on demand) asset from a live content stream. MediaPackage creates the asset and stores it in an Amazon S3 bucket. You can use the VOD functionality in MediaPackage to deliver the asset to end users.

Input Redundancy

Input redundancy is available with only live workflows in MediaPackage.

MediaPackage creates two input URLs on every channel so that you can create input redundancy by sending two identical streams to the same channel. For information about how input redundancy works, see Live input redundancy AWS Elemental MediaPackage processing flow.

Subtitles

MediaPackage supports input WebVTT text-based subtitles. MediaPackage translates the subtitles to the appropriate format based on the packager that's used on the endpoint:

  • For HLS and CMAF: WebVTT is passed through

  • For DASH: subtitles are translated to EBU-TT

  • For Microsoft Smooth Streaming: subtitles are translated to DFXP

Time-shift Viewing

Time-shift viewing is available with only live workflows in MediaPackage.

MediaPackage allows playback of a stream at a time earlier than the current time. Start-over, catch-up TV, and time delay are all supported. For more information about setting up time-shift capabilities, see Time-shifted viewing reference in AWS Elemental MediaPackage.

Video

MediaPackage supports the input H.264 video codec and passes it through to the output stream. CMAF endpoints in MediaPackage also support H.265/HEVC and HDR-10, following the Apple specification to applicable playback devices.

Important

MediaPackage requires at least one video track to be present in the stream configuration from the encoder. The service doesn't support audio-only ingest.