Delivering live streaming video with CloudFront and AWS Media Services - Amazon CloudFront
Serving video using AWS Elemental MediaStore as the originServing live video formatted with AWS Elemental MediaPackage

Delivering live streaming video with CloudFront and AWS Media Services

To use AWS Media Services with CloudFront to deliver live content to a global audience, follow the guidance included in this section.

Use AWS Elemental MediaLive to encode live video streams in real time. To encode a large video stream, MediaLive compresses it into smaller versions (encodes) that can be distributed to your viewers.

After you compress a live video stream, you can use either of the following two main options to prepare and serve the content:

  • Convert your content into required formats, and then serve it: If you require content in multiple formats, use AWS Elemental MediaPackage to package the content for different device types. When you package the content, you can also implement extra features and add digital rights management (DRM) to prevent unauthorized use of your content. For step-by-step instructions for using CloudFront to serve content that MediaPackage formatted, see Serving live video formatted with AWS Elemental MediaPackage.

  • Store and serve your content using scalable origin: If MediaLive encoded content in the formats required by all of the devices that your viewers use, use a highly scalable origin like AWS Elemental MediaStore to serve the content. For step-by-step instructions for using CloudFront to serve content that is stored in a MediaStore container, see Serving video using AWS Elemental MediaStore as the origin.

After you’ve set up your origin by using one of these options, you can distribute live streaming video to viewers by using CloudFront.

Tip

You can learn about an AWS solution that automatically deploys services for building a highly available real-time viewing experience. To see the steps to automatically deploy this solution, see Live Streaming Automated Deployment.

Serving video using AWS Elemental MediaStore as the origin

If you have video stored in an AWS Elemental MediaStore container, you can create a CloudFront distribution to serve the content.

To get started, you grant CloudFront access to your MediaStore container. Then you create a CloudFront distribution and configure it to work with MediaStore.

To serve content from an AWS Elemental MediaStore container

  1. Follow the procedure at Allowing Amazon CloudFront to access your AWS Elemental MediaStore container, and then return to these steps to create your distribution.

  2. Create a distribution with the following settings:

    Origin domain

    The data endpoint that is assigned to your MediaStore container. From the dropdown list, choose the MediaStore container for your live video.

    Origin path

    The folder structure in the MediaStore container where your objects are stored. For more information, see Origin path.

    Add custom header

    Add header names and values if you want CloudFront to add custom headers when it forwards requests to your origin.

    Viewer protocol policy

    Choose Redirect HTTP to HTTPS. For more information, see Viewer protocol policy.

    Cache policy and origin request policy

    For Cache policy, choose Create policy, and then create a cache policy that’s appropriate for your caching needs and segment durations. After you create the policy, refresh the list of cache policies and choose the policy that you just created.

    For Origin request policy, choose CORS-CustomOrigin from the dropdown list.

    For the other settings, you can set specific values based on other technical requirements or the needs of your business. For a list of all the options for distributions and information about setting them, see Distribution settings reference.

  3. For links in your application (for example, a media player), specify the name of the media file in the same format that you use for other objects that you’re distributing using CloudFront.

Serving live video formatted with AWS Elemental MediaPackage

If you formatted a live stream by using AWS Elemental MediaPackage, you can create a CloudFront distribution and configure cache behaviors to serve the live stream. The following process assumes that you have already created a channel and added endpoints for your live video using MediaPackage.

To create a CloudFront distribution for MediaPackage manually, follow these steps:

Step 1: Create and configure a CloudFront distribution

Complete the following procedure to set up a CloudFront distribution for the live video channel that you created with MediaPackage.

To create a distribution for your live video channel

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the CloudFront console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/v4/home.

  2. Choose Create distribution.

  3. Choose the settings for the distribution, including the following:

    Origin domain

    The origin where your MediaPackage live video channel and endpoints are. Choose the text field, then from the dropdown list, choose the MediaPackage origin domain for your live video. You can map one domain to several origin endpoints.

    If you created your origin domain using another AWS account, type the origin URL value into the field. The origin must be an HTTPS URL.

    For example, for an HLS endpoint like https://3ae97e9482b0d011.mediapackage.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/out/v1/abc123/index.m3u8, the origin domain is 3ae97e9482b0d011.mediapackage.us-west-2.amazonaws.com.

    For more information, see Origin domain.

    Origin path

    The path to the MediaPackage endpoint from where the content is served.

    The Origin path field is not filled in for you. You must manually enter the correct origin path.

    For more information about how an origin path works, see Origin path.

    Important

    The wildcard path * is required to route somewhere in the CloudFront distribution. To prevent requests not matching an explicit path from routing to the real origin, create a "dummy" origin for that wildcard path.

    Example : Creating a "dummy" origin

    In the following example, the endpoints abc123 and def456 route to the "real" origin, but requests for any other endpoint's video content route to mediapackage.us-west-2.amazonaws.com without the proper subdomain, which results in an HTTP 404 error.

    MediaPackage endpoints:

    https://3ae97e9482b0d011.mediapackage.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/out/v1/abc123/index.m3u8
https://3ae97e9482b0d011.mediapackage.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/out/v1/def456/index.m3u8

    CloudFront Origin A:

    Domain: 3ae97e9482b0d011.mediapackage.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
Path: None

    CloudFront Origin B:

    Domain: mediapackage.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
Path: None

    CloudFront cache behavior:

    1. Path: /out/v1/abc123/* forward to Origin A
2. Path: /out/v1/def456/* forward to Origin A
3. Path: * forward to Origin B

    For the other distribution settings, set specific values based on other technical requirements or the needs of your business. For a list of all the options for distributions and information about setting them, see Distribution settings reference.

    When you finish choosing the other distribution settings, choose Create distribution.

  4. Choose the distribution that you just created, then choose Behaviors.

  5. Select the default cache behavior, then choose Edit. Specify the correct cache behavior settings for the channel that you chose for the origin. Later, you’ll add one or more additional origins and edit cache behavior settings for them.

  6. Go to the CloudFront distributions page.

  7. Wait until the value of the Last modified column for your distribution has changed from Deploying to a date and time, indicating that CloudFront has created your distribution.

Step 2: Add Origins for the domains of your MediaPackage endpoints

Repeat the steps here to add each of your MediaPackage channel endpoints to your distribution, keeping in mind the need to create a "dummy" origin.

To add other endpoints as origins

  1. On the CloudFront console, choose the distribution that you created for your channel.

  2. Choose Origins, then choose Create origin.

  3. For Origin domain, in the dropdown list, choose a MediaPackage endpoint for your channel.

  4. For the other settings, set the values based on other technical requirements or the needs of your business. For more information, see Origin settings.

  5. Choose Create origin.

Step 3: Configure cache behaviors for all endpoints

For each endpoint, you must configure cache behaviors to add path patterns that route requests correctly. The path patterns that you specify depend on the video format that you’re serving. The following procedure includes the path pattern information to use for Apple HLS, CMAF, DASH, and Microsoft Smooth Streaming formats.

You typically set up two cache behaviors for each endpoint:

  • The parent manifest, which is the index to your files.

  • The segments, which are the files of the video content.

To create a cache behavior for an endpoint

  1. On the CloudFront console, choose the distribution that you created for your channel.

  2. Choose Behaviors, then choose Create behavior.

  3. For Path pattern, use a specific MediaPackage OriginEndpoint GUID as a path prefix.

    Path patterns

    For an HLS endpoint like https://3ae97e9482b0d011.mediapackage.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/out/v1/abc123/index.m3u8, create the following two cache behaviors:

    • For parent and child manifests, use /out/v1/abc123/*.m3u8.

    • For the content segments, use /out/v1/abc123/*.ts.

    For a CMAF endpoint like https://3ae97e9482b0d011.mediapackage.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/out/v1/abc123/index.m3u8, create the following two cache behaviors:

    • For parent and child manifests, use /out/v1/abc123/*.m3u8.

    • For the content segments, use /out/v1/abc123/*.mp4.

    For a DASH endpoint like https://3ae97e9482b0d011.mediapackage.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/out/v1/abc123/index.mpd, create the following two cache behaviors:

    • For the parent manifest, use /out/v1/abc123/*.mpd.

    • For the content segments, use /out/v1/abc123/*.mp4.

    For a Microsoft Smooth Streaming endpoint like https://3ae97e9482b0d011.mediapackage.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/out/v1/abc123/index.ism, only a manifest is served, so you create only one cache behavior: out/v1/abc123/index.ism/*.

  4. For each cache behavior, specify values for the following settings:

    Viewer protocol policy

    Choose Redirect HTTP to HTTPS.

    Cache policy and origin request policy

    For Cache policy, choose Create policy. For your new cache policy, specify the following settings:

    Minimum TTL

    Set to 5 seconds or less, to help prevent serving stale content.

    Query strings

    For Query strings (in Cache key settings), choose Include specified query strings. For Allow, add the following values by typing them and then choosing Add item:

    • Add m as a query string parameter that you want CloudFront to use as the basis for caching. The MediaPackage response always includes the tag ?m=### to capture the modified time of the endpoint. If content is already cached with a different value for this tag, CloudFront requests a new manifest instead of serving the cached version.

    • If you’re using the time-shifted viewing functionality in MediaPackage, specify start and end as additional query string parameters on the cache behavior for manifest requests (*.m3u8, *.mpd, and index.ism/*). This way, content is served that’s specific to the requested time period in the manifest request. For more information about time-shifted viewing and formatting content start and end request parameters, see Time-shifted viewing in the AWS Elemental MediaPackage User Guide.

    • If you’re using the manifest filtering feature in MediaPackage, specify aws.manifestfilter as an additional query string parameter for the cache policy that you use with the cache behavior for manifest requests (*.m3u8, *.mpd, and index.ism/*). This configures your distribution to forward the aws.manifestfilter query string to your MediaPackage origin, which is required for the manifest filtering feature to work. For more information, see Manifest filtering in the AWS Elemental MediaPackage User Guide.

    • If you're using low-latency HLS (LL-HLS), specify _HLS_msn and _HLS_part as additional query string parameters for the cache policy that you use with the cache behavior for manifest requests (*.m3u8). This configures your distribution to forward the _HLS_msn and _HLS_part query strings to your MediaPackage origin, which is required for the LL-HLS blocking playlist request feature to work.

  5. Choose Create.

  6. After you create the cache policy, go back to the cache behavior creation workflow. Refresh the list of cache policies, and choose the policy that you just created.

  7. Choose Create behavior.

  8. If your endpoint is not a Microsoft Smooth Streaming endpoint, repeat these steps to create a second cache behavior.

Step 4: Enable header-based MediaPackage CDN Authorization

We recommend enabling header-based MediaPackage CDN Authorization between MediaPackage endpoints and the CloudFront distribution. For more information, see Enable CDN authorization in MediaPackage in the AWS Elemental MediaPackage User Guide.

Step 5: Use CloudFront to serve the live stream channel

After you create the distribution, add the origins, create the cache behaviors, and enable header-based CDN authorization, you can serve the live stream channel using CloudFront. CloudFront routes requests from viewers to the correct MediaPackage endpoints based on the settings that you configured for the cache behaviors.

For links in your application (for example, a media player), specify the URL for the media file in the standard format for CloudFront URLs. For more information, see Customizing the URL format for files in CloudFront.