Playing VOD Playlist as Live using AWS MediaLive Service

This article will usher you to configure a plurality of VOD content as an input to the media live channel and play them in a sequential looping playback fashion. Before we start with detail on how to configure the media live channel for the VOD playlist, let us quickly understand some of the basic terminology and concepts in AWS MediaLive that we would leverage for this feature.

AWS MediaLive Supports two format of input

AWS Medialive Support Different Input Types

AWS MediaLive Scheduled Action

Using Scheduled Action, the user can perform real-time actions like Input Switch, Pause, etc at different execution modes like Immediate or Fixed time stamp or follow another schedule action once completed.

Now, let’s go step by step to configure the VOD Playlist against a MediaLive channel and enabling enable the sequential looping playback using “awslive-vodplaylist”

“awslive-vodplaylist” is an open-source framework that orchestrates the required resources in AWS cloud to monitor and perform input source switch action dynamically using supplied Vod Assets provisioned on a Medialive channel. It contains three core components…

2. “awslive-lambda-inputswitch”, is a simple lambda function that uses “awslive-inputlopper” to check the channel input state and performs switch function on every call for a Media Live Channel.

3. “awslive-inputlooper”, is an open-source library that is used within “awslive-lambda-inputswitch” for checking the Channel input state and perform the required scheduled action for the smooth transition from one Vod input to the other. More details on this library are available in the below URL.

Step 1: Identify List of Assets

Identify the List of Vod Assets that you like to associate with the MediaLive Channel. The asset URL should follow the below rules.

Step 2: Create Inputs in AWS MediaLive

Create two Inputs, one with Static MP4 Input and another holding Dynamic MP4 Input. The reason for provisioning one static and one dynamic is primarily to satisfy the limitation where AWS MEdialive supports the first input switch from Static to Dynamic input.

The static input can be a dummy MP4 with a black screen with a shorter duration. The dynamic input shall be used for configuring multiple Vod Assets and its sequential looping playback.

Step 3: Create a Channel & Associate the Inputs created

Make sure each input is configured with “Source End Behavior” as “CONTINUE” to support switching from one input to the other.

Step 4: Provision a tag “playlist”

Provision a Tag value “playlist” with the list of selected Vod assets URL separated with a “=” delimiter. You can mix S3, HTTP, or HTTPS URLs in the playlist.

Step 6: Deploy the “awslive-vodplaylist” on AWS Cloud

You can use Terraform based deployment

To un deploy “awslive-vodplaylist”

Please check if the following resources are created.

Step 6: Start the MediaLive Channel

Once the MediaLive channel is started, you will find the supplied plurality of VOD assets playing one after the other in a loopback fashion.

Below is the sample video on how the playback transition looks like between the supplied VOD assets and in parallel how the scheduled actions are created dynamically to achieve this feature.

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