How to diagnose AWS Elemental MediaTailor ad insertion flows using debugging

AWS Elemental MediaTailor allows you to serve targeted ads to viewers while maintaining broadcast quality in over-the-top (OTT) video applications. This article explains how it is possible to use the debugging feature of MediaTailor to dive deep into an ad insertion session lifecycle to troubleshoot or visualize what is happening behind the scenes.

The PDF attachment below will explain how to best utilize Amazon CloudWatch Logs, Metrics, Log Insights, and browser tools to dive deep into issues that could be encountered when first adding an ad insertion workflow or when tracking down issues that might arise during day to day operations.

This article assumes that the following are complete.

• A live or on-demand stream in properly configured with SCTE-35 markers present. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/medialive/latest/ug/what-is.html
• MediaTailor is properly configured according to documentation. https://aws.amazon.com/mediatailor/getting-started/
• Identity and Access Management (IAM) permissions are correctly configured to allow MediaTailor to write to CloudWatch logs. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/mediatailor/latest/ug/setting-up-create-non-admin-user.html

Once MediaTailor is active and IAM is configured, logs will begin appearing in the CloudWatch console. Using a combination of the default logs generated by MediaTailor along with the newly-created debugging functionality, it’s now possible to see the entire lifecycle of an ad insertion and playback workflow. Previously, this involved querying logs from various sources and was a time-consuming process. Customers have asked for a simpler process to visualize a workflow spanning multiple services and partners, and we have added the ability to do just that. The following document will dive deeper into how to logs, debugging, and browser tools can work together to provide actionable insight into your ad insertion workflow.

Check out our step-by-step guide here:

How to diagnose AWS Elemental MediaTailor ad insertion flows using debugging

Conclusion

Ad Insertion workflows can become complicated very quickly. Customers have asked us to provide deeper insights into the backend workflow, and we answered with the aforementioned detailed logging. Combining standard logging with use of debug logging can provide the detailed information needed to ensure that all pieces of a workflow are working as designed. Many customers are utilizing this new functionality today to gather insights into multi-origin DAI workflows as well as new customers just jumping into Ad Insertion wishing for more insight during the development process.