AWS provides two live video streaming AWS Solutions to cost-effectively deliver media content to a global audience as part of the AWS Solutions Library. Both of these AWS Solutions build a highly available architecture that delivers a reliable real-time viewing experience. This page provides guidance to help you choose between the two live video streaming AWS Solutions to best fit your business needs.
For additional guidance on choosing the right option for your use case from all the live streaming solutions and services available on AWS, read this blog post.
Which Live Streaming on AWS Solution should I choose?
AWS Elemental MediaLive Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
Customizations
More
Less
Inputs
Supports URL_PULL, RTMP_PUSH, RTMP_PULL, RTP_PUSH, and MediaConnect inputs with redundancy
Supports URL_PULL, RTMP_PUSH, RTP_PUSH, and Elemental Link device with no redundancy
Outputs
Multiple outputs including CMAF, HLS, and DASH for playback support on different players
HLS only
Support for content protection
DRM
N/A
DVR-like features (live rewind, restart, etc.)
Build live-to-VOD workflows
In addition to the two OTT live video streaming solutions, AWS offers Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS) for creating interactive video experiences. Visit the Amazon IVS page to learn more.
Live Streaming on AWS with Amazon S3
Live Streaming on AWS
Live Streaming on AWS with Amazon S3
AWS Solutions overview
The diagram below presents the serverless architecture you can automatically deploy using the solution's implementation guide and accompanying AWS CloudFormation template.
Live Streaming on AWS with Amazon S3 solution architecture
The AWS CloudFormation template launches the AWS products and services necessary to ingest, transcode, and deliver live streaming video.
AWS Elemental MediaLive, ingests an input feed and transcodes your content into one adaptive bitrate (ABR) HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) stream as output.
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) provides a scalable highly available storage bucket to host the encoded segments.
An Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to use the Amazon S3 custom endpoints as its origin. The CloudFront distribution delivers your live stream to viewers with low latency and high transfer speeds.
An Amazon S3 bucket stores the CloudFront logs.
You can configure this solution to ingest Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP), Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP), HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) content, or live video from an AWS Elemental Link device.
The diagram below presents the serverless architecture you can automatically deploy using the solution's implementation guide and accompanying AWS CloudFormation template.
The solution’s AWS CloudFormation template launches the AWS products and services necessary to ingest, transcode, and deliver live streaming video.
AWS Elemental MediaLive, which ingests two input feeds and transcodes your content into two adaptive bitrate (ABR) HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) streams as output.
AWS Elemental MediaPackage ingests the MediaLive ABR output and packages the live stream into HLS, Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), and Common Media Application Format (CMAF) formats that are delivered to three MediaPackage custom endpoints.
An Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to use the MediaPackage custom endpoints as its origin and includes a CDN identifier custom HTTP header to authenticate requests. MediaPackage only fulfills playback requests that are authorized between MediaPackage and CloudFront using the CDN Identifier. This CDN Identifier is created as part of the CloudFormation deployment and securely stored in AWS Secrets Manager.
The CloudFront distribution delivers your live stream to viewers with low latency and high transfer speeds.
A demo HTML preview player is available to help you test the solution. The player is a static website hosted in an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket. Amazon CloudFront is used to restrict access to the solution's website bucket contents.
