Title

AWS re:Invent 2023 - Live video streaming with Amazon CloudFront and Peacock (NET328)

Summary

• Tal Shalom, a principal product manager for Amazon CloudFront, and Simon Rice, Senior VP of Solution Architecture at NBCUniversal, discuss the architecture and challenges of live streaming at scale with Peacock.
• The session covers the importance of low latency, high quality, and uninterrupted streaming for live events like sports.
• Over-the-top (OTT) streaming has evolved to offer personalized experiences and is now comparable to traditional broadcast in terms of latency.
• Key factors impacting viewer experience include video start failures, interruptions, image distortion, and audio-video sync issues.
• AWS's network and services like Elemental Media Live and CloudFront are used to manage live events and deliver content with low latency.
• Simon Rice explains Peacock's global streaming platform, which includes services for video asset management, authentication, content discovery, personalization, ad tech, and data analytics.
• Peacock's CDN decisioning solution helps optimize CDN usage based on telemetry data from client devices and CDN reliability statistics.
• The ad transcode pipeline is a flexible architecture used by Peacock for personalized and innovative ad insertion.
• Testing, chaos engineering, and AWS's infrastructure event management service are crucial for preparing and managing live events.
• Tal Shalom discusses caching configurations, origin failover strategies, and the use of embedded POPs to improve viewer experience.
• The session concludes with the importance of planning, security, observability, and monetization for successful live event delivery.

Insights

• The shift from traditional broadcast to OTT streaming has led to a need for more sophisticated delivery networks to handle personalized streams and maintain high quality.
• The AWS network's redundancy and global edge locations are critical for delivering content at scale and managing spikes in viewer demand.
• Peacock's use of AWS services demonstrates the importance of a robust backend infrastructure to support live streaming, including the ability to predict load and manage traffic distribution.
• The CDN decisioning solution used by Peacock highlights the need for real-time data analysis and the ability to quickly adapt to changing network conditions to maintain stream quality.
• The ad transcode pipeline showcases how cloud-based architectures can be leveraged for dynamic and personalized ad insertion, which is essential for monetization strategies in streaming services.
• The discussion on caching settings and origin failover strategies provides insight into the technical considerations necessary to ensure a high-quality viewer experience during live events.
• The media event management team offered by AWS is a valuable resource for companies looking to deliver large-scale live events, providing expertise in planning, risk management, and real-time support.
• The session emphasizes the importance of early engagement with AWS teams to leverage their services and expertise for successful event delivery, as demonstrated by Peacock's experience with AWS in launching services in new regions.