(spot209) raising the bar on video streaming quality using aws

© 2015, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.

Prasad Kalyanaraman, VP AWS Edge Services

Jim Freeman, VP Amazon Video

October 7, 2015

Raising the Bar on Video Streaming Quality by

Utilizing AWS

Amazon Video Case Study

SPOT 209

Min

ute

s V

iew

ed

pe

r C

us

tom

er

High Reliability =

No re-buffering

Low Reliability =

Frequent re-buffering

Why is QoS so important to the business?

What to Expect from the Session

Learn what video quality means and how it’s measured

Understand how Amazon Video ensures customers get

the best possible video quality

See how AWS helps Amazon Video achieve their goals

A Quick Primer on Streaming

Media streaming workflow

Media processing and delivery functions

Ingest TranscodeProcess /

StoreDeliver Analyze

Mezzanine Files

Contribution Feeds

Multi Protocol

Single Codec

Integration

Media Fragments

Manifests

Players

Derivatives

Recordings

Cache

Usage Analytics

Security Feedback

Prepare Assets for Multiscreen Deliver Assets and Measure

How was the media workflow implemented

traditionally?

How has the cloud changed the media workflow

implementation?

AWS Direct

Connect

Elastic Load

Balancing

AWS Import/

Export

Amazon

S3AWS Storage

Gateway

Amazon

EBS

Amazon

CloudFront

Amazon

CloudSearch Amazon

SQS

Amazon

Elastic

Transcoder

Amazon

EC2Amazon

EMRAmazon

VPC

Ingest/Create Store

Amazon

RDS Amazon

ElastiCacheAmazon

Route 53

DeliverProcess

Amazon

EC2

Partner Solutions

Measure

Amazon

EMR

Amazon

Redshift

Quality: What is it?

Different use cases make different trade-offs

ErrorsAverage bit

rate

RebuffersTime to

first frame

Combine multiple sources of data to get a full

picture

Origin CDN Players / Devices

• 4xx errors

• 5xx errors

• Requests per

minute

• Cache hit/miss

• Network

congestion (to

origin and to

player)

• Rebuffer events

• Fatal error events

• Average bitrate

• Time to first frame

CASE STUDY:

AV: Overview

Amazon Video: watch

anytime, anywhere

Amazon:

a brand that

customers

trust

Subscription

service plus

buy or rent

Exclusive

& Original

content

Amazon Originals: Sizzle reel

Premium video: the core of

what we’re offering

AV: Overview

Tradeoffs

become

important



AV: Overview

Tradeoffs

become

important

Reliability

Playback

start time

Video

quality

Priority of Tradeoffs

We invent new technologies to

push the boundary where these

tradeoffs must be made.

1

23



AV: Overview

Tradeoffs

become

important

Measuring

& improving

playback



AV: Overview

Tradeoffs

become

important

Measuring

& improving

playback

Customer

trust



AV: Overview

Tradeoffs

become

important

Measuring

& improving

playback

Customer

trust

We noticed that you

experienced poor video

playback while watching the

following rental on Amazon

Video On Demand:

Casablanca. We’re sorry for

the inconvenience and have

issued you a refund for the

following amount: $2.99. We

hope to see you again soon.

- Amazon Letter to Shareholders 2013

Premium video: delivering

reliably at scale

Scale & Complexity

# of customers

Tens of Millions

Scale & Complexity

# of devices

500+

Scale & Complexity

# of end-user networks

23,000

Scale & Complexity

# of titles

600,000+

Scale & Complexity

# of encodes

5.4 Million+

Scale & Complexity

# of fragments

50 Billion

Scale & Complexity

Challenges

Key challenge:Deliver premium video reliably over an inherently unreliable

network to hundreds of devices at various specs

Challenges

2009: The early days

Lack of

customer

metrics with

quantifiable

business

impact

Basic

handling of

degradation

and failure

scenarios

Many

devices,

each

worked

differently

Challenges

2009: The early days

Poor insight

into network

congestion

Low CDN cache

hit ratios

No feedback

loop

Solutions

Solutions

Measure1 2 3Improve/Act Close the

feedback

loop

Measuring the

customer experience

Different devices,

different

implementations,

no simple plugin

1

Solutions

Solutions

1

Min

ute

s V

iew

ed

pe

r C

us

tom

er

High Reliability =

No re-buffering

Low Reliability =

Frequent re-buffering

Solutions

Video Player2

Concurrent

downloads to

maximize

throughput

Adaptive

playback

CDN

switching

DNS failure

Client knows

to fall back to

other CDNs

3

Solutions

CDN Balancer

A problem

identified by

one group of

customers

is a problem

avoided for

other groups

Avoid even

having to

exercise

recovery logic

Solutions

Then > Now

Reduced the percent of

streams with playback

defects by 87% while traffic

has grown by 270x

Results:

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Am

azo

n V

ideo

Cu

sto

mers

Web Services (Purchasing, Catalog,

Vending, etc.)

Content Delivery

Telemetry Storage

Video Transcoding

using AWS

Content Origin

Storage

Amazon Video

Japan

Prime Video

Austria

Amazon Originals

Amazon S3

Amazon RedshiftAmazon EC2

Amazon SWFAmazon EC2

Prime Video

Japan

Prime Video

UK & Germany

CloudFront

Then > Now

Improving Amazon CloudFront

Media Delivery Capabilities

AV’s Long Tail Demand Profile Presents a Challenge to

CDNs

95%10%

Video Catalog Video Streams

5%90%

Video Catalog Video Streams

Short head (blockbuster, widely popular, short lived)

Long tail (blockbuster in a niche, narrowly popular,

popular in the past)

High Popularity Titles Lower Popularity Titles

% o

f S

essio

ns w

ith

ou

t err

ors

an

d

reb

uff

ers

Other CDNs

Why the traditional CDN doesn’t work for long tail

media?

Limited storage at

the edge

Least recently

used eviction

policy

Media files are big

and getting bigger

Does well with popular

content (e.g., movies

requested multiple times

per day).

Less popular content suffer

from cache misses, which

result in poorer playback

experience.

Solution: Build Infrastructure Optimized for

Throughput and Storage

Interconnect

Fabric

Internal Network Layer

Tiered Caching Layer

Border

Transit / Peers

Interconnect

Fabric

Border

Transit / Peers

Large-

Object Store

Large-

Object Store

Large-

Object Store

AWS

Backbone

Transit/Peer Layer

AWS Backbone

Benefits

Benefits

Direct peering

with major ISPs in

multiple internet

exchange

facilities

Improved

ThroughputBetter Caching Lower Costs

Petabytes of content

storage at the edge

Decouples storage

from network

capacity; scale each

separately as

demand warrants

Results: Amazon CloudFront winning traffic where we

have deployed new sites and raised the bar on quality

CloudFront Traffic GrowthCloudFront QoS Improvements

we

ek 1

we

ek 3

we

ek 5

we

ek 7

we

ek 9

we

ek 1

1

we

ek 1

3

we

ek 1

5

we

ek 1

7

we

ek 1

9

we

ek 2

1

we

ek 2

3

we

ek 2

5

we

ek 2

7

we

ek 2

9

we

ek 3

1

we

ek 3

3

we

ek 3

5

we

ek 3

7

Peak T

hro

ug

hp

ut

(Gb

ps

)

Peak Throughput of Amazon Video served via CloudFront

we

ek 1

we

ek 3

we

ek 5

we

ek 7

we

ek 9

we

ek 1

1

we

ek 1

3

we

ek 1

5

we

ek 1

7

we

ek 1

9

we

ek 2

1

we

ek 2

3

we

ek 2

5

we

ek 2

7

we

ek 2

9

we

ek 3

1

we

ek 3

3

we

ek 3

5

we

ek 3

7

% o

f S

essio

ns w

ith

ou

t err

ors

an

d

reb

uff

ers

Quality of Service of Amazon Video served via CloudFront

Results: Dramatically improve performance on long tail

portion of content


% o

f S

essio

ns w

ith

ou

t err

ors

an

d

reb

uff

ers

CloudFront Other CDNs

Our relationship with AV also influenced other media

streaming specific improvements to Amazon CloudFrontIntelligent Pre-fetching

5 Mbps

2.5 Mbps

1 Mbps

512 Kbps

256 Kbps

Dynamic Manifest Support

CloudFront

Edge

Pre-fetch video fragments into cache at

the requested and adjacent bitrates to

reduce cache misses.

AV URL Vending

Service

Dynamic Manifest

Service

Media FragmentsMedia

Fragments

Built support for requesting a dynamically

generated manifest to optimize bitrate

availability based on device to improve

quality of playback.

.m3u8

AWS Digital Media Customers

NASA/JPL

Perfecting the Video Experience

Elemental - pioneers in software-defined video

solutions for multiscreen content delivery

in the cloud

in between (hybrid)

on premise

VIDEO PROCESSING VIDEO DELIVERY

aa

a

Software built for the future of video

Elemental Live and Server, THX Certified

5

1

THX Digital Cinema HD Video Encoder Certification

Robust testing to asses video quality

• 46 critical test points over 6 categories

• Includes machine testing and golden eye testing

• Certification based on H.264 at 1080p30

Elemental Live is the only certified real-time encoder

Perfecting the media experience for top brandsPay TV Operators Content Owners Broadcast / Sports / Other

*Sample listing of disclosed media customers

Min

ute

s V

iew

ed

per

Cu

sto

me

r

High

Reliability

=

No re-

buffering

Low Reliability =

Frequent re-

buffering

Parting thoughts


% o

f S

essio

ns w

ith

ou

t err

ors

an

d r

eb

uff

ers

CloudFront Other

CDNs

Related SessionsContent Delivery

SPOT209 - Raising the Bar on Video Streaming Quality Using AWS: Amazon

Video Case Study (CloudFront case study)

STG205 - Secure Content Delivery Using Amazon CloudFront

STG206 - Using Amazon CloudFront to Improve the Performance, Availability,

and Cacheability of Your Website or Application

Amazon Route 53

NET308 - Consolidating DNS Data in the Cloud with Amazon Route 53

DDoS Mitigation

SEC306 - Defending Against DDoS Attacks

Thank you!

Remember to complete

your evaluations!

(spot209) raising the bar on video streaming quality using aws

Technology