Delivering streaming video at scale with high availability, security, and performance is a challenge for many large organizations. In this session, learn how Amazon Video was able to build one of the world's largest video delivery platforms using multiple AWS services such as Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Elastic MapReduce. We walk you through a comprehensive architecture and workflow for how Amazon Video is able to process and deliver video content to more than a million different devices every day. We also discuss how Amazon Video and CloudFront worked together to build the next generation of CloudFront edge locations optimized for long-tail and high bit-rate video delivery.

1. © 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

2. MinutesViewedperCustomer
High Reliability =
No re-buffering
Low Reliability =
Frequent re-buffering
Why is QoS so important to the business?

3. 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

4. A Quick Primer on Streaming

5. Media streaming workflow
Media processing and delivery functions
Ingest Transcode
Process /
Store
Deliver 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

6. How was the media workflow implemented
traditionally?

7. How has the cloud changed the media workflow
implementation?
AWS Direct
Connect
Elastic Load
Balancing
AWS Import/
Export
Amazon
S3
AWS Storage
Gateway
Amazon
EBS
Amazon
CloudFront
Amazon
CloudSearch Amazon
SQS
Amazon
Elastic
Transcoder
Amazon
EC2
Amazon
EMR
Amazon
VPC
Ingest/Create Store
Amazon
RDS Amazon
ElastiCache
Amazon
Route 53
DeliverProcess
Amazon
EC2
Partner Solutions
Measure
Amazon
EMR
Amazon
Redshift

8. Quality: What is it?

9. Different use cases make different trade-offs
Errors
Average bit
rate
Rebuffers
Time to
first frame

10. 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

11. CASE STUDY:

12. AV: Overview
Amazon Video: watch
anytime, anywhere
Amazon:
a brand that
customers
trust
Subscription
service plus
buy or rent
Exclusive
& Original
content

13. Amazon Originals: Sizzle reel

14. Premium video: the core of
what we’re offering
AV: Overview
Tradeoffs
become
important

15. Premium video: the core of
what we’re offering
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

16. Premium video: the core of
what we’re offering
AV: Overview
Tradeoffs
become
important
Measuring
& improving
playback

17. Premium video: the core of
what we’re offering
AV: Overview
Tradeoffs
become
important
Measuring
& improving
playback
Customer
trust

18. Premium video: the core of
what we’re offering
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

19. Premium video: delivering
reliably at scale
Scale & Complexity

20. # of customers
Tens of Millions
Scale & Complexity

21. # of devices
500+
Scale & Complexity

22. # of end-user networks
23,000
Scale & Complexity

23. # of titles
600,000+
Scale & Complexity

24. # of encodes
5.4 Million+
Scale & Complexity

25. # of fragments
50 Billion
Scale & Complexity

26. Challenges
Key challenge:
Deliver premium video reliably over an inherently unreliable
network to hundreds of devices at various specs

27. 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

28. Challenges
2009: The early days
Poor insight
into network
congestion
Low CDN cache
hit ratios
No feedback
loop

29. Solutions
Solutions
Measure1 2 3Improve/Act Close the
feedback
loop

30. Measuring the
customer experience
Different devices,
different
implementations,
no simple plugin
1
Solutions

31. Solutions
1
MinutesViewedperCustomer
High Reliability =
No re-buffering
Low Reliability =
Frequent re-buffering

32. Solutions
Video Player2
Concurrent
downloads to
maximize
throughput
Adaptive
playback
CDN
switching
DNS failure
Client knows
to fall back to
other CDNs

33. 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

34. Solutions

35. Solutions

36. Solutions

37. Then > Now
Reduced the percent of
streams with playback
defects by 87% while traffic
has grown by 270x
Results:

38. 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
AmazonVideoCustomers
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 Redshift
Amazon EC2
Amazon SWFAmazon EC2
Prime Video
Japan
Prime Video
UK & Germany
CloudFront
Then > Now

39. Improving Amazon CloudFront
Media Delivery Capabilities

40. 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
%ofSessionswithouterrorsand
rebuffers
Other CDNs

41. 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.

42. 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

43. Benefits
Benefits
Direct peering
with major ISPs in
multiple internet
exchange
facilities
Improved
Throughput
Better Caching Lower Costs
Petabytes of content
storage at the edge
Decouples storage
from network
capacity; scale each
separately as
demand warrants

44. Results: Amazon CloudFront winning traffic where we
have deployed new sites and raised the bar on quality
CloudFront Traffic GrowthCloudFront QoS Improvements
week1
week3
week5
week7
week9
week11
week13
week15
week17
week19
week21
week23
week25
week27
week29
week31
week33
week35
week37
PeakThroughput(Gbps)
Peak Throughput of Amazon Video
served via CloudFront
week1
week3
week5
week7
week9
week11
week13
week15
week17
week19
week21
week23
week25
week27
week29
week31
week33
week35
week37
%ofSessionswithouterrorsand
rebuffers
Quality of Service of Amazon Video served
via CloudFront

45. Results: Dramatically improve performance on long tail
portion of content
High Popularity Titles Lower Popularity Titles
%ofSessionswithouterrorsand
rebuffers
CloudFront Other CDNs

46. Our relationship with AV also influenced other media
streaming specific improvements to Amazon CloudFront
Intelligent 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 Fragments
Media
Fragments
Built support for requesting a dynamically
generated manifest to optimize bitrate
availability based on device to improve
quality of playback.
.m3u8

47. AWS Digital Media Customers
NASA/JPL

48. Perfecting the Video Experience

49. Elemental - pioneers in software-defined video
solutions for multiscreen content delivery

50. in the cloud
in between
(hybrid)
on premise
VIDEO PROCESSING VIDEO DELIVERY
a
a
a
Software built for the future of video

51. Elemental Live and Server, THX Certified
5
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

52. Perfecting the media experience for top brands
Pay TV Operators Content Owners Broadcast / Sports / Other
*Sample listing of disclosed media customers

53. MinutesViewedperCustomer
High
Reliability
=
No re-
buffering
Low Reliability =
Frequent re-
buffering
Parting thoughts
High Popularity Titles Lower Popularity Titles
%ofSessionswithouterrors
andrebuffers
CloudFront Other
CDNs

54. Related Sessions
Content 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

55. Thank you!

56. Remember to complete
your evaluations!