Live Streaming With Amazon CloudFront and Adobe Flash Media Server

You can now stream live audio or video through AWS using the Adobe Flash Media Server using a cost-effective pay-as-you-go model that makes uses of Amazon EC2, Amazon CloudFront, and Amazon Route 53, all configured and launched via a single CloudFormation template.

We've used AWS CloudFormation to make the signup and setup process as simple and straightforward as possible. The first step is to actually sign up for AWS CloudFormation. This will give you access to all of the AWS services supported by AWS CloudFormation, but you'll pay only for what you use.

I've outlined the major steps needed to get up and running below. For more information, you'll want to consult our new tutorial, Live Streaming Using Adobe Flash Media Player and Amazon Web Services.

Once you've signed up, you need to order Flash Media Server for your AWS Account by clicking here. After logging in, you can review the subscription fee and other charges before finalizing your order:

Then you need to create a Route 53 hosted zone and an EC2 key pair. The tutorial includes links to a number of Route 53 tools and you can create the key pair using the AWS Management Console.

The next step is to use CloudFormation to create a Live Streaming stack. As you'll see in the documentation, this step makes use of a new feature of the AWS Management Console. It is now possible to construct a URL that will open up the console with a specified CloudFormation template selected and ready to use. Please feel free to take a peek inside the Live Streaming Template to see how it sets up all of the needed AWS resources.

When you initiate the stack creation process you'll need to specify a couple of parameters:

Note that you'll need to specify the name of the Route 53 hosted domain that you set up earlier in the process so that it can be populated with a DNS entry (a CNAME) for the live stream.

The CloudFormation template will create and connect up all of the following:

• An EC2 instance of the specified instance type running the appropriate Flash Media Server AMI and accessible through the given Key Pair. You can, if desired, log in to the instance using the SSH client of your choice.
• An EC2 security group with ports 22, 80, and 1935 open.
• A CloudFront distribution.
• An A record and a CNAME in the hosted domain.

The template will produce the URL of the live stream as output:

The resulting architecture looks like this:

The clients connect to the EC2 instance every 4 seconds to retrieve the manifest.xml file. This is specified in the template and can be modified as needed. You have complete access to the Flash Media Server and you can configured it as desired.

Once you've launched the Flash Media Server, you can install and run the Flash Media Live Encoder on your desktop, connect it up to your video source, and stream live video to your heart's content. After you are done, you can simply delete the entire CloudFormation stack to release all of the AWS resources. In fact, you must do this in order to avoid on-going charges for the AWS resources.

The CloudFormation template specifies the final customizations to be applied to the AMI at launch time. You can easily copy and then edit the script if you need to make low-level changes to the running EC2 instance.

As you can see, it should be easy for you to set up and run your own live streams using the Adobe Flash Media Server and AWS if you start out with our tutorial. What do you think?

Update: The newest version of CloudBerry Explorer includes support for this new feature. Read their blog post to learn more.

-- Jeff;

Comments

[M. David Peterson]

>> What do you think?

In and of itself I think this is absolutely fabulous! And when you factor in @EricS's recent announcement[1] that he's now accepting requests to be a part of the Route53-based EBS zone apex support private beta, all I can feel right now is *LOVE*, *LOVE*, *AWS IS LOVE!!!*

*LOVE* IT! :-)

[1] https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=237781#237781

[ronzensci]

Has this post been written by Jeff Bezos?

[Jeff Barr]

>> Has this post been written by Jeff Bezos?

Nope, I (Jeff Barr) write them!

[Marco]

Hi Jeff,

We were very excited about this when we first heard about it a few months ago, but now that Amazon has released live streaming using CloudFront, we are a bit disappointed with the offering. Namely, we fail to see the advantage of using CloudFront over FMS for AWS. We expected CloudFront to be much simpler to use and that it would be priced similarly to CloudFront for static content.

Actually, it would appear from your tutorial that there are more steps involved in using CloudFront than setting up an FMS server to stream a live event. Also, our understanding is that using CloudFront will actually be a little bit more expensive than doing live streaming directly with FMS (maybe we mis-understood, please feel free to correct).

The only advantage we can see in using CloudFront is the global content distribution using your edge locations. But if you are not YouTube and are only streaming a live event in one region, then this advantage becomes useless.

Can you please tell us your view on what the advantages are of using CloudFront instead of using FMS for AWS directly?

Thank you.

Marco

[John C. Bland II]

Jeff, I mentioned this on Kevin Towes post as well.

This is beautiful but we need to be able to specify dynamic stream names.That would make this a perfect solution.

[Bart]

It seems as if the Flash Media Server AMI instance is not available in Europe (Ireland), this is a bit detrimental for our connections.

[Jeff Barr]

Support requests for this new feature should be directed to the CloudFront Developer Forum at https://forums.aws.amazon.com/forum.jspa?forumID=46 .

[Radek]

Jeff, what program do you use to generate such great looking architecture diagrams? It looks awesome.

[Jeff Barr]

Radek, I do the diagrams with PowerPoint 2010.

[Ola]

Hi Jeff, I am hoping to setup Amazon livestream, can I stream live from Africa.

[Matti]

Hi
is it possible to delay the live stream by 8 hours for my users in singapore so if the user stream at 10pm the users will see the feed which was captured at 2pm

[pablo]

Why does data transfer costs 0.1$ in and 0.15$ out while
EC2 data transfer costs 0$ in and 0.12$ out?

You already charge for FMS per hour so why do you charge again in data transfer?

[Chase]

Any chance this will move to HTML5, mpg4 streaming as opposed to Flash? Flash is not ideal since we'd also like to live stream to mobile devices.

Regards
Chase

[Stefanrichter]

Chase, FMS 4.5 can now target iOS via HLS streaming. However I believe AWS uses FMs 3.5 right now.

Regards,

Stefan

[ben biles]

hi, i have tried fms cloudfront live video with iphone. not working. i tried with osmf player. Stefan, how do you get an iphone ( ios ) device to play a live http stream from FMS 4.5 ? osmf player does'nt appear to even load on an ios device! perhaps I can launch just a single massive fms instance for my event on ec2, but we have above 5,000 possible viwers. I like the AWS price model but as yet its not really working. if you pause the ubload of a live event it takes 8 minuetes to reset. Also I have seen FMS freeze on AWS/cloudfront.
In the end, event people just want a simple flash/http streaming solution for all devices with a pay as you use price structure.

Am i wrong? or is this just not here yet!?

[Luca Accomazzi]

Still waiting for Amazon and Adobe to come up with a solution which marries AWS and HSL. That solution should have been based on FMS 4.5 which was announced in early September 2011. We are getting sad, tired and old here, waiting for its deployment. Is there anybody at the wheel?