VNIS Video Stream ensures that your video streaming will have zero downtime and will scale during demand spikes. This is possible due to VNIS Video Stream’s mid-stream CDN switching and P2P video delivery.
If you are using AWS S3 and MediaConvert, it is possible to improve the availability and scalability of your HLS live stream videos by integrating them with VNIS Video Stream.
The diagram and instructions below will show you how you can do this.
Step 1: Obtain the m3u8 URL from AWS S3
You need to ensure that your video will be transcoded to HLS format. Check this article to learn more about video transcoding and AWS MediaConvert.
Log in to your AWS S3 account, then look for the location of your HLS video files.
Open the main m3u8 file.
On the m3u8 page, copy the URL by clicking the ‘ Copy’ (paper) icon beside the ‘Object URL’ (e.g. https://demobucketname.s3.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com/HLS_videos/e2spy.m3u8).
You will need this m3u8 URL in VNIS Video Stream.
Make sure that all the necessary HLS video files are available for public viewing. Check this article to learn more about the blocking, ACL, and CORS policies of S3.
Step 2: Set up Live Stream in VNIS Stream
To set up a live stream, navigate to ‘ Stream’ > ‘Live Streams’, and then click the ‘Create live stream’ button.
On this page, set the Stream detail info.
The Stream detail info includes:
- Stream source name: a unique name for the stream source (e.g. ss name)
- Protocol: specify the video format/container of the video stream. For now, only HLS is available.
- Origin server: the origin server is where your video streams are hosted. Use the domain name associated to your origin server (e.g. example.com). You may also set this origin as a ‘CDN candidate’ and by doing so, this server will be used together with other CDNs for mid-stream CDN switching.
Next, set the CDN configuration.
The system will recommend you to install 2 Basic CDNs by default, namely Cloudfront and Alibaba Cloud. You may also install additional CDNs depending on your business strategy.
You can add up to a maximum of 10 CDNs per stream source. If you set your origin as a CDN candidate, then your origin will also be counted as 1 CDN.
You may also enable P2P video delivery and/or Domain allowlist.
Finally, click the ‘ Create live stream’ button.
You can follow this article for more details on how to create a Live Stream.
Step 3: Paste the m3u8 URL to the VNIS SDK
After creating a live stream, VNIS Video Stream will generate code snippets.
Go to the ‘ Install & Test’ tab and paste the copied m3u8 URL on the ‘Playlist URL’ field (from AWS S3), and then click the ‘Insert’ button.
This process will insert the m3u8 URL of your target HLS video into the code snippets of the SDK.
You may check the preview of your video on the ‘ Video Preview’ tab and by clicking the ‘Preview’ button.
You can click the ‘ Copy’ button to copy all the code snippets into your streaming app code. You can also open the ‘See our docs’ link, to check more detailed instructions on how to input the code snippets for different players and JS frameworks.
You can follow this article for more details on how to use the code snippets.