In this session, learn how Hulu launched a new Live TV service and Cloud DVR platform using Amazon CloudFront, Amazon S3, Amazon Aurora, and Amazon EC2 to enable the necessary scale for live video ingest, storage, and delivery of content streams. Learn best practices for geographic redundancy, index and naming challenges, hitting performance targets, optimizing for cost, and measuring the user experience to ensure smooth playback for when you build your own video streaming solution.

1. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Case Study:
How Hulu reinvented Television
using the AWS Cloud
B e r t r a n d D a r n a u l t – S r . E n g i n e e r i n g M a n a g e r , H u l u
N o v e m b e r 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

2. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
ABOUT HULU
OFFERING
HISTORY
CULTURE
V O D & L I V E T V , A N Y W H E R E

3. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Hulu’s offerings are simple - All your TV in one
place
Hulu with Live TVHulu Subscription
• Subscription Video-
On-Demand (SVOD)
with ads
• Subscription Video-
On-Demand (SVOD)
no ads
• Premium add-ons
$7.99/
month
$11.99/
month
• Digital MVPD with
SVOD
$39.99/
month

4. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
We started in 2007, focused on creating unique
experience
Ad-Supported
VOD service,
desktop only
SVOD ad-
supported, more
content and
devices
Subscription
VOD ad-free
option added
LIVE TV launch
Hulu
2007
2007 201720162010
2016 20172010
Day After TV
You Tube TV
Premium add-ons
2013

5. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Before launching our live service:
• Pure dev-ops culture
• No dedicated 24/7 tech/network/broadcast
operations teams
• Everything running out of our data centers
We are a technology company first
Small, lean, young, creative, workforce
• ~260 engineers in 2014, now ~630
Almost everything built in-house:
• content management system
• transcoding farms
• advertising server and workflow tooling
• big data pipeline
• financial reporting tools
• recommendations platform
• billing & subscription management
systems
• teleconferencing service
• purchase order management system

6. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
LIVE TV REINVENTED
LIVE TV INNOVATION @ HULU
OVERVIEW OF LIVE TV
TV EXPERIENCE
CHALLENGES
A U N I Q U E U S E R E X P E R I E N C E

7. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Traditional Live TV Broadcast Hulu Live TV
At Hulu, we reinvented what Live TV is

8. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
We consolidate contents from over 1000
channels, push them to AWS and distribute
Over 1000 linear channels today Live or On-Demand
• Store linear assets
• Store Hulu’s SVOD library
Distribution

9. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Many channels and devices to OneOne to Many
Real-time, personalized experience
A la VOD user experience
B e fore , TV was one stre am to many vie we rs.
T oday, we se rve mu ltip le stre ams to one u se r.

10. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Discover relevant content
• Personalized list of *programs*
• Browse programs by category (ex:
sports, network)
Manage delivery of ads
• Freeze controls (no ad skipping)
• Ad countdown timer
• Dynamic ad insertion (to come)
1
2
Personalization and ad-control are key elements
for Live Linear Over-the-Top (OTT) user experience

11. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
5 main challenges with delivering Live TV
Program
Content Content
National
Ad
Local
Ad
Local
Ad
Local
Ad
1
Content Security
Commercial DRM
on all devices
2 Large scale DASH
live rollout
3 Multi-source Configuration
500 Days
4 # of days to launch
the Live service
5
Use of linear ad markers
Prevent ad skipping
One of the earliest
LIVE deployment –
one of the first in the
industry

12. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
LIVE TV IN AWS
PIPELINE INTRODUCTION
AWS ARCHITECTURE OVERVIEW
PACKAGING
STORAGE
DELIVERY
LESSONS LEARNED
B U I L D I N G A S C A L A B L E L I V E V I D E O P I P E L I N E I N A W S

13. • Source: M2TS to HLS, or pre-encoded HLS
• Stream: 5s segments, 8-profile layer up to
720p@60fps
• Manifest: M3U8 decorated with SCTE-35
markers
• Publishing: HTTPS to Hulu in AWS (EC2)
Why HLS contribution? Lowest common denominator
We built a live pipeline from scratch and used
AWS to support Hulu backend
• Periods in MPD
for content & ads
• In-band captions
(CEA-608 in SEI)
• Nielsen “ID3”
tags in MP4
EMSG

14. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
AWS Architecture to support Live TV backend
Virtual
Private
gateway
Amazon
S3
RDS Aurora MySql
Master
Amazon
CloudFront
Internet
users
Availability Zone
Packaging
Service
EC2 instances EC2 instances
Metadata Store;
temporary
Persistent (Live
Media DB)
Manifest
Service
RDS Aurora MySql
Read Replica
Availability Zone
Packaging
Service
EC2 instances
Metadata Store:
temporary
Persistent (Live
Media DB Manifest
Service
EC2 instances
Internet
gateway
Internet
DX
or
Us-West-2
Live Video Segments
[TS + Fairplay (HLS)
MP4 CEML (DASH)]
HLS TS + M3U8
w/ SCTE 35
markers
HLS TS + M3U8
w/ SCTE 35
markers
Segme
ntData
Segme
ntData
Persistent
Write
Manifest
(M3u8
MPD)
Segments
(TS, MP4)
ReplicatedStorage
Encoding
Vendor 1
Encoding
Vendor 2
Multi-AZ ALB
DX
Multi-AZ ALB
Stack for N Channels
cache
cache

15. • Source: M2TS to HLS, or pre-encoded HLS
• Stream: 5s segments, 8-profile layer up to
720p@60fps
• Manifest: M3U8 decorated with SCTE-35
markers
• Publishing: HTTPS to Hulu in AWS (EC2)
Hulu’s Live Backend – Part 1 Ingest/Packaging
• INGEST: on-the-fly encryption, remuxing and
manifest parsing
• INGEST: M3U8 parsed for segment
metadata, including SCTE-35 ad markers
• REPACKAGING: TS to MP4 w/ CENC for
DASH, encrypted to FairPlay for HLS
• Periods in MPD
for content & ads
• In-band captions
(CEA-608 in SEI)
• Nielsen “ID3”
tags in MP4
EMSG
Ingest
We needed good connectivity because repackaging encoder procures dumb
storage, resulting in longer time to process

16. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
AWS Architecture Part 1: Ingest and Packaging
traditional
server
traditional
server
Availability Zone
Repackaging Service
EC2
instances
Availability Zone
Repackaging Service
EC2
instances
Internet
or
HLS TS + M3U8
w/ SCTE 35 markers
HLS TS + M3U8
w/ SCTE 35 markers
Encoding
Vendor 1
Encoding
Vendor 2
DX
Multi-AZ ALB
DX
EC2 Instances were repackaging multiple formats by extracting source metadata from each
segment (4 seconds video segment)

17. • Source: M2TS to HLS, or pre-encoded HLS
• Stream: 5s segments, 8-profile layer up to
720p@60fps
• Manifest: M3U8 decorated with SCTE-35
markers
• Publishing: HTTPS to Hulu in AWS (EC2)
• STORAGE: TS & MP4 segments published
to Amazon S3
• Periods in MPD
for content & ads
• In-band captions
(CEA-608 in SEI)
• Nielsen “ID3”
tags in MP4
EMSG
storage
Hulu’s Live Pipeline – Part 2 Storage
S3 can have spikes in nominal latency. With Live TV, we couldn’t afford having any latency.
We measured S3 publishing by size of the files that led us building a complex re-try logic.

18. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
AWS Architecture Part 2: Storage
RedisCache
Availability Zone
EC2
instances
Availability Zone
EC2
instances
Multi-AZ ALB
RDS Aurora
MySql Master
Metadata Store;
temporary
RedisCache
RDS Aurora MySql
Read Replica
Metadata Store;
temporary
Replicated Storage
Live Video Segments
[TS + Fairplay(HLS) MP4CEML (DASH)]

19. • Source: M2TS to HLS, or pre-encoded HLS
• Stream: 5s segments, 8-profile layer up to
720p@60fps
• Manifest: M3U8 decorated with SCTE-35
markers
• Publishing: HTTPS to Hulu in AWS (EC2)
Hulu’s Live Pipeline – Part 3 Manifest/Delivery
• MANIFEST/DELIVERY: Manifests generated
on-the-fly, but cached in app & CDN
• Periods in MPD
for content & ads
• In-band captions
(CEA-608 in SEI)
• Nielsen “ID3”
tags in MP4
EMSG
Ingest

20. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
AWS Architecture Part 3: Manifest/Delivery
RedisCache
Availability Zone
EC2
instances
Availability Zone
EC2
instances
Multi-AZ ALB
RDS Aurora
MySql Master
Metadata
Store;
temporary
RedisCache
RDS Aurora MySql
Read Replica
Metadata
Store;
temporary
Replicated Storage
Live Video Segments
[TS + Fairplay(HLS) MP4CEML (DASH)]
Manifest
Service
Manifest
Service
RedisCache
RedisCache
EC2
instances
EC2
instances
Amazon
CloudFront
Internet
users
Manifest
(M3u8MPD)
Segments
(TS, MP4)

21. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
We were successful at launch. Now, we are
getting ready to expand.

22. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Lessons Learned on Live TV
 You can’t fix things later with Live TV. Measure every step to
define a critical condition versus small issues
 the measurements taken for segment reporting led to complex
re-try logic of S3
 You need to have an in-depth understanding of AWS services on
various limits and capabilities

23. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
AWS PARTNERSHIP
TECHNICAL ADVISORY
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES (PROSERVE)
OPERATIONAL READINESS (ORR)
READY TO LAUNCH (IEM)
B E Y O N D T H E T O O L S

24. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
We couldn’t do this without AWS teams
Technical
Advisory
IEM
Professional
Services
Infrastructure
Event Management
from AWS Support
provided 24x7
always-on support
Collective AWS Teams
AWS Professional
Services
consultants
accelerated delivery
Trusted Advisor
from AWS Support
gave us objective
recommendations
Hulu

25. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
AWS was more than the tools
- AWS became a true partner starting with the design phase to find a best
solution
- Professional Services engaged just 2 weeks before the launch and helped
us accelerate the implementations of the design
- Once it was Prod and Watch ready, AWS ensured that there was a common
Operational Readiness Review (AWS Internal Product Launch Process) from
start to finish, side by side at our Infrastructure management war room

26. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
THANK YOU!
C o n t a c t : b e r t @ h u l u . c o m
HULU LIVE TV