Live streaming in sports and music continues to increase double digits’ year over year. Both industries are challenged with complex rights management, scale at cost, worldwide distribution and monetization business models. In this session, learn how uCast’s platform automates what were previously difficult to execute and cost prohibited video operations unsustainable for premium video brands. uCast with AWS services solves these challenges while creating broadcast grade video quality, personalization of content, geo & rights management while streaming thousands of live events each year. Brian Lisi, CTO, uCast

1. TOPIC DISCUSSION
How uCast is using AWS Media Services and the
Power of the Cloud to Deliver Global Live Events

2. uCAST GLOBAL & DIALOG
HIGH QUALITY
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
END-TO-END
OTT SOLUTION
ENHANCEMENTS
AND FEATURES
BROAD DEPLOYMENT
OF FEATURES
PROVEN
TRACK RECORD

3. AGENDA
• CURRENT STATE OF OTT LANDSCAPE & CHALLENGES
• OTT 1.0 vs 2.0
• FOCUSE AREAS FOR MARKET COMPETITIVENESS
• CUSTOMER CHALLENGES
• SOLUTIONS WITH AWS
• LIVE DEMO
• uCAST SPORTS CASE STUDY

4. COMPLICATED DYNAMICS OF VIDEO TECHNOLOGY

5. LANDSCAPE CONTINUES TO GROW

6. IABD DC GLOBAL MARKET VALUATION REPORT

7. WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO TECHNOLOGY BUYERS & USERS

8. WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO TECHNOLOGY BUYERS & USERS

9. REMOTE PRODUCTION IS A BUSINESS MODEL TRANSITION

10. WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO TECHNOLOGY BUYERS & USERS

11. WHAT is OTT 1.0
The use of platforms for digital video has primarily been a largescale systems integration effort with a few core pieces
coupled with a significant number of add-ons that are single instance per region and brand:

12. CHALLENGES WITH OTT 1.0
1. Application development is difficult – multiple 3rd party vendors, workflows, different upgrade
release cycles, etc.
2. Not multi-brand or multi geo. Aren’t capable of supporting Global Video Initiatives.
3. Require more development then configuration to deploy. Features aren’t inherent to the solution.
4. Do not easily support personalization and advanced user experience features without considerable
development.
5. Solutions do not meet the standards of enterprise software.
6. Little or no advanced AD-Tech support, specifically SSAI.
7. Subscriber management typically outsourced.
8. Signal capture, channel playout & user-friendly video features are limited.

13. WHAT is OTT 2.0
The next generation video stack is going to enable an agile video business
through new capabilities:
1. Movement to an approach similar to enterprise software
2. Core Platform adopted across the enterprise
3. Simplifies toolsets to enable user experience
4. Multi-Brand & Multi-GEO with TV-Live Channel Playout to future proof
business models
5. Initial investment with smaller costs to enable scale across multiple
brands
6. Support for core AD-Tech industry’s and partners – SSAI, DFP, DCM,
Spotx, Innovid, and more 3rd party agencies
7. Ability to own core components and stack over time – modularity with
business model licensing innovation
8. Extensible across today’s and future business models

14. OPERATIONS INDUSTRIALIZATION
Managed Services & SLA for DevOps
1. Standard SLA definitions for response, recovery, and resolution times.
2. Integration to client support system for ticketing.
3. Sufficient operational resources to enable SLA’s without “key man risk”.
4. Incident management capability for bringing together all service vendors.

15. FOCUS AREAS FOR MARKET COMPETITIVENESS
Solve the complexity of the video workflow
• Make a platform lighter with a smaller footprint.
• Perform “infrastructure as code”, integrate more AWS services to achieve (light), remove all custom
components
• Run on 100% “auto scaling” cloud infrastructure
• Adopt best practice data taxonomy structure for reusable catalogs and skinny bundles
• Make most system screens self service so non-technical business units can use
• Advance AD-Tech
• Analytics – Actionable Data Transformation
• Channel Playout, DVR-in-the-Cloud, EPG support
• Scale virtualization from on-prem to cloud encoding and payout

16. Customer
Challenges

17. • Build a cost effective workflow to live stream events with broadcast grade quality
• Cloud enhanced video ingest
• Live Linear capture & playout (cost)
• Multi-Tenant vs Cross-Tenant vs Single-Stack
• Reliable live event scheduler
• Create 24/7 stitched Live Channels
• Personalize ADS
• Global Distribution
• Complex Data taxonomy
• Rights Management
• GEO & Blackout
• SCTE-35 in the Cloud
• DRM
CURRENT OTT 2.0 SPORTS & MUSIC CHALLENGES

18. VIRTUALIZATION OF PLAYOUT
MEDIA COMPAY
Stack
On-Prem Services
Live Content
Acquisition
Content
Processing
Channel
Playout
Distribution
CMS
Users and devices
Metadata
Curation and Promotion
Rights and entitlement
Images
CRM
Monetization
Tags
Reporting
API
ConnectedApplications
Schedules (EPG)
Content Rules
GEO & Brand
CLOUD LAYER

19. CLOUD ENHANCED INGEST SERVICE
The service makes it easy to configure new data feeds as well
as create recurring mapped to the appropriate data model.
A standalone service
• A UI in (in Admin) that connects to the service
• User chooses to create a new import flow
• User provides either URL or API credentials (to supported
OVPs)
• The data is parsed and the user is presented with a
mapping screen that determines external metadata fields
and video formats to be mapped to product data model
• User can run a test import to see the results and can save
the ETL (Extract->Transform-Load) scenario
• The ETL + mapping is saved in DB with ability to make it
recurring if protocol permits.
Ingest Service
Cable Labs 3
Movie Labs
XMLTV
MRSS
OVP APIs
Other
ETL
REMA
P
Metadata
Media

20. DYNAMIC DATA MODEL
Dynamic data model enabling content providers to position
their materials in accordance to the service & end-users’
needs.
Classification Group
Linear Channels
1st Level
Classification
Linear Channel
Type
Linear
2nd Level
Classification
Program Guide (EPG)
Type
EPG Metadata
Custom Branding
Parent Tag
Genre
Child Tag
Drama
Dynamic
Metadata
Name
Runtime
Personalized Content
Rows
Recent / Catch Up
Recommended /
Videos
Classification Group
General
1st Level
Classification
Channel Logo
Classification Group
Single Video
1st Level
Classification
Video
Type
Video
Any piece of content is to fit the
standardized data model upon
importing / creating the respective
asset in the CMS.
Well structured & positioned data ensure
the optimization & unification of the
deployed service.
Type
Image
Type
Video

21. Content pieces are
accurately distributed
depending on their nature
– whether those are a main
asset or a supplementary
object.
Each asset can support rich
metadata depending on
the service needs – from
main contextual
information to 3rd party
data captured from
external source(s).
Integration with
external data
sources
Data available in a
web browser
Classification
Athlete
Type
Metadata
Dynamic Real-Time
Schedule
Live Events
Classification
Cast
Type
Metadata
Classification Group
Series
1st Level
Classification
Show
Type
Video
2nd Level
Classification
Season
Type
Video
3rd Level
Classification
Episode
Type
Video
Related Content Row
Content Pieces with
relevant tags
Classification
Team
Type
Metadata
DIFFERENT CONTENT = MANY NEEDS

22. CUSTOMERS
SOLUTIONS

23. SPORTS PARTNER – UNIQUE FEATURES
[2] Subscription VOD (SVOD)
$4.99 a month, with a 7-
day free trial
[1] Advertising (AVOD)
Server Side Stitching
- Negates Ad blockers
- Programmatic Ads
Pre-Rolls, Mid-Rolls, Post
Rolls;
160 Schools
7 Conferences
3 TV Networks
Multi-Platform
Flexible &
Complex
Content
Availability
Matrix
Subscription
Packages
Geography:
States
Service 1 Service 2 Service 3
67,000 pieces of content
& metadata
5 months of
synchronization
No Interruption
of Service
Unified Service
Monetization:
Rights & Entitlement Management Migration Business Sustainability &
Monetization Opportunities
Feed Distribution

24. LIVE EVENTS SCHEDULE & WORKFLOW
CORE in
us-east-1
us-west-2
Elemental Deployment
us-east-1
Elemental Deployment
us-west-2
Teradek
Cube
Teradek
Cube
EAST
WEST

25. LIVE EVENTS SCHEDULE & WORKFLOW
CORE
Management
and Monitoring
INDUSTRY
PROTOCOL
Over Internet
SOURCE/TERADEK
AWS
Sputnik Region 1
AWS
Sputnik Region 2
AWS
Sputnik Region 3
AWS
Sputnik Region 4
AWS
Elemental LIVE
Deployment 1
AWS
Elemental LIVE
Deployment 2
AWS
Elemental LIVE
Deployment 3
REST API
UDP
UDP
UDP
HTTP PUSH
HTTP PUSH
HTTP PUSH
AKAMAI CDN
AD
DAI ENGINE
RETURN
AD
RETURN
AD
AD SERVER
Ad Segments pointing
to Ad Server
Content
Segments pointing
to CDN
Push final manifest through
CDN again to be served for end
user consumption
PULL ORIGIN
MANIFEST
Content
Segment
Content
Segment
Ad
Segment
FINAL MANIFEST
EVENT MGMT AD SCTE-35 AD INSERTION

26. SCTE-in-the-CLOUD & DYNAMIC SSAI

27. LIVE LINEAR CLIPPING & CLOUD DVR
Amazon
DynamoDB
CLIP
VIDE
O
TIME SHIFTED –
RECEIVER POINTS
HLS (VOD & Live
Linear)
Amazon S3
STORAGE
Amazon
CloudFront
CDN
Amazon
Elastic Transcoder
TRANSCODE
Amazon
Glacier
STORAGE
Amazon S3

28. CHANNEL PLAYOUT

29. LIVE DEMO
&
ARCHITECTURE

30. • Utilize AWS cloud technologies like CloudFormation and VPCs to quickly launch brand new stacks
• Easily deploy a stack in any AWS VPC location, availability zone or data center with different configurations
• Automatic Scalability, Load balancing, Monitoring and update of stacks in AWS
• Metadata definitions, translations and other customizations via web based GUIs
• Individual services scales independently of others depending on load.
• From several instances to several thousand instances per service with HA and failover, automated
• Utilizes multiple AWS services for lower footprint
Service Module
Small Load
HA
Service Module
Moderate Load
HA
Service Module
High Load
HA
SCALABILITY / STACK & PLATFORM

31. uCast Stack with AWS
Amazon API
Gateway
EC2 Elastic Load
Balancing
AWS VPC
ELB
RDS
instances
Auto Scaling
S3
instances
Redis
AWS
Lambda
Lambda
function
Amazon
Route 53
Elasticsearch
Postgres
Aurora
ELB
edge location
Amazon
CloudFront
Amazon
SQS
Amazon
SNS
VPC
Client Apps

32. AWS SERVICES USED

33. API MICRO AND MACRO SERVICES
• Content API (PHP)
• User API (PHP)
• Media API (PHP)
• Billing API (PHP)
• Video Broker (Scala)
• Image Service (PHP)
• Events Service (analytics) (Java)
• Time shift Video Service (Python)
• Live Video Cutting Service (JavaScript)
• Workers (php)
• UI Interfaces
• Admin Panel
• Media Admin Panel
• Live Manager
• Embeddable Players
• MRSS / XML Feeds / Content Syndication

34. API MICRO AND MACRO SERVICES ROLES
Content API (PHP)
• Manages and serves content hierarchy and metadata (objects)
• Image management
• Video Assets (metadata)
• Tags, Categories. Groups
• Helper Assets
• Content Filters
• Geo Filters
• Spotlights. Screen Curation.
User API (PHP)
• Manages User authentication, profiles and states
Media API (PHP)
• Manages encoding workflows
• Mezzanine files
• Encoded files and formats
• Origins and CDN destinations
Billing API (PHP)
• Manages subscriptions and billing
• Integrates with all subscription services (iTunes, GooglePlay)
• Credit card gateways
• Reporting
Video Broker (Scala)
• Checks entitlement and hands out playback urls
• Virtual channel playout stitching(vod to live )
Image Service (PHP)
• Resized and crops and caches images
Events Service (analytics) (Java)
• Collects application and player events for statistics
• Retention, funnels, QES
Time shift Video Service (Python)
• Records live channels and stores segments for later use as time shift
Live Video Cutting Service (JavaScript)
• Cuts pieces of content from recorded live channels or events
Workers (php, python, lambdas)
• Performs background tasks such as data enrichment, metadata
rebuilds, messaging, orchestration
Ingestion
• Helps automate metadata and content ingestions from different
sources
• Setup first time catalog import and data mapping
• Recurring templates for recurring updates.

35. USER INTERFACES
Admin Panel
• Asset and Metadata Management
• Live event scheduling
• User Data management and reporting
• Manage CRM campaigns
• System Settings
• Reports
• Manage content imports
Media Admin Panel
• Functionality to manage and monitor encoding
workflow and settings
Live Manager
• Controls live encoder nodes (Elemental)
• Performs SCTE insertion (Elemental)
• Starts and stops encoders , on air, off air
Embeddable Players
• Exposes video assets via a html5 HLS player, with
client side and server side advertising
MRSS / XML Feeds / Content Syndication

36. SPORTS

37. SPORTS PARTNER – UNIQUE FEATURES
[2] Subscription VOD (SVOD)
$4.99 a month, with a 7-
day free trial
[1] Advertising (AVOD)
Server Side Stitching
- Negates Ad blockers
- Programmatic Ads
Pre-Rolls, Mid-Rolls, Post
Rolls;
160 Schools
7 Conferences
3 TV Networks
Multi-Platform
Flexible &
Complex
Content
Availability
Matrix
Subscription
Packages
Geography:
States
Service 1 Service 2 Service 3
67,000 pieces of content
& metadata
5 months of
synchronization
No Interruption
of Service
Unified Service
Monetization:
Rights & Entitlement Management Migration Business Sustainability &
Monetization Opportunities
Feed Distribution

38. OPERATIONS & STABILITY REPORTCARD
• Rights & Entitlement Management
• Flexible & Complex Content Availability
Matrix
• Subscriber & User Management
• Automated Live Events workflow with Cloud
Fleet Teradek
• 240,000 minutes of Live Games Streamed
with 86 minutes of Service Degradation,
99.97% uptime.
• 100% uptime on VOD
• GEO granularity

39. SPORTS CONFIGURATIONS
• uCast Sports is a “Sports Optimized” Product & Platform
• The Platform has over 800 widget & feed customization tailored to meet
syndication business needs.
• There were 17,000 hours of Live Events optimizations.
• The front-end user experience went through numerous UX iterations to
accommodate a complex data taxonomy & model.
• SCTE-in-the-Cloud with DAI.
• Enhanced DVR, VOD and Content Asset Management.

40. ROADMAP FEATURES
• Building platform support for new Voice Search & Discovery, Amazon
ECHO voice & AppleTV & iOS.
• Big Data for Machine Learning & AI for data enrichment to analytics &
AD monetization.
• Scripting customer facing products