Tencent Cloud offers a high performing and feature-rich live streaming solution for UGC / Entertainment industry

Background

As one of the world’s largest gaming and entertainment companies, Tencent has accumulated more than a decade of experience in live streaming scenarios, which it has developed into a Tencent Cloud Media Services products portfolio.

Tencent Cloud’s live streaming solution has helped hundreds of customers all over the world build their own platforms, such as Trovo, Nimo TV, Mildom, etc. These platforms provide reliable, high-performance, low-latency and feature-rich capabilities by leveraging Tencent Cloud Media Services.

In this blog, I’ll try to help you better understand Tencent Cloud Media Services’ offerings and advantages by discussing:

• Common architecture and feature set of UGC/Entertainment live streaming platforms；
• Tencent Cloud Media Services for live streaming platforms
• Comparative advantages of Tencent Cloud Media Services vs. AWS IVS solution.

Common architecture and feature sets of UGC/Entertainment live streaming platforms

1）Basic architecture and feature set

The core business of a live streaming platform is to push live streams that audiences play. In addition, these platforms also require live recording, video-on-demand playback, and real-time clipping functionalities, which are important feature sets provided by current live streaming platform providers.

The following is a diagram and description of a basic architecture and feature set:

Feature set description:

• Push Stream: Platform streamers use software (most commonly used: OBS-Open Broadcasting Software or StreamLab) to push RTMP streams to the live streaming platform
• A live streaming platform usually has three core functional modules:
  a) Live Streaming module: responsible for converting the received RTMP stream into common live streaming formats (HLS, LHLS, LLHLS), and then forwarding it to the CDN service, and finally broadcasting to the audience;
  b) Video-on-demand function module: responsible for storing the live stream as a file (HLS, MP4), and finally providing the on-demand function of the video file through the CDN service, so that the audience can watch it later;
  c) CDN functional modules: generally live streaming platforms integrate CDN services into the above two functional modules, and platforms do not need to care about the configuration of CDN;
• Player: The player used by viewers to play live streams and on-demand videos.

Live streaming platforms generally focus on the following basic functions and performance:

• Global Live streaming Latency:
  a) HLS: General standard protocol, the delay is generally 5–10s.
  b) LHLS: AWS proprietary protocol, which is optimized on the basis of the standard HLS protocol. Only AWS IVS is used, and the delay is generally 4–6s. LHSL has requirements for players, only IVS Player can play LHLS protocol.
  c) LLHLS: Developed by Apple and open source, it is optimized on the basis of the standard HLS protocol. The delay is generally 4–5 seconds, which has advantages over LHLS. LLHLS has requirements for the player, the player needs to support the LLHLS protocol.
• Live streaming resolution support and transcoding support:
  a) At present, the most common live stream resolution is 1080p, but due to the improvement of the network environment and personal computer configuration, the platforms also need 2k or even 4k resolution support.
  b) At present, the common transcoding method is ABR-Adaptive BitRate, that is, the player can select automatically the adaptive resolution according to the network conditions of the viewers, so the live streaming platform also needs to support the ABR transcoding function.
  c) At present, the common transcoding encoder is H.264, but because H.265 is becoming more and more popular, the platforms also need to support H.265 encoding and decoding.
• Live recording format:
  a) At present, the most common live recording format is HLS ABR, that is, when viewers play, they can also manually/automatically select the resolution, which is the same experience as live streaming, but the disadvantage of HLS format is that it is not easy to download and share, so the platform also needs to record to MP4 format, and needs to download MP4 format.
  b) Since the duration of the live broadcast of the streamers sometimes reaches 6–8 hours, the file size generated by the recording will be very large, so the user of the platform also needs to record the original file first, and then transcode it into a small file offline.
• Live stream time shifting:
  For example, in game live streaming, most viewers enter the live streaming room after the stream starts, so some highlights require live stream time shifting function to realize.
• Live clipping:
  Viewers can freely choose a time period to edit during the live streaming according to their own preferences, edit and save the desired highlights.
• Player:
  a) Live time shift support: viewers can drag the progress bar of the player to choose the timestamp they want to start watching from.
  b) Thumbnail/Screenshot preview: viewers can preview the thumbnail/screenshot of a certain timestamp in real time on the player, so that they can quickly find the highlights they want to watch.

2) Advanced architecture and feature set

In addition to the basic architecture and feature sets mentioned above, current live streaming platforms also provide some advanced features, such as real-time communication and interaction between streamers, and instant messaging between streamers and viewers.

The following is a diagram and description of an advanced architecture and feature set:

The platforms generally pay attention to the following advanced functions:
a) RTC function module: The anchors can interact in real time, and the pictures and sounds of the two anchors are mixed and pushed to the Live Streaming function module, and finally broadcasted to the audience.
b) Instant message function module: text instant message interaction can be performed between the anchor and the audience.

Tencent Cloud Media Services for live streaming platforms

In this article, we would like to highlight four media products under Tencent Cloud Media Services. Each product provides a relatively independent and decoupled product architecture and feature set. The following is a diagram and description of the above-mentioned advanced architecture and feature set.

The following is a description of the relevant features of Tencent Cloud products in the live streaming platform scenario:

Comparative advantages of Tencent Cloud Media Services vs. AWS IVS solution

AWS provides IVS products to support live streaming platform scenarios. Unlike Tencent Cloud Media Services’ multi-product portfolio, IVS products integrate live streaming functions (Channel), RTC functions (Stage), and chat functions (Chat). The degree of coupling is high; for instance, in order to use the Stage/Chat module, you must first use the Channel module.

Author: Hang Zhang

Hang Zhang is a Principal Solution Architect of Tencent Cloud. He is taking charge of business development of Tencent Cloud International in Canada, and focusing on Go-China & Gaming strategy for companies headquartered in Canada.