Home/Live Webcast Engineering

Module 4: Live Webcast Engineering — New Module

Run a live production, stand up a cloud live-streaming pipeline on AWS MediaLive/MediaPackage with low-latency delivery, inject live ad markers, and simulcast a broadcast to multiple platforms with a failover plan. Capstone: produce and stream a live webcast end to end.

4 WeeksLive + RecordingsCapstone Project
This module was split out from Encoding & Delivery — live production has its own tooling and failure modes, distinct from VOD transcoding pipelines. It's the newest module in the catalog.

Prerequisites

Learning Outcomes

By the end, you can run a live production (OBS/vMix), stand up a cloud live-streaming pipeline on AWS MediaLive/MediaPackage with low-latency delivery, inject live ad markers, and simulcast a broadcast to multiple platforms with a failover plan.

Weekly Curriculum

Week 1Live Production Fundamentals

The stream that looks perfect on your monitor can already be failing for half your viewers.

OBS Studio vs vMix, encoder settings for live (keyframe interval discipline), RTMP vs SRT ingest, network resilience & auto-reconnect. Lab: configure OBS with SRT output, simulate a network drop, verify reconnect.

Week 2AWS MediaLive & MediaPackage

This is the difference between a stream that quietly recovers from a network blip and one that just dies on air.

Channel/input configuration, redundancy models (single vs standard dual-pipeline), live encoding profiles, DVR window, low-latency HLS/LL-DASH mechanics. Lab: stand up a MediaLive channel with MediaPackage, verify DVR seek-back and measure latency.

Week 3Live Ad Insertion & Monitoring

Inserting an ad into a live stream without a single viewer noticing the seam — that's the actual hard part.

SCTE-35 injection at the encoder/switcher level for live, live SSAI via MediaTailor, CloudWatch monitoring and QoE dashboards for an in-progress broadcast. Lab: inject SCTE-35 markers, verify MediaTailor stitches an ad break in real time.

Week 4Multi-Platform Simulcast & Capstone

There's no "redeploy and try again" when you're live — this is the week that makes it real.

Restreaming to YouTube/Facebook/custom CDN simultaneously, restream tooling tradeoffs, incident response for live (failover playbook — because there's no re-encode-and-redeploy mid-broadcast). Capstone: produce and run a live webcast with SCTE-35 ad markers, simulcast to two destinations, live QoE dashboard.

Who It's For

Broadcasters & News Orgs

Teams running live production who need cloud-native MediaLive/MediaPackage skills alongside traditional OBS/vMix workflows.

Live Events / Sports

Engineers responsible for multi-platform simulcast and the incident-response discipline live production demands.

Cloud Media Engineers

AWS-focused engineers who need the live-specific half of Elemental — MediaLive/MediaPackage — not just the VOD side.

Continue Your Track

Pricing

Pricing depends on who's enrolling — pick the page that matches you:

Ready to Run a Real Live Broadcast?

Get the full curriculum, next cohort dates and pricing.