AWS Elemental Medialive Support Playbook

Special mention to our Medialive SME's Kartik Kapoor and Ruhisar Tikoo for contribution in putting this content together

MediaLive – Support Checklist

Support team would generally require the following information to assist with a MediaLive support case:

• Complete description of the issue.
• A screenshot of the error (if applicable)
• Timeframe of the issue (whether it happened for specific timeframe or currently ongoing)
• Frequency of occurrence (whether it has happened before or first time, intermittent or a single continued occurrence, etc.)
• Complete flow architecture (like Source → Zixi → MediaConnect → MediaLive → MediaPackage → Cloudfront →Viewers)
• ARNs of all the resources involved (MediaConnect flow ARN, MediaLive/MediaPackage channel ARN, etc.)
• Is this a new or existing workflow?
• Confirmation on source health (whether you have checked if the source had any issues during the concerned time)
• Investigation performed on your end (if any)

MediaLive – Common Issue Investigation

Getting an Access Denied error from MediaLive

Description(s) of the issue: I am getting an ‘AccessDeniedException’ while performing an action related to MediaLive. How can I resolve the error?

Example error: “AccessDeniedException: User: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/test is not authorized to perform: medialive:CreateInput on resource: arn:aws:medialive:us-east-1: 123456789012:input:* with an explicit deny”

Troubleshooting steps to be performed:

• The IAM entity, which could be an IAM user or role, being used to perform the action requires appropriate permissions attached to it. The actions can range from creating a MediaLive input, to listing alerts in the console.
• To identify which permissions need to be attached, please refer the following document: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/medialive/latest/ug/setting-up-for-production.html
• For example, to create a MediaLive input, the IAM entity should have permission for ‘CreateInput’. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/medialive/latest/ug/requirements-for-medialive.html
• Once the appropriate permission(s) have been identified, please associate them to the IAM entity.

MediaLive is unable to detect audio and video in the input

Description(s) of the issue:

I am sending input to MediaLive via a standard source in MediaConnect. I am seeing Video Not Detected and Audio Not Detected alerts on the MediaLive console. How can I resolve this?

Troubleshooting steps to be performed:

• Such alerts may occur when input is not arriving at MediaLive.
• Please ensure that your source is contributing content to MediaConnect
• Next, please navigate to your flow in the MediaConnect console. Within the console, view the details of your source and ensure that the IP address contributing content to MediaConnect is specified under Allowlist CIDR block.

Reference: Creating a transport stream flow that uses a standard source

• The Input metrics can be used to get information associated with the input arriving at MediaLive. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/medialive/latest/ug/eml-metrics-input-metrics.html

MediaLive reports there is no video in the input, however the input has video

Description(s) of the issue: I am sending input to MediaLive via a standard source in MediaConnect. I am seeing an alert on the MediaLive console with Type as ‘Initial Probe is Taking Longer Than Expected’, with Message ‘Input [s3://DOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET/videos/mysamplevideo.mp4] contains no video.’ How can I resolve this?

Troubleshooting steps to be performed:

• This alert may occur if the input video contains an unsupported codec.
• For example, for a MP4 video, MediaLive supports H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC) and MPEG-2 codec. If the video has a different codec, MediaLive will generate such an alert.
• Reference: Supported input containers and codecs
• Thus please ensure that the input video contains a supported combination of codecs and containers

A black screen was seen for few seconds while playing the video generated from MediaLive

Description(s) of the issue: I am using MediaLive in my workflow. I noticed black screen in my output for several seconds. Why did this happen?

Troubleshooting steps to be performed:

• This issue may occur if the input to MediaLive is unhealthy or lost for some time. In that case, by default, MediaLive will repeat and encode the last valid frame for 1 second and then deliver a black output. These output frames are called fill frames. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/medialive/latest/ug/feature-input-loss.html
• To confirm if MediaLive used fill frames, please review the ‘Fill msec’ metric in CloudWatch for your channel. The metric shows the length of time (the fill period) during which MediaLive had filled the video output with fill frames. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/medialive/latest/ug/eml-metrics-output-metrics.html#eml-metrics-fill
• If the metrics indicate that MediaLive used fill frames, please check your source to ensure it was sending a healthy output to MediaLive at the time of the issue and fix any potential issues on the source.
• The Input metrics can be used to get information associated with the input arriving at MediaLive. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/medialive/latest/ug/eml-metrics-input-metrics.html

I would like to increase MediaLive service limits

Description(s) of the issue: I am seeing an error related to reaching a limit in MediaLive. How do I request an increase in limit for the service? Example error: You have created as many channels as your current service limit of 5.

Troubleshooting steps to be performed:

• We request you to use the Service Quotas console to request a limit increase. Here is a view of the console for MediaLive service:

• MediaLive also has certain limits that can’t be changed.