Sources are one of the basic building blocks of M2A CONNECT. An M2A Source is the unit which manages stream inputs, handling: – local AWS region pick-up – decryption – automated capture – proxy generation – multiple AWS region gating – custom metadata for Subscribers

Each M2A Source represents multiple Cloud resources, orchestrated and scaled according to a Scheduled Events.

There are currently two types of M2A Sources: M2A Managed and Self-serve.

• M2A Managed Sources include those which have M2A Media-controlled input devices, require additional resilience, use tailored MediaLive streams, or VPC interfaces for AWS Direct Connect inputs.

• Self-serve M2A Sources include those which use public addresses for the input of live streams (using Zixi, RTP-FEC, SRT, RIST) and inputs provided by AWS Entitlement.

Once set up, Sources are made active and incur cost only between an Event start and end time.

For Aggregation workflows, multiple M2A Sources can be readied across global AWS regions to take a variety of streams to be funnelled through to fixed end points.

For Capture workflows, M2A Sources can output without compression to S3 Locations

For Distribution workflows, single M2A Sources can fan out to multiple multi-region Outputs each with their own multiple Destinations to allow easy content control.

Creating a Source

Before creating sources, you must grant M2A CONNECT access to the AWS account to be managed, which can be completed through AWS Identity and Access Management.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/mediaconnect/latest/ug/quotas.html

If you require private addressing, a tailored input stream that uses AWS MediaLive (ie for the addition of a bug), or have M2A Media-controlled input devices, or additional resilience requirements, you will require M2A Managed Sources which will be set up by M2A Media’s Engineering team.

M2A CONNECT is being developed to favour self-serve. Over time, M2A Managed Sources will only be retained for the kind of tailoring which requires consultation.

You can create Self-serve M2A Sources if you are using an AWS Entitlement or public addressing to send your inputs.

Go to the Source page and Create Source to be guided through the process.

From this point, you can manage Subscribers, Create Subscriptions and also define Events within your Source.

Editing and deleting sources

Using multiviewer for visual monitoring

M2A CONNECT features an enhanced multiviewer feature that allows users to view up to 32 individual proxy feeds at one time. The following video details how to use this feature.