NAB 2026 · AWS Builder Lab

Zixi × AWS Video Pipeline

This lab showcases Zixi's ZEN Master platform for resilient transport stream distribution with full monitoring and orchestration, as well as its ability to manage and monitor AWS compute and media infrastructure — all from a single pane of glass.

◎

Lab structure — three roles, one platform

You'll wear different hats as you move through the parts

◈ Content Provider

In Parts 1–3, you play the role of a content provider building a resilient global channel distribution. You'll ingest a redundant source using hitless failover and distribute it downstream using the Zixi protocol.

◈ Content Platform

In Parts 4–5, you switch hats to a content platform receiving the provider's feed. You'll ingest the Zixi distribution and deliver it through an AWS HLS-based D2C pipeline — all managed within the same ZEN Master instance.

◈ Rights Management

In Part 6, you return to the content provider role to demonstrate how a SCTE-224 schedule can selectively embargo specific regional distributions — switching them to slate automatically, without manual intervention.

PART 01

Content Provider — Broadcaster Setup

Spin up a Zixi Broadcaster cluster in AWS, configure your compute, and prepare for resilient ingest.

→ ZEN MASTER · EC2 · BROADCASTER

PART 02

Sources — Primary, Secondary & Slate

Ingest a redundant Zixi Pull source pair with hitless failover, plus a file-based embargo slate.

→ ZIXI PULL · FAILOVER · FILE SOURCE

PART 03

Channels & Targets — Distribution

Create passthrough channels for content and slate, then build a Zixi Pull target for your downstream affiliate.

→ CHANNELS · TARGETS · ZIXI PULL

PART 04

Platform Ingest — MediaConnect

Switch roles to content platform. Ingest the Zixi feed via AWS MediaConnect to feed your D2C pipeline.

→ MEDIACONNECT · AWS FLOW

PART 05

HLS Delivery — MediaLive

Create a MediaLive channel with a multi-rendition HLS ladder, output to S3, and verify with the built-in stream player.

→ MEDIALIVE · HLS · S3

PART 06

Rights Management — SCTE-224

Watch a live demo: a SCTE-224 embargo schedule selectively blacks out regional outputs and switches them to slate.

→ SCTE-224 · ESNI · RIGHTS

→

Login credentials

Use these to access the ZEN Master platform throughout the lab

URL nab2026awsbl.zen.zixi.com

Username nab2026bl@zixi.com

Password AWSBuilderLab2026!

ℹ Use your name wherever the instructions say your-name or yourInitials to keep resources identifiable during the shared lab session.

PART 01 / 06

◈ Role: Content Provider

Broadcaster Cluster Setup

You will provision a Zixi Broadcaster cluster in ZEN Master backed by an AWS EC2 instance in us-east-1. This broadcaster will be used to ingest, process, and distribute the channel throughout the lab.

⚠ Make sure you are logged into ZEN Master at nab2026awsbl.zen.zixi.com before continuing. Credentials are on the Overview page.

2

Add a Broadcaster to the cluster

This is the compute instance that will process and deliver video

Click Add Broadcaster within your new cluster
Name it bl-your-name-distribution and click Save
Wait a few minutes and confirm the Broadcaster status shows as Active
In the meantime, go ahead and spin up another Broadcaster named bl-your-name-ingest for the second part of this lab.

ℹ While the Broadcaster is spinning up in EC2, continue to Part 2 to prepare your source configurations. You can come back to verify the status.

PART 02 / 06

◈ Role: Content Provider

Source Configuration

Add three sources to your broadcaster: a primary Zixi Pull source, a secondary Zixi Pull source for redundancy, and a file-based embargo slate. Then combine them with a hitless failover source group.

1

Add Primary Zixi Pull Source

Sources → Add → Zixi

Navigate to the Sources tab and click Add
Select source type Zixi
Set Name to bl-source-yourInitials-primary
Set tag to owner=nab2026_aws_builderlab
Set Mode to Pull
Set Host to builder-lab-contribution-alqyk.nab2026awsbl.io.zixi.com
Set Stream ID to bl-source-origination-primary-smnkorp
Set Ingest Cluster and Target Broadcaster to your broadcaster
Click Save

2

Add Secondary Zixi Pull Source

Sources → Add → Zixi (secondary path for hitless failover)

Navigate to the Sources tab and click Add
Select source type Zixi
Set Name to bl-source-yourInitials-secondary
Set tag to owner=nab2026_aws_builderlab
Set Mode to Pull
Set Host to builder-lab-contribution-mqbgy.nab2026awsbl.io.zixi.com
Set Stream ID to bl-source-origination-secondary-serk24p
Set Ingest Cluster and Target Broadcaster to your broadcaster
Click Save

3

Add File-Based Embargo Slate Source

Sources → Add → File (used during SCTE-224 rights management in Part 6)

Navigate to the Sources tab and click Add
Select source type File
Set Name to bl-source-yourInitials-slate
Set tag to owner=nab2026_aws_builderlab
Set Broadcaster to your broadcaster
Enter URL: https://zixi-file-sources.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ts/EmbargoSlate_720_CBR.ts
Click Save

4

Create a Hitless Failover Source Group

Combine primary & secondary using Content Merge for seamless redundancy

Navigate to the Sources tab and click Add
Select Failover Source
Set Name to bl-source-yourInitials-fo
Set tag to owner=nab2026_aws_builderlab
Add your primary and secondary sources to the failover group
For Failover Mode choose Content Hitless Merge (handles cases with or without RTP headers)
Click Save

ℹ Content Merge uses sequence numbers to reconstruct a single seamless stream from both paths, eliminating any gap on failover — even without RTP headers.

PART 03 / 06

◈ Role: Content Provider

Channels & Targets

Create two passthrough channels — one for the live content and one for the embargo slate — then define a Zixi Pull target that your downstream affiliate (or your future self!) will use to receive the feed.

ℹ At this point you're ready to build the distribution layer. A channel output can be delivered over Zixi, SRT, RIST, RTMP, or HLS — to any number of B2B partners or, as we'll see in Parts 4–5, directly into an AWS media pipeline. We're still wearing the content provider hat here, so we'll create a Zixi Pull target that our downstream affiliate can connect to and receive with full telemetry and stream monitoring.

1

Create the Content Channel

Channels → Add → Passthrough Channel

Go to the Channels tab and click Add
Select Passthrough Channel
Set Name to bl-channel-yourInitials-content
Set tag to owner=nab2026_aws_builderlab
Set Broadcaster Cluster and Target Broadcaster to your broadcaster
Set Source to your failover source bl-source-yourInitials-fo
Under Advanced, set External ID to bl-content (used for SCTE-224 schedule binding in Part 6)
Click Save

2

Create the Embargo Slate Channel

Channels → Add → Passthrough Channel

Go to the Channels tab and click Add
Select Passthrough Channel
Set Name to bl-channel-yourInitials-embargo
Set tag to owner=nab2026_aws_builderlab
Set Broadcaster Cluster and Target Broadcaster to your broadcaster
Set Source to your file slate bl-source-yourInitials-slate
Under Advanced, set External ID to bl-slate
Click Save

3

Add a Zixi Pull Target

From your content channel → Targets tab → Add Target

Open your content channel and navigate to its Targets tab
Click Add Target and select Zixi
Set Name to bl-target-yourInitials
Set tag to owner=nab2026_aws_builderlab
Set Type to Pull
Enter your initials in the Receiver Name/ID field
Under Advanced, set External ID based on your seat location:

Seated on the RIGHT

External IDbl-region-1

Seated on the LEFT

External IDbl-region-2

Click Save

PART 04 / 06

◈ Role: Content Platform

Platform Ingest via MediaConnect

Switch hats — you are now the receiving content platform. You'll ingest the Zixi Pull feed you just created and route it into an AWS MediaConnect flow to feed your D2C pipeline.

ℹ We've built out the content provider's distribution system. In a real deployment there would be many more targets — SRT, Zixi, RIST, RTMP — potentially with localization, regional variants, and a full mirror of this setup in a second AWS region for redundancy. Now we switch roles. You are now the content platform receiving that feed. We'll use the broadcaster configured in Part 1 to pull the Zixi stream and route it into our own personal AWS-based D2C system.

⚠ Tip: Ctrl/Cmd-click the Targets tab to open a new browser tab — keep it open so you can reference your Target's configuration details while setting up the MediaConnect source.

PART 05 / 06

◈ Role: Content Platform

MediaLive HLS Delivery

Create an AWS MediaLive channel fed from your MediaConnect Flow, configure a multi-rendition HLS ladder to S3, and verify the stream end-to-end with VLC.

2

Add HLS Output Target

Targets → Add → MediaLive HTTP Output → S3

Navigate to the Targets tab and click Add
Select MediaLive HTTP Output
Set tag to owner=nab2026_aws_builderlab
Set Channel to bl-yourInitials-eml
Set Type to S3 Bucket
Set Bucket to s3://nab2026-awsbl/your-name
Add renditions: 480p and 320p
Click Save

3

Enable the Channel & Verify

Start the video flowing and check it in the stream player below

In ZEN Master, navigate to Channels and find your MediaLive channel
Enable the channel to start the video pipeline
Wait ~30 seconds for the first segments to land in S3
Enter your stream URL below and click Play to verify

HLS Stream Player

Enter your stream URL above and click Play

URL format: https://nab2026-awsbl.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/your-name.m3u8

PART 06 / 06

◈ Role: Content Provider — Rights Management

SCTE-224 Embargo Schedule

This section is an instructor-led demo. Watch how ZEN Master's SCTE-224 integration can selectively switch specific regional outputs to slate on a schedule — using the external IDs and channels you configured in earlier steps as the binding mechanism.

◎

How it works — SCTE-224 in ZEN Master

The wiring behind the demo

SCTE-224 is the industry standard for media audience restriction policies. ZEN Master exposes an ESNI (External Schedule and Network Interface) endpoint that accepts a SCTE-224 XML schedule via a standard PUT request authenticated with AWS Signature Version 4.

Once received, ZEN Master parses the policy actions and maps them to channels and targets using the External ID fields set earlier — bl-content, bl-slate, bl-region-1, bl-region-2. No manual switching is needed at run time.

When an embargo window is triggered for a given region, ZEN Master automatically routes that target's output to the slate channel. When the window closes, it restores the live content — seamlessly, on schedule.

A SCTE-224 schedule can act on either Time based triggers or SCTE-35 Signaling observed on the content. In this case, we're just using a simple time based schedule set to apply blackouts every 30 seconds.

ℹ Your seat position — and the corresponding External ID (bl-region-1 or bl-region-2) — determines which regional output gets embargoed during the demo. Check the stream player in Part 5 to observe the switch.

1

PUT the schedule via AWS Signature 4 API

Instructor demo — delivering the SCTE-224 XML to ZEN Master's ESNI endpoint

The instructor sends the SCTE-224 schedule XML via an authenticated HTTP PUT to the ZEN Master ESNI endpoint, signed with AWS Signature Version 4. This is exactly how a rights management system or scheduling platform would deliver embargo policies in a production workflow.

2

View the schedule in the ZEN Master ESNI GUI

Confirming ZEN Master has parsed and mapped the policy windows

In ZEN Master, navigate to the ESNI schedule view to see the embargo windows visualized in playlist format, with each row mapped to appropriate content change event. You can also verify that your External IDs have been correctly resolved.

3

Observe the ZEN Master target update

Watching the platform respond as embargo windows open

As embargo windows become active, watch the affected target in ZEN Master reflect the source switch in real time. No manual action is required — the platform handles routing automatically based on the schedule. In this case we are using a Time based schedule, but the ESNI backend can respond to matching SCTE-35 on the channel as well.

4

Watch the stream — content switches to slate

End-to-end verification in the HLS player from Part 5

Keep your stream player from Part 5 open. When your region's embargo window is active, the HLS output will switch from live content to the embargo slate. When the window closes, the content is automatically restored.

⚠ HLS has inherent segment latency, so the slate switch may appear a few seconds after the scheduled window opens. This is normal behavior for segment-based delivery.

✓

Lab Complete!

You've built an end-to-end IP video pipeline on Zixi and AWS

You successfully provisioned a Zixi Broadcaster cluster in AWS, ingested a resilient dual-path source with hitless failover, distributed via Zixi Pull to an affiliate, ingested through AWS MediaConnect, transcoded with MediaLive to HLS, and demonstrated SCTE-224 rights management — all orchestrated from a single ZEN Master platform.

PROTOCOL

Zixi · HLS · SCTE-224

AWS SERVICES

EC2 · EMX · EML · S3

PLATFORM

Zixi ZEN Master