Customer use cases

Company overview

• Industry: Internet live streaming platform

• Website: Huya Live

Huya Live is an interactive live streaming platform that features live comments and focuses mainly on game streaming. It streams popular games, esports tournaments, and mobile games, such as League of Legends, Honor of Kings, and Peacekeeper Elite.

Business challenges

The League of Legends World Championship is the game's largest annual event and the most prestigious, valuable, competitive, and well-known tournament in all of League of Legends esports. It is also the most important event broadcast by Huya Live each year.

1. The S12 League of Legends World Championship was held in four North American cities: Mexico City, New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco. The event signal had to travel a long distance through many intermediate steps. The stability of the upstream frame rate for stream ingest was the most critical factor for broadcast quality and required special attention.

2. As the most important League of Legends event of the year, the S12 World Championship attracted a large, geographically diverse audience. The high demand for live comment interaction also posed significant challenges to the stability of the live streaming service.

Solution

1. To address these pain points, the Alibaba Cloud support team created a comprehensive event support plan. The plan used leased lines to ensure stable stream ingest and included primary and backup lines for disaster recovery. Massive bandwidth reserves and comprehensive support from regional carriers ensured that tens of millions of viewers at home and abroad could watch the event. This laid a solid foundation for a successful broadcast.

2. The Alibaba Cloud support team provided full support throughout the event. The S12 tournament was held in four North American cities from September to November, with matches often starting in the early morning hours. The support team worked around the clock to meet the customer's needs, providing both on-site and remote support. The team used the Alibaba Cloud monitoring system to provide monitoring and alerting for Huya. A dedicated 24/7 DingTalk group was also established to promptly respond to and resolve any potential threats or issues during the live broadcast.

Customer value

The S12 League of Legends World Championship concluded in San Francisco in early November 2022. As the provider of Huya Live's core streaming platform, Alibaba Cloud successfully provided support for the entire tournament, enabling the customer to complete the broadcast with zero failures.

Customer testimonial

For the S12 League of Legends tournament broadcast, Alibaba Cloud provided Huya with a smooth viewing experience. It ensured a zero-failure broadcast for the S12 tournament and supported tens of millions of concurrent viewers. Alibaba Cloud was a strong partner for Huya's S12 League of Legends broadcast.

—Guangzhou Huya Inc.

Company overview

Industry: Internet video platform

BesTV is a streaming media platform owned by Shanghai Oriental Dragon New Media Co., Ltd. It offers a vast library of ultra-high definition content that focuses on original short dramas, popular exclusive variety shows, exciting sports events, and exclusive live performances. Its channels include movies, TV series, variety shows, children's programming, anime, documentaries, games, and educational content, making it suitable for viewers of all ages.

Business challenges

1. For scenarios such as sports events and exclusive live performances, scenes change quickly, involve significant motion, and venue conditions are variable. The challenge was ensuring the real-time performance and smoothness of large-scale event broadcasts under these complex and variable conditions.

2. For large-scale concert broadcasts with millions of viewers joining at once, the challenge was ensuring zero stuttering during ultra-high definition, high-concurrency streaming.

3. The challenge was using technology to create a more immersive audio-visual experience for the audience.

Solution

BesTV used Alibaba Cloud ApsaraVideo Live to support large-scale cultural and sports event broadcasts, such as NBA games and a concert by the band Teens in Times.

1. Narrowband HD 2.0 for high-definition, low-bitrate streaming

   Live broadcasts of sports events and concerts feature fast-moving scenes and high motion. Audiences also demand high video definition, which typically requires high-bitrate streaming. However, if the on-site network quality fluctuates, high-bitrate transmission can cause video stuttering and latency. BesTV applied Alibaba Cloud's Narrowband HD 2.0 technology to its live broadcasts. The technology uses adaptive encoding to reduce the source stream's bitrate. At the same time, its generative detail enhancement capabilities significantly improve the source stream's visual clarity. This allows for a lower bitrate while maintaining high picture definition.

2. MediaUni converged streaming network for zero stuttering at high concurrency

   A global network with over 3,200 nodes and more than 180 TB of bandwidth reserves ensures a high-quality viewing experience for tens of millions of concurrent users. Customized, end-to-end disaster recovery and emergency plans provide greater reliability for large-scale events such as concerts. To prevent resource contention during peak traffic, Alibaba Cloud proactively prepared and reserved bandwidth resources based on BesTV's broadcast schedule. If a stream interruption or abnormal frame rate occurs during a broadcast, the configured primary and backup streams perform an automatic switchover.

3. Custom transcoding templates and AI enhancement models to improve picture detail

   Different transcoding templates and AI enhancement models were customized for sports events and concerts. For example, a custom portrait template for concerts applied special processing to performers' faces and skin tones to enhance facial details. The transcoding templates and AI enhancement models for basketball broadcasts made jersey numbers, floor textures, and court boundary lines clearer.

Customer value

1. Alibaba Cloud ApsaraVideo Live ensured high concurrency, low latency, and stability for BesTV's large-scale event broadcasts.

2. Using Narrowband HD technology, ApsaraVideo Live transformed low-bitrate ingested streams into clearer video. This ensured stable and smooth transmission while also providing a satisfying viewing experience for the audience.

Customer testimonial

The Alibaba Cloud solution for cultural and sports events provided excellent support for our large-scale live broadcasts. In the complex environment of a large outdoor concert, it delivered a clear, smooth, and immersive viewing experience to millions of fans.

—BesTV