Live event states and billing

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Warning

Azure Media Services will be retired June 30th, 2024. For more information, see the AMS Retirement Guide.

In Azure Media Services, a live event begins billing as soon as its state transitions to Running or StandBy. You will be billed even if there is no video flowing through the service. To stop the live event from billing, you have to stop the live event. Live Transcription is billed the same way as the live event.

When LiveEventEncodingType on your live event is set to Standard or Premium1080p, Media Services auto shuts off any live event that is still in the Running state 12 hours after the input feed is lost, and there are no live outputs running. However, you will still be billed for the time the live event was in the Running state.

Note

Pass-through (basic or standard) live events are NOT automatically shut off and must be explicitly stopped through the API to avoid excessive billing.

States

The live event can be in one of the following states.

State Description
Stopped This is the initial state of the live event after creation (unless autostart was set to true.) No billing occurs in this state. No input can be received by the live event.
Starting The live event is starting and resources getting allocated. No billing occurs in this state. If an error occurs, the live event returns to the Stopped state.
Allocating The allocate action was called on the live event and resources are being provisioned for this live event. Once this operation is done successfully, the live event will transition to StandBy state.
StandBy live event resources have been provisioned and is ready to start. Billing occurs in this state. Most properties can still be updated, however ingest or streaming is not allowed during this state.
Running The live event resources have been allocated, ingest and preview URLs have been generated, and it is capable of receiving live streams. At this point, billing is active. You must explicitly call Stop on the live event resource to halt further billing.
Stopping The live event is being stopped and resources are being de-provisioned. No billing occurs in this transient state.
Deleting The live event is being deleted. No billing occurs in this transient state.

You can choose to enable live transcriptions when you create the live event. If you do so, you will be billed for Live Transcriptions whenever the live event is in the Running state. Note that you will be billed even if there is no audio flowing through the live event.

Get help and support

You can contact Media Services with questions or follow our updates by one of the following methods: