NEW RELEASE: Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.11

Wowza Streaming Engine
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Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.11 contains a variety of fixes that help to improve the functionality of the media server software.

Here’s what’s new:

  • Beamr encoding and decoding for H.264 and H.265 video
  • Replacing missing video frames to ensure a consistent frame rate
  • Protect WebRTC playback with SecureToken

BEAMR
Highest quality video, at the lowest bitrate.

We’ve always taken quality seriously, and now we’ve raised the bar even higher. This release adds support for Beamr’s unmatched software video encoding and decoding for the H.264 and H.265 codecs. With Beamr, your end-users will have a better viewing experience that costs you less. Beamr offers a more efficient, state-of-the-art live transcoder. This translates to either an increase in video quality that requires similar CPU usage, or similar visual quality that requires lower CPU usage.

Compared to the existing MainConcept encoder and decoder implementations, using the Beamr encoder or decoder implementations offers improved video quality with similar CPU usage.

For information about using Beamr, please click HERE.

Replace missing video frames to ensure consistent frame rate.

Optimize media processing through a balance of reliability and quality by replacing missing video frames. This new capability allows for a smoother, more continuous playback by preventing streams from buffering — so your end-users can watch your content all the way through without any delays.

With Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.11, you can prevent streams from buffering and displaying artifacts for smoother, more continuous video playback by replacing missing video frames and ensuring a consistent frame rate using the Transcoder. Replacing missing frames with the last successfully decoded frames allows for maintaining a specific output frame rate even when the source video is missing frames and drops below the desired output frame rate.

You can enable a consistent frame rate using either a strict frame rate for constant frame rate video or minimum frame rate for variable frame rate video. For more information about replacing missing video frames and ensuring a consistent frame rate, see the following the article:

Protect WebRTC playback with SecureToken.

Using WebRTC to deliver your streams? Now you can secure authentication of WebRTC playback using SecureToken protection. Limit viewership and protect your streams from unauthorized viewing by providing the SecureToken information to Wowza Streaming Engine.

You provide the SecureToken information to Wowza Streaming Engine through JSON data passed over the WebSocket. For more information about using SecureToken to protect WebRTC playback, see the following the articles:



What’s improved/bug fixes

• Fixed an issue with MP4 VOD content having incorrect default sample duration data when frame rate information is not found
• Fixed an issue with ICE candidates added to WebRTC signaling responses via the Wowza Streaming Engine Java API having their priorities overwritten
• Fixed an issue with not being able to set the FIR Message Interval for WebRTC sessions
• Added a method to WebRTCSession to set the FIR Message Interval in milliseconds in the Wowza Streaming Engine Java API: public void setFIRMessageInterval(long interval)
• Updated the format of installer and updater filenames to include a number for internal tracking following the release version number and a plus sign.


Read the full list of changes since the last release here.

Download Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.11

To get started, download the installer from the Downloads page, or download the updater from the “My Downloads” tab after you log into your Wowza Account.