Important: A newer version of Wowza Streaming Engine is available. For more information, see Latest software updates for Wowza Streaming Engine.
Version: Wowza Streaming Engine™ 4.8.22+2 build 20230327140309 released on March 29, 2023.
Java support: Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.22 is built on Java 11 (OpenJDK Java SE JRE 11.0.2), but can be used with Java versions 11 - 12. For more information, see Manually install and troubleshoot Java on Wowza Streaming Engine.
New features and functionality in Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.22
Wowza Streaming Engine is a robust, customizable, and scalable media server software that powers reliable streaming of high-quality video and audio to any device, anywhere. Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.22 contains enhancements and fixes that improve the functionality of the media server software.
Support for AMD Xilinx Alveo U30 in preview mode
With Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.22, you can transcode Wowza Streaming Engine with an AMD Xilinx Alveo U30 accelerator card in a preview mode in addition to using the CPU, NVIDIA cards, or Intel QuickSync Video.
This enhancement allows users to seamlessly leverage the hardware-accelerated features of Xilinx video codec units, enabling high-density real-time transcoding for live-streaming video. For more information, see the following articles:
- Introduction to AMD Xilinx Acceleration with Wowza Streaming Engine
- Server specifications for AMD Xilinx acceleration with Wowza Streaming Engine transcoding
- Configure an AMD Xilinx accelerated transcoding for Wowza Streaming Engine
- Limitations of AMD Xilinx acceleration with Wowza Streaming Engine transcoding
MainConcept replacement of Beamr for H.264 and HEVC/H.265 transcoding
This release sunsets support for Beamr H.264 and HEVC/H.265 transcoding and updates the default encoding and decoding implementations for H.264 and HEVC/H.265 video to MainConcept. The move to MainConcept delivers improved quality, speed, and performance.
If you update to Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.22 from an earlier version, existing Transcoder templates that use Default as the encoding or decoding implementation will use MainConcept after the upgrade. You will need to update your encoding configuration for MainConcept if it uses any advanced Beamr parameters. For migration details and parameter mappings, see Migrate from Beamr to MainConcept in Wowza Streaming Engine.
Upgrade to CUDA 12
With Wowza Streaming Engine release 4.8.22, we've upgraded support to CUDA 12 for NVIDIA GPU-accelerated live stream transcoding.
This upgrade supports using the latest NVIDIA drivers for transcoding at greater scale and speed. The NVIDIA microarchitecture of your hardware must support CUDA 12. NVIDIA driver versions must be at least 525.60.13 for Linux and 527.41 for Windows. Any previous or unsupported drivers will cause Wowza Streaming Engine to revert back to default CPU transcoding. For more information, see Server specifications for NVIDIA acceleration with Wowza Streaming Engine transcoding.
Installation and update considerations for Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.22
If you're updating to Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.22 from a base installation of Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.17 or earlier, before you update, you need to install a supported version of Java, such as Java 11-12 or the OpenJDK Java SE JRE 11.0.2 installed with Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.18 (available from the Downloads tab of My Account). Then instruct Wowza Streaming Engine to use that version of Java according to the instructions in Manually install and troubleshoot Java on Wowza Streaming Engine.
When using the Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.18 installer to install a new instance of Wowza Streaming Engine on Windows, you may need to install additional dependencies in order to ingest SRT MediaCaster streams or use the generic SRT stream targets destination to publish an SRT stream. To address this, install the latest version of the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio appropriate to your operating system.
For step-by-step instructions on how to install or update Wowza Streaming Engine, see the following articles:
- Install – Install and configure Wowza Streaming Engine
- Update – Update your Wowza Streaming Engine installation
Breaking changes in Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.22
MainConcept replacement of Beamr for H.264 and HEVC/H.265 transcoding
With the sunset of Beamr encoding and decoding for H.264 and HEVC/H.265 video in Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.22, all Beamr parameters will stop working. You can manually replace the most common advanced Beamr parameters with MainConcept equivalents. For help with this task, see Migrate from Beamr to MainConcept in Wowza Streaming Engine.
Other remaining Beamr parameters you've configured will also fail with this update. To troubleshoot any leftover Beamr parameters, you can view similar warnings in the access logs.
WARN 200 - TranscoderNativeParameterInfo.resolveVideoEncodeParameters[beamr4.bframes]: Video encoding parameter not found: beamr4.bframesJava versions
Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.18 is built on Java 11 (OpenJDK Java SE JRE 11.0.2) and supports Java versions 11 - 12. Earlier versions of Java aren't supported.
Important notes about changing the Java version:
- Previous versions of Wowza Streaming Engine media server software were built on Java 9. If you're updating an earlier installation of Wowza Streaming Engine to version 4.8.18 (or later), you must install OpenJDK Java SE JRE 11.0.2 before running the Wowza Streaming Engine updater. For your convenience, we've provided the OpenJDK Java SE JRE 11.0.2 files as a zip on the Downloads tab of your Wowza account.
- If your Wowza Streaming Engine workflow uses custom modules or plugins, we recommend that you test them with Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.18 in a non-production environment prior to updating your media server software. The following Java modules are included:
- java.base
- java.datatransfer
- java.desktop
- java.instrument
- java.logging
- java.management
- java.management.rmi
- java.naming
- java.prefs
- java.rmi
- java.scripting
- java.scripting.jgss
- java.security.sasl
- java.sql
- java.transaction.xa
- java.xml
- jdk.crypto.cryptoki
- jdk.crypto.ec
- jdk.httpserver
- jdk.management
- jdk.management.agent
- jdk.naming.rmi
- jdk.unsupported
- jdk.xml.dom
- If you have other dependencies, you must install a Java 11 JRE or JDK that includes all your dependencies.
For more information, see Manually install and troubleshoot Java on Wowza Streaming Engine.
Detailed list of changes in Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.22
Changes since Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.21
- Added transcoding support for AMD Xilinx Alveo U30 in preview mode.
- Migrated (default) CPU transcoding to use MainConcept and deprecated Beamr CPU transcoding support.
- Updated NVIDIA SDKs to version 12.0.
- Fixed an issue producing out-of-sync audio and video when pushing two consecutive MPEG-DASH live streams to a cloud provider.
- Fixed an issue causing audio bitrates to drop to 0 kbps for some initial segments during cloud uploads.
- Fixed an issue where the last bit of content in live streaming workflows was lost.
- Fixed an issue related to quality and color drop for VP9 transcoding and WebRTC playback.
- Please note that VP8 is no longer suggested for outputs. We recommend using VP9.
Known issues with Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.22
For a detailed list of known issues that are still in effect, see Known issues with Wowza Streaming Engine.
