Wowza Streaming Engine

Version: Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.27+5

Wowza Streaming Engine™ is robust, customizable, and scalable media server software that powers reliable streaming of high-quality video and audio to any device, anywhere.

New Features and Functionality

Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.27+5 contains the following improvement to the functionality of the media server:

Improved Wowza Streaming Engine with Wowza Video features

We made various enhancements to offer a more complete experience to Wowza Streaming Engine with Wowza Video customers. As part of this work, we delivered several features to seamlessly integrate our hybrid cloud platform solution for end-to-end streaming. Changes include the following:

Made security improvements to encrypt and obfuscate the Wowza Video API token used when creating Wowza Video stream targets. This enhancement helps our customers maintain SOC 2 compliance by ensuring access tokens are always stored securely.
Streamlined the Test Playback modal in Wowza Streaming Engine Manager to improve playback URL generation. This enhancement builds on our previous solution, creating more accurate URLs that better respect protocols and ports.
Improved the Wowza Video Transcoder stream target workflow by incorporating it into the existing Wowza Video CDN distribution steps. This simplifies the exchange to push stream targets from Wowza Streaming Manager to Wowza Video for transcoding. It also lets you start and stop Wowza Video transcoders from Wowza Streaming Engine Manager when creating adaptive bitrate (ABR) ladders for your streams. For more, see:

Updated the Wowza Streaming Engine REST API to include Wowza Video stream target attributes for liveStreamId, playbackUrl, liveStreamPlayerUrl, and liveStreamEmbedCode. These parameters are added by Wowza Video when a stream target is initialized and fully provisioned using the wowza-video-transcoder profile. For more, see Wowza Video sample profile entries.

Improved SCTE-35 ad insertion for HLS live streams

We added documentation explaining how to use the Wowza Streaming Engine Java API to access and insert MPEG-TS SCTE-35 tags when streaming an HLS live stream. To accomplish this task, we recommend using the new ModuleAdMarker class over the legacy stream target API method. To work with this new module and to learn about its benefits, see the Access MPEG-TS SCTE-35 tags for HLS streaming article.

Improved AMD Xilinx accelerated transcoding

We made major improvements to stabilize the transcoding of WebRTC inputs with the AMD Xilinx Alveo U30 card. Therefore, support for transcoding WebRTC inputs is promoted from preview to production mode in Wowza Streaming Engine version 4.8.27. Improvements fixed issues with stream interruptions when the card is full, or when the stream has many resolution changes. For more, see:

Improved SRT stream creation via the Wowza Streaming Engine REST API

With Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.27, we made changes to improve the creation of SRT stream files via the Wowza Streaming Engine REST API. The mpegTSFilters property was added to the Swagger model for the PUT endpoint that handles updates for advanced stream settings. For more information and details, see this SRT example.

System Requirements

Operating systems

The supported operating systems varies by workflow. For non-transcoded streaming, Wowza Streaming Engine media server software can be used on the following 64-bit operating systems:

Microsoft Windows
macOS
Linux (CentOS, RedHat, Ubuntu, and SuSe)

If you use the Transcoder feature, Wowza Streaming Engine media server software supports the following 64-bit operating systems:

Microsoft Windows 10
Microsoft Windows Server 2019
Microsoft Windows Server 2016
Microsoft Windows Server 2012
Linux (CentOS, RedHat, Ubuntu, and SuSe)
Note: Linux versions must compile with the GNU C library (glibc) version 2.17 or greater. Other Linux distributions that meet this requirement may work, but haven't been tested.

Install Wowza Streaming Engine on a clean operating system. If you want to update your earlier version of Wowza Streaming Engine to Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.27+5, see Update your Wowza Streaming Engine installation for instructions.

Java version

Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.27+5 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.

If you're updating 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. For more information, see Manually install and troubleshoot Java on Wowza Streaming Engine.

Notes: Previous versions of Wowza Streaming Engine media server software were built on Java 8 and Java 9. If you're updating an earlier installation of Wowza Streaming Engine to version 4.7.8 through 4.8.17, you must install OpenJDK Java SE JRE 9.0.4 before running the Wowza Streaming Engine updater. For your convenience, we've provided the OpenJDK Java SE JRE 9.0.4 files as a zip on the Downloads tab of your Wowza account. For more information, see Manually install and troubleshoot Java on Wowza Streaming Engine.

Browser support for Streaming Engine Manager

You can use Wowza Streaming Engine Manager with the latest versions of most modern web browsers that support HTML5 and Cascading Style Sheets level 3 (CSS 3). We recommend that you use the latest version of the Chrome browser for best results.

Note: Wowza Streaming Engine Manager was tested extensively using the Google Chrome web browser. Manager functionality and performance may vary on other web browsers. Browser updates that occur after this release of Wowza Streaming Engine may also impact functionality and performance and Wowza will work to address any new issues as quickly as possible.