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 4.8.27 contains enhancements and fixes that improve the functionality of the media server software.
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 leverage our hybrid cloud platform solution for end-to-end streaming seamlessly. 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 Access MPEG-TS SCTE-35 tags for HLS streaming.
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:
- Configure an AMD Xilinx accelerated transcoding for Wowza Streaming Engine
- Limitations of AMD Xilinx acceleration with Wowza Streaming Engine transcoding
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.
