Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.18 Release Notes

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™ 4.8.18+1 build 20220318091926 released on March 29, 2022.

Java support: Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.18 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 4.8.18


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 4.8.18 contains several enhancements and fixes that help to improve the functionality of the media server software.

Java 11 update

With Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.18, we've updated to OpenJDK Java SE JRE 11.0.2. Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.18 requires Java 11 at a minimum, but can be used with Java versions 11 - 12. For more information about this update, refer to the Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.18 installation and update considerations and breaking changes.

Installation and update considerations for Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.18


If you are updating to Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.18 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:

Breaking changes in Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.18


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 4.8.18


Changes since Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.17

  • Replaced Oracle Java SE JRE 9.0.4 with OpenJDK Java SE JRE 11.0.2.
  • Upgraded Tomcat libraries to version 9.0.54.
  • Upgraded Log4j libraries to version 2.17.2.
  • Fixed an issue which prevented RTMP audio-only streams to be reproduced.
  • Fixed an issue which caused Wowza Streaming Engine trial licenses to crash when transcoding with a CUDA scaler.
  • Removed the Wowza CDN option as a Wowza stream target destination.
  • Upgraded Facebook API to version 12.0.
  • Upgraded Beamer4 to version 5.4.7.2.
  • Upgraded to Java 11.

Known issues with Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.18


For a detailed list of known issues that are still in effect, see Known issues with Wowza Streaming Engine.