Latest software updates for Wowza Streaming Engine

Originally Published on 08/02/2017 | Updated on 11/11/2020 2:57 pm PST

Wowza Media Systems™ regularly releases Wowza Streaming Engine™ media server software builds with new features and functionality. You can install the software on your computer using an installer, or if you already have Wowza Streaming Engine installed, you can update it with a build updater.

Note: If you have problems with or want to provide feedback about our software updates, contact Wowza Technical Support. To learn about the variety of support resources that we offer to our user community, see our Support Resources webpage.
Wowza Streaming Engine software releases
Latest production release
Latest beta releases

Wowza Streaming Engine software releases

Wowza Streaming Engine currently has the following types of software updates:

  • Production – Long-term supported builds with new features and bug fixes and full regression and performance testing for use in production environments.
  • Patch – Between production releases, Wowza occasionally provides patch releases to fix bugs or regressions in the latest production release, which can be deployed in production environments for long-term stability. Patches undergo varying degrees of regression and performance testing, but generally not as much as a long-term supported production build. Patch releases are versioned as 4.8.5.[patch], where 4.8.5 is the latest production release.
  • Beta – For early access to new features and improvements being developed, Wowza also provides betas between production releases. Although the improvements and enhancements have been tested by QA, full regression testing and performance testing hasn't been performed on beta builds, and they should only be used in testing environments. Support for beta builds is fully available, but there is no guarantee of hotfixes.

Latest production release 

The latest Wowza Streaming Engine production build is Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5 build 20200616153358 released on June 17, 2020.

For a complete list of changes in this build, see the Release Notes.

Note: The latest patch to the production build with updates to Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5 is available as Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5.05 build 20201006161917 on our Downloads webpage or from the Downloads tab of My Account. For more information, see Patch updates to Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5.

New features and functionality in Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5

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

WebRTC updates

Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5 includes significant upgrades and fixes for WebRTC functionality. We added support for configuring WebRTC streaming in Wowza Streaming Engine Manager and made WebRTC hosted test pages available for faster learning and testing. Additionally, we improved the accuracy of RTCP feedback messages for adaptive encoding when publishing WebRTC to Wowza Streaming Engine, and we improved the stability of WebRTC session timeouts. We also updated FIR messages to default to a more reliable time-based scheme, which enables a more regular interval for accessing WebRTC streams via a keyframe. For more information about WebRTC and Wowza Streaming Engine, see the following the articles:

SRT improvements

Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5 offers enhanced support for Secure Reliable Transport (SRT). We now support SRT version 1.4, which provides increased reliability. Other improvements include a number of new and renamed properties for SRT MediaCaster ingest and SRT stream targets and fixes for outstanding issues. For more information on newly available SRT properties, see the following articles:

Low Latency HLS enhancements

Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5 includes adjustments to the Low Latency HLS implementation to keep up-to-date with modifications to Apple’s preliminary protocol extension to the HLS spec. We've added support for the EXT-X-PRELOAD-HINT media playlist tag, removed the HTTP/2 push delivery mechanism, and made other minor changes.

Performance upgrades

With Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5, we've increased playback performance for connections over SSL/TLS, updated the default server performance tuning, made general WebRTC performance upgrades, and updated MediaCaster ingest performance.

Security improvements

In Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5, we've fixed Wowza Streaming Engine Manager security concerns related to CSRF, authenticated XSS, and remote authenticated authorization. We've also added support for additional security-related HTTP headers in request responses, and we've enabled stricter Wowza Streaming Engine file access permissions on Linux and macOS.

Get the latest production release

 
  • New Wowza Streaming Engine installation
    Installers for the latest Wowza Streaming Engine production or patch build are available on our Downloads webpage and can be used to install a new Wowza Streaming Engine instance.
  • Update an existing Wowza Streaming Engine installation
    To update a Wowza Streaming Engine installation, sign in to your Account Management page using your Wowza account and then check the Downloads tab for the latest updater for your Wowza Streaming Engine version. You must have an active Maintenance and Support contract to receive updaters. For more information, see Wowza Streaming Engine Maintenance and Support.
     

Patch updates to the latest production release

The latest patch release for Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5 is available as Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5.05 build 20201006161917 on our Downloads webpage or from the Downloads tab of My Account. For information about the latest patch release, see Patch updates to Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5.

Latest beta releases

Between production software releases, Wowza produces beta builds so you can get the latest bug fixes and improvements for Wowza Streaming Engine and get early access to new features being developed. Although the improvements and enhancements have been tested by QA, full regression testing and performance testing hasn't been performed on beta builds, and they should only be used in testing environments. Support for beta builds is fully available, but there is no guarantee of hotfixes. Download the latest beta release updater from the Downloads tab of My Account. See Update your Wowza Streaming Engine installation for installation instructions.

Note: Wowza Streaming Engine beta releases may contain breaking changes or known issues. See Breaking changes and known issues in Wowza Streaming Engine beta releases for more information.

Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.7b

The latest Wowza Streaming Engine beta build is Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.7b build 20201103113343.

Notes: 
  • Some of the changes in Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.7b require a new installation using an installer, rather than the updater. These changes are identified as requiring an installer in the following release notes.
  • Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.7b includes all of the changes released with the latest patch to the latest Wowza Streaming Engine production release, Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5.05.

Changes since the previous beta release

  • Made the following improvements for security:
    • Updated the access to the following directories on Linux to use 644 permissions (read-only for all users except the owner): [install-dir]/conf, [install-dir]/manager/conf, [install-dir]/content, [install-dir]/transcoder. This update requires a new installation of Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.7b, rather than using the updater.
    • Fixed a security vulnerability related to passwords. This update requires a new installation of Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.7b, rather than using the updater.
      • Made the following changes to the admin.password file:
        • Added support for secure password storage using Bcrypt one-way hashing. Bcrypt hashed passwords are compatible with HTTP basic authentication for HTTP Providers, the REST API, and the REST API Documentation Server.
        • Added a group (name: basic) for read-only users.
        • Added a passwordEncoding field to separate password encoding from authentication mechanisms.
      • Made the following updates to the REST API:
        • Added a new parameter (name: passwordEncoding, values: bcrypt, digest, cleartext) for specifying a password encoding format when adding or updating users. If no value is specified, the password encoding format will default to the value set for <PasswordEncodingScheme> in Server.xml.
        • Added a new property (name: PasswordEncodingScheme; location: [install-dir]/conf/Server.xml, <Server>/<RestInterface>, default: bcrypt) for specifying a password encoding format. This value will default to bcrypt for new installations. 
          <RestInterface>
    ...
    <PasswordEncodingScheme>bcrypt</PasswordEncodingScheme>
    ...
</RestInterface>
      • Added a CLI tool for adding and updating users.
      • Changed the default value for <AuthenticationMethod> in Server.xml to basic.
      • Fixed an issue with Wowza Streaming Engine Manager incompatibility with HTTP basic authentication.
      • Updated the default behavior of the Wowza Streaming Engine installer to automatically use Bcrypt one-way hashing when adding new users.
    • Fixed an XSS security vulnerability in Wowza Streaming Engine Manager.
    • Notarized and stapled the macOS installer to meet basic macOS security requirements. This update requires a new installation of Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.7b, rather than using the updater.
  • Made the following improvements for Media Cache:
    • Added AWS SDK for Java (2.14.15) support for Amazon S3 Media Cache sources.
    • Updated Media Cache Amazon S3 source authentication to AWS Signature Version 4.
    • Added a new property (name: logStoreCapacityInterval, location: [install-dir]/conf/MediaCache.xml, <MediaCache>/<Properties>, type: Integer, default: 10000) to enable logging of available storage space in Media Cache stores. 
      <Property>
    <Name>logStoreCapacityInterval</Name>
    <Value>10000</Value>
    <Type>Integer</Type>
</Property>
    • Fixed an issue where HTTPS URLs defaulted back to HTTP for Media Cache Amazon S3 and HTTP sources.
  • Made the following improvements for Low-Latency HLS (LL-HLS):
    • Fixed an issue where EXT-X-PROGRAM-DATE-TIME was reporting the segment end time instead of segment start time.
    • Fixed an issue that caused a null pointer exception when adding rendition reports to media playlists.
    • Fixed an issue with EXT-X-PROGRAM-DATE-TIME tags being added only after the complete segment was created.
    • Fixed an issue with LL-HLS streaming that caused player requests for the last partial segment to fail with 500 internal server errors.
    • Fixed an issue with timing out and returning HTTP 503 errors earlier than three Target Durations after blocking playlist reloads is requested with the _HLS_part query parameter.
    • Added support for PING messages over HTTP/2.
    • Changed the default values for the following LL-HLS and CMAF packetizer properties:
      • cmafLLChunkingScheme – byDuration
      • cmafLLChunkDurationTargetVideo – 1000 (ms)
      • cmafLLChunkDurationTargetAudio – 1000 (ms)
      • cmafLLChunkFrameCountTargetVideo – 30
      • cmafLLChunkFrameCountTargetAudio – 47
      • cmafSegmentDurationTarget – 6000 (ms)
  • Deprecated the following ModuleCoreSecurity properties:
    • securityPublishIPBlackList. Use the securityPublishIPBlockList property instead.
    • securityPublishIPWhiteList. Use the securityPublishIPAllowList property instead.
    • securityPlayIPBlackList. Use the securityPlayIPBlockList property instead.
    • securityPlayIPWhiteList. Use the securityPlayIPAllowList property instead.
  • Deprecated the following HTTPProvider property:
    • KillConnectionTimeout. Use the EndConnectionTimeout property instead.
  • Fixed an issue with publishing streams to Facebook using the Facebook Live stream target failing as a result of a change in the Facebook Graph API to deprecate the save_vod parameter for some requests.
  • Fixed an issue with Transcoder B-frame reordering that caused warnings to appear in the console during playback.
  • Fixed an issue, introduced in Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.6b, with NVIDIA NVENC SDK 9 that caused skip frame messages to be logged.
  • Updated the Windows installer to have a valid installer certificate. This update requires a new installation of Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.7b, rather than using the updater.
  • Removed the [install-dir]/examples directory. This update requires a new installation of Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.7b, rather than using the updater.

Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.6b

The first available beta build after Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5 was Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.6b build 20200914185817.

Note: Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.6b includes all of the changes released with the previous patch to the latest Wowza Streaming Engine production release, Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5.01.

Changes since Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5.01

  • Made the following improvements for LL-HLS:
    • Fixed an issue that caused PART-HOLD-BACK values to not account for the maximum part target duration from all renditions.
    • Fixed an issue that caused the cupertinoPartHoldBack property to be ignored.
    • Fixed an issue with partial segments being removed earlier than three target durations from the end of the playlist for Low-Latency HLS streams, causing playback issues.
    • Fixed an issue with the HTTP/2 implementation and connection window size doubling.
  • Fixed an issue with onPublish events being called twice for HLS and SRT MediaCaster streams.
  • Added support for H.264 levels 6, 6.1, and 6.2.
  • Updated the Wowza Streaming Engine logging framework from Apache Log4j 1.x to Apache Log4j 2. Use the new [install-dir]/conf/log4j2-config.xml file for logging configuration.
  • Added exception handling and logging for methods in Java modules.
  • Fixed an issue with incorrect logging when using custom Push Publishing modules that contain map entries for the same stream name.
  • Updated the Restlet framework library to version 2.4.3.
  • Added a new property (name: insertConscryptCryptoProvider, location: [install-dir]/conf/Server.xml, <Server>/<Properties>, type: Boolean, default: false) to enable Conscrypt, an open-source Java Security Provider that improves SSL performance. 
    <Property>
    <Name>insertConscryptCryptoProvider</Name>
    <Value>true</Value>
    <Type>Boolean</Type>
</Property>
  • Made the following improvements for SRT:
    • Improved error handling for SRT ingest and publish on Windows operating systems.
    • Fixed an issue with SRT streams with high packet loss that could cause a deadlock.
    • Added new default methods to the IMediaStream interface in the Wowza Streaming Engine Java API to set or get whether a stream is an SRT stream:
      • void setIsSRT(boolean isSRT)
      • boolean getIsSRT()
    • Added new methods to the LiveMediaSRTReceiver class in the Wowza Streaming Engine Java API for retrieval of native statistical data for SRT sockets:
      • public SRTNativeTraceStats getSRTNativeStats()
      • public SRTNativeTraceStats getSRTNativeStats(boolean instantaneous)
    • Fixed an issue with erroneously logging "Stream index not found" when stopping SRT MediaCaster streams.
  • Fixed a memory leak that occurred when shutting down a stream.
  • Made the following improvements for nDVR:
    • Fixed an issue with starting nDVR recordings using the Wowza Streaming Engine Java API not working due to a stream timeout.
    • Fixed an issue with not saving changes made to an application's nDVR configuration in Wowza Streaming Engine Manager when was not enabled.
  • Fixed an issue with the stream type for E-AC3 audio being incorrectly logged as AC3 audio with HLS streams.
  • Fixed an issue with not saving overlay images when adding or updating them as a decoding preset in a Transcoder template for an application in Wowza Streaming Engine Manager.
  • Added support for a new parameter in Transcoder templates for adjusting the volume on audio transcoded to the Opus codec (location: <Encode>/<Audio>/<Parameters>/<Parameter>, name: opus.gain, type: Double). 
    <Parameter>
    <Name>opus.gain</Name>
    <Value>12.5</Value>
    <Type>Double</Type>
</Parameter>
  • Updated the encoder for VP8 and VP9 video codecs to use constant bitrate (CBR) encoding by default.
  • Fixed an issue with the updaters for Wowza Streaming Engine 4.7.8 and later overwriting the tomcat.properties file and, if updating from version 4.7.7 or earlier, deleting the winstone.properties file.
  • Added audio encode callbacks to the Wowza Streaming Engine Java API for intercepting and modifying audio data before and after resampling.
  • Upgraded to newer versions of several libraries including Spring Boot 2.3.1, Spring Framework 5.2.7, Spring Security 5.3.3, Apache Tomcat 9.0.36, Apache Ant 1.10.8, Apache Taglibs 1.2.5, Apache Commons Lang 3.10, Apache Commons Text 1.8, Jackson 2.11.1, JAXB 2.3.3, Java Servlet API 4.0.1, Joda-Time 2.10.6, and Bootstrap 3.3.7.
  • Fixed an issue with Wowza Streaming Engine looping indefinitely and increasing CPU usage when trying to connect to an RTP endpoint with I/O exceptions, such as when the RTP SSL certificate was not valid.
  • Fixed an issue with an incoming stream being stopped through either the Wowza Streaming Engine REST API or Wowza Streaming Engine Manager and timing out at the same time that could cause a deadlock.
  • Fixed an issue with error parsing of RTCP sender reports.
  • Fixed an issue with a null pointer exception sometimes occurring when stopping a PushPublish session.
  • Upgraded to NVIDIA NVENC SDK 9.
Removed functionality

The following features are no longer available:

  • Removed the test players in Wowza Streaming Engine Manager. The Test Players window was renamed Test Playback and now provides playback URLs for each protocol that you can use with your player or the Video Test Players webpage.
  • Removed Microsoft Smooth Streaming and Adobe HDS from the Playback Types options in Wowza Streaming Engine Manager.
  • Removed support for sending a continuous live stream with Facebook Live stream targets. Existing stream targets with continuous live streaming enabled will need to be updated to disable sending a continuous live stream in PushPublishMap.txt in [install-dir]/conf/[application name].
  • Removed support for posting to a group you manage (the Group option for Video Destination) with Facebook Live stream targets. Existing stream targets with group enabled for video destination will need to be updated to publish to a page or timeline in PushPublishMap.txt in [install-dir]/conf/[application name].
  • Removed Concurrent collector from the Java Garbage Collection Settings options in Wowza Streaming Engine Manager.
  • Removed Mirror Image from the destination options on the Add Stream Targets page in Wowza Streaming Engine Manager.
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