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.
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: A patch with updates to Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5 is available from Wowza support as Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5.01 build 20200724152835. For more information, see Patch updates to the latest production release.
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:
- Set up WebRTC streaming with Wowza Streaming Engine Manager
- Set up WebRTC streaming with Wowza Streaming Engine
- WebRTC workflows in Wowza Streaming Engine
- Ingest RTSP, SRT, or RTMP streams into Wowza Streaming Engine for playback with WebRTC
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:
- Specify per-stream settings in Wowza Streaming Engine .stream files
- Use SRT to distribute live streams from Wowza Streaming Engine
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 this Wowza Streaming Engine 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.
Note: You must have an active Maintenance and Support contract to receive updaters.
Patch updates to the latest production release
A patch with updates to Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5 is available from Wowza support as Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5.01 build 20200724152835. Contact support if you want access to the build that includes these changes.
Note: AWS, Docker, Google, and Azure cloud platform images use Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5 and do not include the patch.
Changes in Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.5.01
- Fixed an issue with incorrect logging when playing MPEG-DASH streams using secure tokens.
- Fixed an issue with the nDVR converter sometimes creating an audio-only MP4 file when audio and video content is in the nDVR store.
- Fixed an issue with parsing invalid Request-Lines in HTTP/1.1 request messages.
- Fixed an issue with shutting down RTSP streams that could cause a deadlock.
- Decreased the log level for missing Quick Sync system libraries from WARN to INFO.
- Modified the Wowza Streaming Engine updaters for Linux and macOS to only update permissions for the following directories: [install-dir]/lib, [install-dir]/manager/lib, [install-dir]/bin, [install-dir]/manager/bin, [install-dir]/scripts.
- Fixed an issue with incorrectly deserializing RTCP packets with a zero length resulting in repeated logging messages.
- Fixed an issue with RTCP handlers mishandling RTP packets when listening for RTP multicast streams.
- Added handling of invalid URLs for HTTP requests when attempting to resolve MIME types.
- Fixed an issue with the HTTPProviderSimpleWebServer returning the incorrect MIME type on Windows.
- Fixed an issue with playback of MPEG-DASH adaptive bitrate streams failing due to the play alias resolving incorrectly.
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. Support for beta builds is fully available, but there is no guarantee of hotfixes. Contact support if you want access to a beta build that includes these fixes and enhancements.
There is no available beta build at this time.
