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 4.8.23 contains enhancements and fixes that improve the functionality of the media server software.
New push-based CDN workflow with distribution to Wowza Video
The Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.23 release introduces a new push-based CDN workflow that interacts directly with Wowza Video to distribute live streams to global audiences over HLS. This workflow uses stream targets to manage and push streaming data to Wowza Video. All stream targets are managed within the Wowza Streaming Engine Manager interface, so there's no need for additional steps in Wowza Video. There are also no requirements to configure your server firewall when setting up this functionality. To learn more, see the following resources:
- Wowza Streaming Engine with Wowza Video
- Scaling Wowza Streaming Engine with Wowza CDN
- Push streams to Wowza CDN from Wowza Streaming Engine
- Pull streams from Wowza Streaming Engine to Wowza CDN
Updated Wowza Video transcoder workflow
Earlier versions of Wowza Streaming Engine experienced problems when using connection codes to send streams from Wowza Streaming Engine to Wowza Video for transcoding and CDN distribution. With this release, we've addressed this occurrence. We've also provided an updated method to stream to Wowza Video for transcoding and delivery over the Wowza CDN edge network. Changes include a new Wowza Video Transcoder tile in the Wowza Streaming Engine Manager interface. For more, see these resources:
- Scaling Wowza Streaming Engine with Wowza CDN
- Send a stream from Wowza Streaming Engine to Wowza Video for transcoding
Frame-rate reduction added to AMD Xilinx accelerated transcoding
To improve processing times, the AMD Xilinx Alveo U30 data center accelerator card now supports frame rate reduction. With this new functionality, users that select U30 as the scaler implementation can reduce the frame rate by half when utilizing the Alveo U30 card. The only limitation is that the first output needs to match the incoming frame rate. For more, see:
- Introduction to AMD Xilinx acceleration with Wowza Streaming Engine transcoding flow
- Limitations of AMD Xilinx acceleration with Wowza Streaming Engine transcoding
- Configure an AMD Xilinx accelerated transcoding for Wowza Streaming Engine
NVIDIA API parameter updates and CUDA 12
The Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.23 release cleans up NVIDIA-related code to remove and replace deprecated API items from CUDA versions 9 to 11. NVIDIA users with custom encoding, decoding, and scaling properties should review their implementations for updated CUDA 12 parameters. To confirm if your custom properties and settings need to be updated, reference the NVIDIA NVENC Preset Migration Guide.
