New Release of Wowza Streaming Engine!

from Wowza by Jamie Sherry The new version of Wowza Streaming Engine™—4.4.0 build 17695—was released on February 2, 2016. The latest version features Stream Targets enhancements, CORS for HTTP connections, WebM stream encryption for MPEG-DASH, Works With Wowza™ integration for The Telos Alliance audio encoders, and more. Wowza Streaming Engine version 4.4 highlights include:

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) for HTTP connections

CORS allows resources to be requested from a domain outside the one where the request originated. A common example is a website in one domain that requests video from a streaming media server in a different domain. Wowza Streaming Engine 4.4.0 enables you to configure cross-origin HTTP access-control settings so that a website on one domain can deliver HTTP-based streaming video from a streaming media server in a different domain. For more information, see How to enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) for HTTP-based connections.

Stream Targets enhancements

The Stream Targets feature allows you to send live streams to content delivery networks (CDNs), streaming servers, streaming services, and multicast networks for distributed delivery. Wowza Streaming Engine 4.4.0 has a new option that can automatically start the Wowza Streaming Cloud service when you create a Wowza Streaming Cloud stream target. This option starts the Wowza Streaming Cloud transcoder immediately and publishes the source stream. For more information, see How to send a live stream to Wowza Streaming Cloud.

Media Cache enhancements

The Media Cache feature in Wowza Streaming Engine is a read-through caching mechanism that increases the scalability of on-demand video streaming. In this release, we've increased the flexibility of Media Cache deployment options by adding Microsoft Azure BLOB storage as a supported Media Cache source for media files. You can configure Wowza Streaming Engine Manager to request media files from a single container in Azure BLOB storage. For HTTP-based media cache sources, you can now configure Media Cache to request media files over encrypted HTTP (https://) connections. For more information, see How to scale video on demand streaming with Media Cache.

WebM stream encryption (MPEG-DASH)

Wowza Streaming Engine software can use key files to protect on-demand and live MPEG-DASH streams using the Common Encryption (CENC) standard. Wowza Streaming Engine 4.4.0 software adds key-file support to enable encryption of WebM streams on the fly. The encryption follows The WebM Project specifications, and browsers that support Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) and WebM, such as Google Shaka Player, should be able to decrypt and play the streams. For more information, see How to secure MPEG-DASH streaming using Common Encryption (CENC).

Works With Wowza integration for The Telos Alliance audio encoders

The Sources (Live) page for live applications in Wowza Streaming Engine Manager adds The Telos Alliance audio encoders to enable you to deliver connection settings for the application to the encoder. For more information, see How to connect The Telos Alliance's Z/IPStream audio encoders to Wowza Streaming Engine.

Linux enhancements

Support for running as a service using the latest versions of the Linux OS.

To update to Wowza Streaming Engine version 4.4.0

The full installer (for new installations) is available at wowza.com/pricing/installer/. Updates for existing installations are available at wowza.com/portal/account/ by signing in and clicking on My Downloads. You can learn about everything that's included in the latest release by reading the full Wowza Streaming Engine version 4.4.0 release notes.