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Streaming Platform and Media Server Release Notes

about 1 month ago by Developer Relations

Updates to the Dolby.io Streaming Platform and Media Server.

2024-11-14

Media Server

  • Where incorrect (higher then expected) viewer counts were being reported a fix has been implemented to report the correct number of viewers
  • For Metadata workflows with RTMP utilizing AMF OnFi messages for inserting timestamps, to improve playback to a bug in Google Chrome, timestamps will only be reported on keyframes. The issue with Chrome has been patched and will resolve as users update their versions of Chrome. For more information on this bug, please refer to our knowledge base article.

2024-05-28

Media Server

Features

  • Introduced initial support for our "re-stream" capability. This is the ability to stream from Dolby to other platforms via RTMP. For more details, review our documentation for Re-stream. If you want to start using this feature, please contact our sales team .
  • Updates to our Cloud Transcoder to pass RTMP AMF messages to every simulcast layer of the adaptive bitrate ladder.

Fixes

  • Fix for an issue where in some cases with Backup Publishing audio did not fail over.
  • Improvements to error messages with our Live Clipping feature.
  • Improvements in certain cases when streaming with AV1.
  • Fixed an issue where the plus character (+) in an SRT URL was not handled as whitespace correctly.
  • Fix for certain media streams where the top layer desynchronized from the lower renditions when using Cloud Transcoder with "Passthrough" mode.

2024-04-11

New Regional Clusters in Sao Paulo and Sydney

Deployed new regional clusters that can be specified by a stream or an account. This increases the global footprint of the service and reduces end-to-end latency in specific regions.

2024-03-14

Media Server

Features

  • Introduced support for obtaining an individual viewer's bandwidth consumption while using syndication. The feature introduces a new customViewerData parameter for creating a self-signed token. Customers who have this feature enabled can pass per-viewer metadata via a self-signed subscriber token on a per-viewer basis and then get individual viewer records back as a report via the Advanced Analytics API. If you want to start using this feature, please contact sales.

  • Introduced server updates to support extracting RTMP Action Message Format (AMF) messages and passing them through to the client. Please contact your sales engineer for a demonstration.

  • Improved SRT ingests to take advantage of the Low latency RTMP flag on a publishing token. When this flag is enabled for an SRT ingest, a buffer responsible for synchronizing audio and video is reduced to reduce end-to-end delay with SRT. This feature improves SRT latency, but in some cases where audio packets are not delivered close together, this flag may result in out-of-sync audio and video. We recommend disabling this flag in that case.

Fixes

Improved capture timestamps in certain ingest cases.

2024-01-22

Media Server

Features

  • Introduced a geo-cascading feature to improve the streaming experience for viewers around the world. The feature uses a network of clusters that are strategically placed in various geographical locations. This way, viewers can connect to clusters located closest to their location and experience reduced latency and improved reliability. For more information, see the Geo-cascading guide.

  • The platform supports publishing multiple redundant feeds into more than one region to improve the reliability of broadcasting. The platform now supports a priority publish parameter that lets you specify the priority of each feed. This way, in the case the primary feed disconnects, viewers will automatically receive the available feed with the highest priority. For more information, see the Redundant Ingest document.

  • Introduced the videoTargetBitrate publish parameter for defining the target bitrate of the streamed video content when using SRT or RTMP. The parameter helps the service determine what layer to send to viewers while using Simulcast to deliver a more consistent viewer experience. For more information, see the publish parameters section of the Broadcast document.

2023-10-30

Media Server

Features

  • The server now supports the H.265 codec for Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) streaming and recording. Using the codec is available only in native applications, as web browsers do not yet support it for WebRTC.

  • Support for Enhanced RTMP to allow using Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) with the H.265 and AV1 codec. This feature is available in OBS as well. HDR support is not yet supported.

Fixes

Minor fixes and improvements for RTMP publishers.

2023-07-24

Media Server

Features

  • Added a new low latency mode to RTMP publishing, which is enabled by default on all new publishing tokens. This feature reduces RTMP latency by 200-400ms.
  • Introduced significant improvements to connection rates and setup times.

Fixes

  • Fixed an issue with the Videon Edgecaster which required a restart to stream with RTMP.
  • Fixed an SRT A/V desync issue which was observed with several hardware encoders, such as Kiloview, LiveU, and PVI.
  • Fixed an SRT recording issue where audio playback was impacted by significant audio drops with several hardware encoders such as Kiloview, LiveU, and PVI.
  • Fixed a race condition that could lead to recording errors.

2023-03-29

Support for Syndicated Content

The Dolby.io Real-time Streaming APIs now support the ability to track usage data across multiple streaming partners on a single stream by adding a trackingId parameter to an API-generated Subscribe token or self-signed subscribe tokens.
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This "syndication" mechanism allows you to send the same stream to multiple cohorts of viewers whilst tying viewer data to a cohort via trackingId.
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By querying your aggregated viewer data with the Analytics API or GraphQL API you can determine how much bandwidth was consumed, how many viewers were watching for which provider, and a few other statistics.

For more information, see the Syndication article.

2022-12-04

Support for SRT Ingest

Added support for ingesting SRT protocol. SRT has become the standard for replacing RTMP as a contribution protocol for broadcast workflows over IP.

For more information, see:

2022-10-31

WHEP support for playback

Introduced support for WebRTC-HTTP Egress Protocol (WHEP) in Millicast to offer standardization of WebRTC playback. This allows streaming services, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), and WebRTC Transmission Networks (WTNs) to use multiple vendors to support their WebRTC-based services. This specification is based on this draft and will be updated to upcoming versions as soon as they are available. The WHEP endpoint is available here.

New Regional Cluster in Bangalore

Deployment of a new regional cluster that can be specified by a stream or an account. This increases the global footprint of the service and reduces end-to-end latency in specific regions.

2022-09-01

Introduced VP9 Codec Support for 4:4:4 Chroma Subsampling

Introduced support for VP9 codec that provides better color fidelity with the support of more color formats for remote post-production workflows.

2022-06-30

Web Viewer Multi-view Support

Introduced the Web Viewer multi-view support that allows customers to display multiple streams in a single viewer and interactively switch between them. The multi-view web viewer can be configured in the Dolby.io dashboard with a no-code hosted player, removing the need to deploy multiple player instances to view multiple streams.

For more information, see:

New Regional Clusters in Amsterdam and Singapore

Deployed new regional clusters that can be specified by a stream or an account. This increases the global footprint of the service and reduces end-to-end latency in specific regions.

2022-06-01

Support for RTMP MBR

Introduced the RTMP MBR support that allows customers to live stream multiple bitrates from professional RTMP encoders and deliver WebRTC Simulcast. For more information see, the Simulcast document.