Wowza Streaming Engine (known as Wowza Media Server prior to version 4) is a unified streaming media server software developed by Wowza. The server is used for

streaming Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a network for playback using a media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of packets from a server to a client and is rendered in real-time; this contrasts with file downl ...

of live and on-demand video, audio, and rich Internet applications over IP networks to desktop, laptop, and tablet computers, mobile devices, IPTV set-top boxes, internet-connected TV sets, game consoles, and other network-connected devices. The server is a

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

application deployable on most

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

History

Version 1.0.x was released on February 19, 2007.>(Press Release) This version was originally offered as an alternative to the Adobe Flash Media Server, and supported streamed video, audio and RIA’s for the Flash Player client playback and interaction based on the Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) using content encoded with Spark and VP6 codecs. The original product name was Wowza Media Server Pro. Version 1.5.x was released on May 15, 2008>(Press Release) and added support for H.264 video and

Advanced Audio Coding Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. It was developed by Dolby, AT&T, Fraunhofer and Sony, originally as part of the MPEG-2 specification but later improved under MPEG-4.ISO (2006ISO/ ...

(AAC) audio, and ingest support for

Real Time Streaming Protocol The Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) is an application-level network protocol designed for multiplexing and packetizing multimedia transport streams (such as interactive media, video and audio) over a suitable transport protocol. RTSP ...

(RTSP), Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP),

MPEG transport stream MPEG transport stream (MPEG-TS, MTS) or simply transport stream (TS) is a standard digital container format for transmission and storage of audio, video, and Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) data. It is used in broadcast syst ...

(MPEG-TS), and ICY ( SHOUTcast/

Icecast Icecast is a streaming media project released as free software maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. It also refers specifically to the Server (computing), server program which is part of the project. Icecast was created in December 1998/Janua ...

) sources for re-streaming to the Flash Player client. Version 2.0.x was released on December 17, 2009.> The product name was changed to Wowza Media Server 2. This version added outbound H.264 streaming support for Apple HTTP Live Streaming protocol for iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, etc.), Microsoft HTTP Smooth Streaming for Silverlight player, RTSP/RTP for QuickTime Player and mobile devices based on Android, BlackBerry ( RIM),

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

(Symbian Foundation), Palm webOS (now owned by HP), and other platforms, and TV

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also known as a cable converter box, cable box, receiver, or simply box, and historically television decoder or a converter, is an information appliance device that generally contains a Tuner (radio)#Television, TV tuner inpu ...

es and

video game console A video game console is an electronic device that Input/output, outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can typically be played with a game controller. These may be home video game console, home consoles, which are generally ...

s. Version 3.0.x was released on October 7, 2011. This version added network DVR, Live transcoding, and DRM plug-in functionality. Version 3.5 was released on November 7, 2012. This version added Closed Captioning and a Silverlight Multicast Player. Live Stream Record and Media Security, previously additional features external to the software, were incorporated into the server software. Media Security DRM plugins with Verimetrix VCAS, Microsoft

PlayReady PlayReady is a media file copy prevention technology from Microsoft that includes encryption, output prevention and digital rights management (DRM). It was announced in February 2008. Technological differences The main differences relative to p ...

, BuyDRM KeyOS Services, EZDRM Hosted DRM, AuthenTec DRM Fusion. Wowza also released Wowza StreamLock free AddOn which provides 256-bit SSL for RTMPS and HTTPS. The release included enhancements to Wowza Transcoder AddOn; transcoder overlays that can be used for advertising, tilting, watermarks and tickers. Other new features include B-frame support, Dolby Digital Plus (EAC3) pass-through for HLS, MPEG-DASH, HTTP Origin. Version 3.6 was released June 10, 2013. Wowza Media Server 3.6 added basic support for

Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), also known as MPEG-DASH, is an adaptive bitrate streaming technique that enables high quality streaming of media content over the Internet delivered from conventional HTTP web servers. Similar to Appl ...

(DASH). Expanded support for

closed captioning Closed captioning (CC) is the process of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information, where the viewer is given the choice of whether the text is displayed. Closed cap ...

formats for live and video-on-demand streams. Version 4.0 was released February 11, 2014. The product name was changed to Wowza Streaming Engine. This release includes a new web-based graphical interface which interacts with the server via a

REST REST (Representational State Transfer) is a software architectural style that was created to describe the design and guide the development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of ...

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

and provides monitoring and configuration functions. This release also brings full support for MPEG-DASH and support for additional for captioning formats. Previously available separately, the MediaCache and Push Publishing add-on modules are now included in the server. Version 4.2 was released on June 16, 2015. This release included the Stream Targets feature in Wowza Streaming Engine Manager, enabling you to send an incoming live source stream to one or more destinations that re-distribute the source stream to users. Stream target destinations allow you to scale and add redundancy to your live streaming workflow. Version 4.3 was released on October 6, 2015. New functionality included full access to the Wowza Streaming Engine REST API. You can use the REST API to configure, manage, and monitor the media server through HTTP requests. Version 4.7.3 was released on November 14, 2017. Wowza Streaming Engine 4.7.3 software added support for Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) in Wowza Streaming Engine media servers on Linux and Windows operating systems. Wowza Streaming Engine 4.7.3 also introduced the ability to create a generic stream target that sends an SRT stream from Wowza Streaming Engine to destinations such as content delivery networks (CDNs) and streaming services for distributed delivery. Version 4.7.6 was released on July 31, 2018. New functionality included support for

MPEG-DASH Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), also known as MPEG-DASH, is an adaptive bitrate streaming technique that enables high quality streaming of media content over the Internet delivered from conventional HTTP web servers. Similar to Appl ...

with nDVR. The Wowza nDVR feature enables you to record a live stream with Wowza Streaming Engine while simultaneously allowing users to play or pause the live stream, rewind it to a previously recorded point, or resume viewing at the current live point. Version 4.7.7 was released on November 13, 2018. Wowza Streaming Engine 4.7.7 added support for

WebRTC WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is a free and open-source project providing web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via application programming interfaces (APIs). It allows audio and video communication and ...

. Wowza Streaming Engine can ingest source WebRTC audio and video content and deliver it to supporting players. It can also transmux or transcode WebRTC to other streaming protocols, including Apple HLS, Adobe HDS, RTMP, RTSP, and Microsoft Smooth Streaming. Version 4.7.8 was released November 5, 2019. Added functionality included support for Low-Latency HLS. Wowza Streaming Engine can now generate Low-Latency HLS live streams. Wowza Streaming Engine now also supports Common Media Application Format (CMAF), the open, extensible standard that enables efficient streaming using the HLS and MPEG-DASH protocols. Version 4.8 was released February 18, 2020. The update added full support for WebRTC and Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) streaming; the addition of the CMAF packetizer for MPEG-DASH, HLS, and Low-Latency HLS streaming; and added support for recording MPEG-DASH live streams with the nDVR feature. Version 4.8.5 was released June 17, 2020. Extensive updates were added related to WebRTC including improved accuracy of RTCP feedback messages for adaptive encoding. There is now support for SRT version 1.4 and EXT-X-PRELOAD-HINT media playlist tag for Low Latency HLS. The new version also increased security.

Formats

Wowza Streaming Engine can stream to multiple types of playback clients and devices simultaneously, including the

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a mostly discontinuedAlthough it is discontinued by Adobe Inc., for the Chinese market it is developed by Zhongcheng and for the international enterprise market it is developed by Ha ...

player, Microsoft Silverlight player, Apple QuickTime Player and iOS devices (

iPad The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The IPad (1st generation), first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. ...

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

iPod Touch The iPod Touch (stylized as iPod touch) is a discontinued line of iOS-based mobile devices designed and formerly marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-controlled user interface. As with other iPod models, the iPod Touch can be used as a po ...

), mobile phones, IPTV set-top boxes (Amino, Apple TV, Enseo, Fire TV,

Roku Roku ( ) is a brand of consumer electronics that includes streaming players, smart TVs (and their operating systems), as well as a free TV streaming service. The brand is owned by Roku, Inc., an American company. As of 2024, Roku is the U ...

, Streamit and others), and game consoles such as Wii,

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand that consists of four main home video game console lines, as well as application software, applications (games), the streaming media, streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, and online services such as the Xbox networ ...

, and PS4. Wowza Streaming Engine is compatible with standard streaming protocols. On the playout side, these include RTMP (and the variants RTMPS, RTMPT, RTMPE, RTMPTE), HDS, HLS,

, RTSP, Smooth Streaming, and MPEG-TS (unicast and multicast). On the live ingest side the server can ingest video and audio via RTP, RTSP, RTMP, MPEG-TS (unicast and multicast), ICY (SHOUTcast / Icecast) and

streams. In 2017 Wowza and Haivision created SRT Alliance to develop and promote an open-source SRT protocol for low latency reliable-UDP delivery. For on-demand streaming, Wowza Streaming Engine can ingest multiple types of audio and video files. Supported file types include MP4 (QuickTime container - .mp4, .f4v, .mov, .m4a, .m4v, .mp4a, .mp4v, .3gp, and .3g2), FLV (Flash Video - .flv), and MP3 content (.mp3).

Awards

* 2007 ''Streaming Media Magazine'' Editors’ Pick * 2008 ''Streaming Media Magazine'' Editors’ Pick * 2008 ''Streaming Media Magazine'' US Readers’ Choice (Best Server) * 2009 ''Streaming Media Magazine'' US Readers’ Choice (Best Server; Best Streaming Innovation) * 2010 ''TV Technology Europe Magazine'' STAR Award * 2010 ''Streaming Media Magazine'' European Readers’ Choice Awards (Best Server; Best Innovation) * 2010 WFX New Product Award (Best Overall New Media Product; Best Podcasting, Webcasting, and Website Streaming Media Solution) * 2011 ''Streaming Media Magazine'' European Readers’ Choice Awards (Best Server; Best Streaming Innovation) * 2012 European Readers' Choice Award (BestServer Software and Best Transcoding Solution) * 2013 ''Streaming Media Magazines All-StarTeam named Wowza Co-Founder and CTO Charlie Good * 2013 ''Streaming Media Magazine'' European Readers’ Choice Award (Server Hardware/Software) * 2013 ''Streaming Media'' Readers’ Choice Award (Media Server) * 2014 ''Streaming Media Magazine'' European Readers’ Choice Award (Best Streaming Innovation) * Wowza Media Server Pro won the Server Hardware/Software category in the Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards in 2008. * Wowza Media Server 2 Advanced won the Best Streaming Innovation category in the Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards in 2009. * Wowza Media Server Pro won the Server Hardware/Software category in the Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards in 2009. * Wowza Media Server 2 won the Server Hardware/Software and Best Streaming Innovation of 2010 categories in the Streaming Media European Readers' Choice Awards in 2010. * Wowza Media Server 3 won the Server Hardware/Software and the Best Streaming Innovation categories in the Streaming Media European Readers' Choice Awards in 2011. * Wowza Media Server 3 won the Server Hardware/Software and the Best Streaming Innovation categories in the Streaming Media European Readers' Choice Awards in 2012. Additionally, the Wowza Media Server Transcoder Add-On won the Transcoding Solution category in the Streaming Media European Readers' Choice Awards in 2012. * Wowza Media Server won the Server Hardware/Software category in the Streaming Media European Readers' Choice Awards in 2013. * Wowza Media Server won the Media Server category in the Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards in 2013. * Wowza Streaming Engine won the Best Streaming Innovation category in the Streaming Media European Readers' Choice Awards in 2014. * Wowza Streaming Engine won the Media Server category in the Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards in 2014. * Wowza Streaming Engine won the Media Server category in the Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards in 2015. * Wowza Streaming Engine won the Media Server category in the Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards in 2016. * Wowza Streaming Engine won the Server Hardware/Software category in the Streaming Media European Readers' Choice Awards in 2016. * Wowza Streaming Engine won the Media Server category in the Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards in 2017. * Wowza Low Latency Streaming Platform won the Best Live Production/Streaming Product in the RedShark News awards at IBC 2017. * Wowza Streaming Engine won the Media Server category in the Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards in 2018. * Wowza was listed as one of the 50 Companies That Matter Most in Online Video in 2019 by Streaming Media. * Wowza CEO David Stubenvoll has been named a finalist in the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2019. * Wowza named Google Cloud Partner of the Year for Media 2019.

References

41.
Wowza Streaming Engine vs. Alternatives: Unveiling the Ideal Media Server Solution
www.wowzaservers.com. Retrieved 2023-05-31.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wowza Media Server Media servers Streaming software

History

Formats

Awards

See also

References

External links