Encoder 2.200.0 - 2.216.0

2.216.0 (BETA)

Released 2024-11-12

Added

  • Encodings from Dolby Vision input to HDR10 and SDR output now support cropping.

Fixed

  • Fixed potentially failing Dolby Vision encodings with applied crop filter. Dolby Vision outputs don't allow a change in the aspect ratio (i.e., an image distortion). However, with applied crop filters, the aspect ratio is allowed to change as long as this does not result in a distorted output. Previously the crop filter was not considered when performing the aspect ratio validation for Dolby Vision outputs.

Known Issues

  • Segment validation is not supported for S3 role based, generic S3 (includes Linode and OCI), and FTP and not for LIVE encodings


2.215.0

Released 2024-10-29

Added

  • Support for the following regions on Akamai Connected Cloud:
    - Madrid, Spain (es-mad)
    - Jakarta, Indonesia (id-cgk)
    - Chennai, India (in-maa)
    - Milan, Italy (it-mil)
    - Amsterdam, Netherlands (nl-ams)
    - Stockholm, Sweden (se-sto)
    - Los Angeles, USA (us-lax)
    - Miami, USA (us-mia)
    - Chicago, USA (us-ord)
  • Enabled additional instance types in Akamai Connected Cloud, increasing the available peak capacity for the Bitmovin LIVE as well as VOD Encoder in each Akamai region.
  • Live Encoding has a new option added to the shutdown configuration waitingForFirstConnectTimeoutMinutes. This live encoding will wait for the first connection for the specified duration. If the input is not connected within this time, the encoding will stop automatically.

Changed

  • When reconnecting an input stream after disconnection for Live Encodings, all streams' codec parameters must be equivalent to the previous input. This release excludes the stream's extra data from the comparison.

Fixed

  • Improved manifest writing logic for Live Encodings to prevent incomplete manifests in cases of delayed first-segment processing, ensuring more reliable and robust performance.

Known Issues

  • Segment validation is not supported for S3 role based, generic S3 (includes Linode and OCI), and FTP and not for LIVE encodings

2.214.0

Released 2024-10-22

Added

  • Implemented rollover behaviour for TimecodeTrackTrimming for which the end time code of the input exceeds the 24h format. E.g., a configured trimming start time code of 00:00:00.000 would be interpreted as 24:00:00.000 for an input with a start time code of 23:59:45.000 and an end time code of 24:10:00.000.

Fixed

  • Enhanced Live encoder frame rate support for common frame rates, addressing corner cases that could cause A/V sync issues (e.g. with 23.976 fps)

Known Issues

  • Segment validation is not supported for S3 role based, generic S3 (includes Linode and OCI), and FTP and not for LIVE encodings

2.213.1

Released 2024-10-15

Added

  • Introduced functionality for converting subtitles from SRT format to CEA-608/708 closed captions.
  • The H265VideoConfiguration now supports the creation of Dolby Vision Profile 8.1 outputs, allowing for high-quality HDR video encoding. A new value, DOLBY_VISION_PROFILE_8_1, has been added to the H265DynamicRangeFormat enum to simplify the configuration of H265 outputs using this profile. Additionally, support for the CropFilter has been introduced for use with the Dolby Vision 8.1 profile, enabling further customisation of video output. This feature is available only for progressive outputs and currently does not support manifest formats such as DASH or HLS. This would be added soon.

Fixed

  • Resolved an issue where SCTE-35 auto-return markers were not being set correctly when used in conjunction with the 'splice immediately' command. This fix ensures proper marker behaviour and seamless content transitions during ad insertion or other splice events.
  • Improved Live encoder frame rate handling for common frame rates to support contribution encoder and fix some edge cases where A/V sync issues might occur.

Known Issues

  • Segment validation is not supported for S3 role based, generic S3 (includes Linode and OCI), and FTP and not for LIVE encodings

2.212.0

Released 2024-10-02

Added

  • Segmented workflows using Akamai NetStorage as output now verify the correct upload of segments and report an error of the encoding in case some are missing.

Changed

  • Further improvement to the Per-Title tuning of the previous release. We introduced a limit to restrict the bitrate increases to a maximum of 50%.
  • Improved resilience to interact with Akamai outputs during internal processes which should reduce the few sporadic network problems occurring for such encodings.

Fixed

  • Bug fixed for audio output when mapping a 6-channel input audio track to a (5.1) and (5.1 back) configuration using AudioMix. In the output, only the Front Left (FL) and Front Right (FR) channels had audio, while the other channels remain silent. Now all 6 channels have same audio as in input.

Known Issues

  • Segment validation is not supported for S3 role based, generic S3 (includes Linode and OCI), and FTP and not for LIVE encodings.

2.211.0

Released 2024-09-24

Added

  • Added offsetInSeconds to reset Live manifest time-shift call. With that it is possible to reset the live manifest at a given duration of the live event.

Changed

  • Per-Title improvement for assets with very high fluctuations in complexity. In this case per-title will choose a higher bitrates to resolution ratio to improve quality.

Known Issues

  • S3 role-based output for segmented muxings: No upload verification available.

2.210.0

Released 2024-09-17

Fixed

  • In some cases, the number of segments between Live manifest and Live2Vod manifest were not the same. This has been corrected now.
  • For Live Encodings, an issue with handling variable frameRate in combination with Cea608708SubtitleConfigurations has been fixed.

Changed

  • The time zone indicator in the HLS manifest date format for the tag #EXT-X-PROGRAM-DATE-TIME now uses the character Z instead of +000. For instance instead of 2024-09-16T18:49:48.720+0000, it would be 2024-09-16T18:49:48.720Z.

Known Issues

  • S3 role-based output for segmented muxings: No upload verification available.

2.209.1

Released 2024-09-10

Added

  • HLS manifest creation with WebVtt muxed in FMP4 is now supported.
  • We have updated the Live Encoder to support contribution devices that output variable frame rates, the live encoder can now offer a constant bitrate based on the average frame rate conforming to a common standard of 24, 25, 29.97, 30 etc... on the output. This means we can support streams from software and devices such as iOS, Android and Zoom.

Fixed

  • Fixed wrong AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH and BANDWIDTH attributes for HLS I-frame playlists ( EXT-X-I-FRAME-STREAM-INF ) generated with manifest generator V2.
  • Fixed an issue where using multiple chunked text muxings would lead to missing subtitle cues in the output segments.

Known Issues

  • S3 role-based output for segmented muxings: No upload verification available.

2.208.1

Released 2024-08-28

Fixed

  • In cases of complex inputs like JPEG2000 (J2K) and ProRes, when the output resolution is configured to be smaller than the input content resolution, crop filter was not working as expected. This has been fixed now.

2.208.0

Released 2024-08-27

Changed

  • Dolby Vision encodings would benefit from increased machines per encode (100 instances for EncodingMode SINGLE_PASS, TWO_PASS and 200 instances for THREE_PASS), resulting in improved execution time.

Fixed

  • Improved rate-control of VP9 encoder.
  • In cases of complex inputs like JPEG2000 (J2K) and ProRes, the crop filter was incorrectly applied twice due to internal processing of complex inputs. This has been fixed.

Known Issues

  • S3 role-based output for segmented muxings: No upload verification available.

2.207.0 (STABLE)

Released 2024-08-13

Added

  • For RTMP input including the stream-key directly in the URL instead of in a separate field is now supported. So both rtmp://[server-domain-or-ip]:[port]/[application]/[stream-key] or rtmp://[server-domain-or-ip]:[port]/[application]/+ [stream-key] as a separate field are now accepted.

Changed

  • Various improvements for HEVC under the hood which positively influence quality and turnaround speed.

Fixed

  • Fixed potential stalling encodings with HEVC slices greater 1.

Known Issues

  • S3 role-based output for segmented muxings: No upload verification available.

2.206.0

Released 2024-08-06

Fixed

  • Fixed an issue where encodings would sometimes fail in case more than 10 output streams where configured with at least one of them being subtitles.
  • Fixed failing per-title encodings having duplicate configured output paths in different outputs.
  • Fixed an issue where ignored progressiveWavMuxings lead to an error.

Known Issues

  • S3 role-based output for segmented muxings: No upload verification available.

2.205.0

Released 2024-07-23

Added

  • Support for muxing Webvtt into FMP4 container has been added.

Fixed

  • Fixed an issue that caused delays for triggering the LIVE_INPUT_STATUS_CHANGED webhook for the status CONNECTED.

Known Issues

  • S3 role-based output for segmented muxings: No upload verification available.

2.204.0

Released 2024-07-16

Fixed

  • Fixed a bug, where inserting a custom keyframe exactly on an audio segment boundary and using the associated keyframe ID for defining a Dash period resulted in a wrong start segment for the audio dash representations.

Known Issues

  • S3 role-based output for segmented muxings: No upload verification available.

2.203.0

Released 2024-07-09

Added

  • Support added for Google Cloud region: me-central2
  • Progressive MP4 muxings are now supported for live encodings.
  • PCM Codec Configuration can now be used for creating custom PCM streams from any input audio stream (previously, it's usage was restricted to xdcamhd workflow).
  • Support for S32LE sampleFormat and STEREO channelLayout has been added to PCM Codec Configuration.

Fixed

  • Fixed potential out-of-memory issues for encodings having multiple high-resolution Dolby Vision renditions.
  • An issue where custom keyframes were not correctly propagated into mp4Muxing with fragmentDuration was fixed. Custom keyframes are now correctly applied.
  • Fixed a bug that caused Live HLS manifest to stall. This bug was triggered when single segments would take longer to process than expected.

Known Issues

  • S3 role-based output for segmented muxings: No upload verification available.

2.202.0

Released 2024-06-25

Added

  • Introduced a new Muxing - ProgressiveWavMuxing. It is now supported to use PassthroughAudioConfiguration for PCM input streams with ProgressiveWavMuxing.
  • Added support for Live Heartbeat Webhooks. It is now possible to configure global Webhooks that periodically send updates about the Live Encoding status.
    • Note: This feature is available with encoderVersion => 2.201.0 and above. Encodings started with older encoder versions than 2.201.0 will not trigger heartbeat notifications. Only the live encodings that are created after the webhook was configured will send heartbeats. Encodings that are already running will not send heartbeats. When a webhook is deleted, Live encodings created afterward will not send heartbeats. The existing running live encodings will keep sending the heartbeats.

Changed

  • Speed improvement of internal preprocessing to prevent gateway timeout in case many streams with stream conditions are used.

Known Issues

  • S3 role-based output for segmented muxings: No upload verification available.

2.201.0

Released 2024-06-18

Added

Changed

  • When using the endKeyframeId of fmp4 Representation or Chunked Text Representation the segment containing the end keyframe is not included in the segment list of the representation anymore by default. This means, that the last frame included in the period is the frame before the keyframe having the endKeyframeId.

Fixed

  • When using Per-Title with many fixed resolutions, it was possible that the highest bitrate was not assigned to the highest fixed resolution. This is fixed.
  • Fixed bug in the Dolby E extraction where the extraction of the stream would not happen correctly in case the Dolby E ingest stream is not selected as the first stream

Known Issues

  • S3 role-based output for segmented muxings: No upload verification available.


2.200.0

Released 2024-06-11

Added

Fixed

  • Progressive text muxings, with audio only workflows, would not generate any subtitles. This has been fixed.
  • Timescale associated to subtitle representations in dash manifests (either just-in-time or post-encoding) would not always be consistent when multiple periods were configured. The timescale is now always set to 1000 and is consistent with the presentation time offset.
  • A bug where rate change could drop all frames in the last segment of the video processing was leading to stall and later to error. This has been fixed.

Known Issues

  • S3 role-based output for segmented muxings: No upload verification available.