Release Notes

v1.3.5 - May 3, 2023

Public link password protection Creators can now easily set a temporary password on the public link. Public viewers will be met with a simplified login page (password only) reflecting the theme of the stream they are attempting to join.

Proxy Streaming (ABR) Your server can encode a lower-quality proxy stream that viewers can flip to manually or automatically if they don’t have a super solid connection to view your full-quality stream.

SRT encryption You can now set the SRT passphrase and 50+ other SRT options in the engine config.

Other improvements and fixes

• Added the ability to duplicate existing themes.

• Fixed issue where web server might require a manual restart when renewing TLS certificate.

• Fixed false message that theme had not been updated if you only updated the logo or background.

v1.3.4 - April 13, 2023

• Added preferences option to set the default sort order shown on the home screen.

• Added support for editing Restreaming destinations.

• Added mute toggle - press 'M' to mute or unmute the player.

• Preferences related to the look and feel of Streamwell now live in their own 'Preferences' menu, along with nice new toggle switches and buttons.

• Improved 'reveal' of stream keys - now you can click to copy them when they are visible.

• Fixed issue where the restreaming panel would show 'Stopped' when it should have shown 'Awaiting Stream'.

• Improved page load and recording processing speed 🚀

• Reduced the size of the engine log file

v1.3.3 - March 30, 2023

• Added experimental support for WebRTC (WHIP) stream input. Enable this under the 'Features' panel in the Administration section.

• Added "Simplified Client View" by default for new installs - clients do not see chat, file sharing or other modules unless this is disabled.

• Improvements to Split View UI and page performance.

• Better support for running the web interface on non-standard (80/443) ports.

v1.3.2 - March 23, 2023

• Added support for custom CSS in the Administration section

• Added responsive split view

• Added "Theatre Modes": press 'T' to toggle a focused, minimal player. Or press 'F' to toggle fullscreen on or off.

• Fixed issue from 1.3.1 where the recordings panel might not initialize

• Improvements to HTTPS certificate renewal

v1.3.1 - March 18, 2023

• Added input stream statistics (codec, stream type, resolution, bitrate, framerate etc…)

• Added support for ATEM Mini Pro. Go to Admin -> System Info to download an XML config file for your server.

• Fixed an issue where the Home Screen logo might disappear

• Security, Engine and Player updates

• Deprecated the rarely-used video chat feature (enter videoChatEnabled as a custom Site Title to magically bring it back).

v1.3.0 - March 8, 2023

Streamwell 1.3 is a big update! Please note there have been some changes to the default ports used by Streamwell so users upgrading from a prior version may need to adjust their port forwarding settings. Please see the updated documentation for specifics.

New Features:

• Introducing... themes! You can now create as many themes as you would like, and assign them on a per-channel basis.

• Added RTMPS support for encrypted inbound streams.

• Added QR Code generator for easier public link sharing.

• Streamwell now runs natively on ARM processors like Apple M1/M2 🎉

Improvements:

• Rebuilt Docker image from scratch with improved performance, security and compatibility.

• Startup time improved more than 10x

• Improved HLS stream reliability and compatibility (now offers 2-3s latency under LLHLS players like iOS devices, 12-15s under classic HLS players like VLC)

• Improved reliability of Control Room (browser-based streaming) and Video Chat.

• Improved web client performance at the expense of dropping support for some very old browsers.

• Added support for GIF and WEBP images in the file sharing tab.

• Streamwell now supports simultaneous LAN and WAN access. This means you can still fully utilize the server at a local address like 192.168.0.100 even if you have enabled TLS via a domain like mystreamwellserver.com. This is a much-requested feature for groups who are on a restricted network where the server cannot 'see itself' at the domain name.

v1.2.5 - January 2, 2023

• Fixed issue preventing use of Control Room and Video Chat

• Added "reveal" button to Stream Keys so you can view them without copying the whole URL

• Security updates for core components

• Update Engine to 0.14.18

v1.2.4 - November 14, 2022

• Security improvements (including OpenSSL update)

• Update Engine to version 0.14.15 for better playback performance and more stability with LLHLS

• Implement more secure licensing format. Any permanent license keys from previous versions will need to be re-issued - please contact support for assistance with this.

v1.2.3 - October 25, 2022

• Many small UX/UI improvements

• Public links now use a center-justified player that takes up more of the available screen space

• Fixed issue where player might not automatically reload if a live stream is stopped, then started again

• Fixed issue where deleting a restream while it was streaming could cause trouble.

• Update engine to 0.14.13

v1.2.2 - August 17, 2022

• Screen Sharing added as an option in Control Room (note: this is less preferable than streaming in your screen as it uses the browser for encoding, and takes 30 seconds to ramp up the quality)

• Fixed issue where certain users could not reset the public link

• Fixed issue where data connection would remain open after bouncing a public viewer

• Updated engine to latest version with better LL-HLS support

v1.2.1 - July 21, 2022

• Fixed issue where homepage did not sort correctly

• Fixed issue where user/channel could not be edited after toggling delete mode on and off

• Fixed issue where recordings might stop immediately after starting

• Added support for "UPLOAD_MB_LIMIT" environment variable to override the default upload file size limit of 256 MB. (e.g. -e UPLOAD_MB_LIMIT=500)

• Updated player and engine to latest versions

• Security updates for other 3rd party components

v1.2.0 - July 14, 2022

• New Feature: Low-Latency HLS! Now you can view / AirPlay a native HLS stream with latency approaching 1 second. If your device does not support LL-HLS it will automatically fallback to regular HLS (with ~20 seconds latency).

• Fixed issue where users could not be assigned to a channel while it was being created

• Fixed display issue where player could appear pillar boxed in Chrome

• Improved recording processing time

• Updated Media Engine to 0.14.0

• Updated LAMP stack with latest security updates for PHP, MySQL, Apache

v1.1.9 - May 7, 2022

Hotfix: Customizations to the engine config might be lost on container reboot depending on HTTPS config. Now config changes will be preserved!

v1.1.8 - April 22, 2022

• Allow custom port selection by setting environment variables at launch (See 'Installing with Docker')

• Video chat now shows along the top of the player

• Fixed some visual glitches

• Fixed issue where a very large log file would be unviewable in the browser. Now log files will show 2500 lines maximum when viewing (but can be downloaded in their entirety).

v1.1.7 - March 25, 2022

Streamwell v1.1.7 introduces an exciting new feature: Restreaming! Now you can push your streams to one or more custom-defined RTMP destinations. It also includes these slightly less exciting improvements:

• Resetting a public link now gives any public viewers or embedded streams a smooth 'goodbye' after 10 seconds.

• Further improvements to file sharing

• Update OvenMediaEngine to 0.13.2

• Session security improvements

• Enable JitterBuffer in OME by default, to fix ongoing sync issues in Safari

v1.1.6 - March 14, 2022

• When deleting a channel, the files, recordings and chat history associated with that channel are now all deleted as well. Bye bye cruft!

• Fixed a longstanding issue where a file might appear in your uploaded list before it has finished uploading.

• Added support for entering a license key as part of the docker run command, so the server is licensed on startup (use environment variables STREAMWELL_LICENSE_KEY and STREAMWELL_LICENSE_NAME)

A note on these rapid updates: Streamwell is in a very intense period of development. Updating the app is easy (and being made easier whenever possible), but don't feel any pressure to apply the latest and greatest unless you need a particular improvement.

v1.1.5 - March 9, 2022

• User interface improvements

• Log files now auto-rotate beautifully at 11:59pm each night

• Add support for passing in environment variables at runtime, to automatically configure and use HTTPS

v1.1.4 - March 2, 2022

• Improved video chat performance in Safari, but added warning that it really works better in Chrome/Edge/Firefox

• Allow dismissing of any modal dialog with the Esc key

• Player no longer flashes every 10 seconds when offline

• Fixed issue where embed code would sometimes not copy

• When promoting a chat stream to the main player, the 'demoted' player now shows an outline to help differentiate it

• Channel admin now bolds selected usernames to help differentiate in case of more subtle accent colors

• Centered the main UI to keep it manageable on larger screens

• Security improvements

• Chat performance improvements and notifications

• Improved the stacked panel UI a bit. More to come here.

v1.1.3 - February 28, 2022

New Features:

• Added the ability to embed a stream in an external site (click ‘embed’ under the public link to generate HTML which can be copy-pasted into another site

Improvements:

• Feature panels now open from a bar of tabs instead of a stack.

• Log files are now more verbose where it matters and less verbose where it doesn’t.

• Video chat reliability and UI improvements. Uses less bandwidth, too.

• Firefox is now an equal citizen to Chrome and Edge, and should work with all features.

Fixes:

• HLS ‘open’ button broke in 1.1.0, and is now fixed.

• Fixed security issue where a bad actor could falsify logs from the login screen.

• Fixed issue where text chat would get sluggish and sketchy on very slow connections.

• Update OvenMediaEngine to v0.13.1 - resolves SIGABRT issue on HTTP error.

Note: The somewhat obscure video chat screen sharing option has been removed, because sharing your screen at low quality through a web browser defeats the purpose of Streamwell and it never worked well in the first place.

v1.1.2 - February 23, 2022

New features:

• Add ability to view server and engine logs instead of just downloading them

• Add ability to manage stream keys and public links on the channel page (added to statistics module)

• Creators will now need to confirm before resetting stream keys or public links, to prevent accidental resets

Improvements:

• HTTPS activation and renewal improvements

• Long lists of users or channels are now scrollable

• Shared link previews (e.g. iMessage) now show a thumbnail from the stream if it is live

• Update OvenMediaEngine to v0.13.0

• Log files now auto-rotate to prevent buildup

• Performance and security enhancements, application architecture updates

• Better error reporting and logging

• Small bug and performance fixes

Fixes:

• Fix issue where viewer stats show reverse values for peak / current viewers

v1.0.12 - February 11, 2022

• Fix issue if no environment variables provided

• Fix issue with sorting channels

• Fix issue where player might disappear if somebody departs the video chat

• Check HTTPS expiry and warn Admin within 2 weeks when accessing the administration section

• Added Control Room (BETA) for streaming directly from your web browser

• Small UX tweaks and bug fixes

v1.0.11 - November 25, 2021

Fixes:

• Fix UI issues when stream is offline

• Fix chat disconnect issues

• Other small bug fixes

Improvements:

• Update Streaming Engine to 0.12.8

• Reinstate support for Microsoft Edge

• Refactored some code for faster performance

• Consolidate use of ports (no new ports required, uses less ports than before)

v1.0.10 - November 3, 2021

• Improvements to video chat

• Expand free license features

• Fixed issues with iOS 15 / 15.1

v1.0.9 - October 19, 2021

Fixes:

• Fix audio sync issues in Safari

• Fix issues with engine config reset

• Fix issues with recording status not updating

• Fix issue where only one SRT stream could be received at a time

• Fix issue where thumbnails were not deleted when their main file was

• Fix issue where some backend operations slowed down the UI

• Fix BeamBOX toggle not showing when editing existing creator

• Other bug and visual fixes

Improvements:

• Stream playback starts faster (Specify ICE Candidate)

• Added free license tier for personal use

• Redesigned video chat with better performance and UI

• Added support for Screen Sharing and HD webcam resolution on Chrome

• Replaced Emoji placeholders with actual icons

• File uploads now show progress

• File list now automatically refreshes

• Improved page loading performance

• Added some fun Easter eggs (Hints: the boat of a chocolate maker; a cheat from Shadows of the Empire)

Security Improvements:

• Allow use of a SYSTEM_KEY environment variable at the docker level, to allow persistent keys between updates. If not present, a random system key will be issued but your old public links will have expired.

• Limit BeamBOX to certain registered users only as it is an obscure and somewhat insecure feature.

Known Issues with Video Chat:

• Video chat is not yet supported in Firefox or Edge due to poor WebRTC reliability. Additionally, Safari on iOS 15.1 introduces breaking changes to WebRTC and the application will crash if you attempt to transmit video. This in mind, it is recommended to participate in video chat from Chrome or Safari on Desktop only. As the WebRTC standard is more uniformly adopted across browsers, this will improve. When in doubt, use Chrome.

v1.0.8 - September 30, 2021

Fixes:

• Fixed issue where pressing enter to submit a form might cause the page to reload

• Fixed issue where certain characters in user / channel names could prevent changes from saving

• Fixed logo image caching so new logo shows without browser cache reset

• Fixed issue where login panel gets too narrow when the logo image is narrow

• Fixed issue where Safari on iOS 15 destroyed the entire universe

• Fixed disappearing player when promoting live chat stream but no stream was live

Improvements:

• User and Admin experience improvements

• Reduced network activity when chat, recording, stats modules are not visible

• Users will now be shown a ‘live stream offline’ warning instead of an empty player, if there is no live stream

• Main player is now vertically responsive and will always fit on the page regardless of vertical height limitations

• Uploaded files now receive itty bitty thumbnails where possible

• Stream and chat connections now more reliable (TCP relay)

• Media tags like <img> <video> etc are no longer allowed in custom welcome messages, as they presented a cross-site scripting vulnerability

• Closed a loophole where the test stream URL could be used to execute a malicious command

Known Issues:

• There is an issue with SRT streams where only one stream is processed at a time. WORKAROUND: Use the <WorkerCount> flag in the SRT port binding settings to increase the worker count to the number of incoming SRT streams needed, up to the number of CPU cores available. This will be fixed in the next release.

v1.0.7 - September 22, 2021

• Add HLS streaming for universal playback compatibility

• Add drag-drop file upload support

• Bug fixes and performance improvements

Note to iOS users: iOS 15.0 includes breaking changes to web sockets in Safari, which prevents Streamwell from functioning. We are exploring ways to get around these new changes but as Apple does from time to time, the change is significantly limiting and they have not provided any alternatives yet. For now, Streamwell (and a number of other web apps which use secure sockets) will only work up to iOS 14.8.

v1.0.6 - September 17, 2021

• Video chat is somewhat less experimental!

• In-browser streaming now supported via video chat

• Added ability to dynamically swap videos in and out of the main player without reloading them

• Added ability to view most uploaded image / mp4 / mov files in the browser

• Bug fixes and performance improvements

• Improved application security (better input validation)

• Improved database restores

• Improvements to text chat (e.g. URL highlighting)

• Optimize default network / server configurations

• Update Engine to 0.12.5 and Player to 0.10.3

v1.0.5 - Jun 4, 2021

Add File Sharing module

• Add Chat module

• Add ‘classic mode’ HLS stream option

• Add engine config editor to Admin panel

• Improvements and additions to video conferencing (still experimental)

• Fix engine config issue on reboot

• Improve custom color scheme

• Fixes for other minor bugs and UI issues

v1.0.4 - May 17, 2021

• Many UI/UX improvements

• Auto-rotate log files on admin login

• Fix crackling audio on recordings

• Auto-recover failed recordings

• Add Autoplay on/off option

• Add secure SRT input

• Add TCP/UDP toggle to player ('Safe Mode')

• Expand custom color scheme

• Fix users and channels showing in random order

• Add experimental video chat feature

v1.0.3 - April 21, 2021

• Expand licensing

• Implement database updates

• Implement test stream

• Implement live stream statistics

• Bug fixes and architecture improvements

v1.0.2 - April 15, 2021

• Many small UI/UX fixes

• Add automatic HTTPS certificate in Administration

• Auto-rotate log files

• Fix player background not updating due to caching issue

• Application security keys are now randomized on deployment

• Allow reset of public links and stream keys

• Improved session & password reset security

• Recordings now require a minimum of 12GB disk space to start

• Changed default application name to 'live' instead of 'streamwell'

• Add PHPShadow code protection for production environment

v1.0.1 - April 6, 2021

• Update OvenMediaEngine (0.11.2.x) and OvenPlayer components for improved performance

• Add Engine Restart / System Log controls in the Admin Panel

• Now fully containerized and ready for automated deployment with Build Script + Dockerfile

v1.0.0 - March 26, 2021 (Initial Release)

Streamwell Studio is a decentralized, self-hosted streaming server that puts creators back in control. With this application running on a local server or in a cloud of your choosing, you can:

• Create private and secure live streaming channels, viewable from any modern web browser

• Control visibility of channels to approved clients and creators only

• Stream with sub-second latency for live collaboration and 'in the moment' experiences

• Fully brand the experience with your organization's logo and identity

• Share convenient one-touch public links for absolute ease of use

• Record, playback and download streams for future use