Video API v1.5 Release Notes

Release Name: Altair Date of Release: October 24, 2019

EnableX Video API v1.5 provides several new features, improvements to existing features, and bug fixes.

New Features

• Recording of VP8 Stream from Safari: Recording of VP8 stream from Safari on iOS 12.1 and later versions is available now.
• Android and iOS SDKs: The following new features are introduced:
  • Switch User Role: The moderator of a room can hand over moderator's role to any of the participants in the room.
  • Audio Only Call: Participants are allowed to join a room only in the audio mode.

Improvements

Improved Video Quality

The quality of video streaming during down-scaling and up-scaling has improved through efficient video resolution transition. In addition, the intermittent video freeze issue no longer occurs.

Effective Handling of Automatic Bandwidth Detection

In order to provide the best user experience within the available bandwidth, EnableX tries to optimize the picture resolution, frame rate, and the number of streams that can be shown to end users. The SDK provides event notifications in the event of changes in link bandwidth conditions that affect the quality of the call so that application developers can display this information to end users if desired.

The user experience is also enhanced by smoothly reducing the number of video streams, and moving to audio-only streams from audio and video streams when video communication no longer feasible because of low bandwidth conditions.

Stability

A number of improvements have been made to prevent crashes. Also, process optimization introduced in this release provides greater stability than its predecessors.

Auto-Scaling of Transcoding Servers

Transcoding processes have been improved by deploying auto-scaling of transcoding servers based on the workload. For a higher workload, new transcoding servers are automatically spawned. Similarly, the servers are downsized when the workload decreases.

New Features

• Recording of VP8 Stream from Safari: Recording of VP8 Stram from Safari on iOS 12.1+ is available now.
• Android SDK and iOS SDK
  • Switch User Role: Now moderator can hand over his/her role to any of one participant in the same room.
  • Audio Only Call: Now user can join room as audio only.

Updates

Web SDK

• Video Size Constraint: You can define different video frame size for Standard Definition and High Definition videos while initiating a local stream. For example, the frame size of a Standard Definition video can be set to 320x180px.
• Audio Stream Parameters: To ensure improved audio quality, noise suppression and echo cancellation on audio track are properly handled.

Android and iOS SDK

• Publish with maxBitrate: On server demand, the maxBitrate value for publisher streams is properly handled at runtime.

iOS SDK

• EnxPlayerView for Local and Remote Views: Now the player view (EnxPlayerView) for remote and local views is created by two separate APIs.
• WebRTC Version: The WebRTC version is updated from 1.1.29024 to 1.1.29229. This update addresses the video player issue observed on iOS OS 13.1.1.
• Socket Version: The socket library is updated from 12.0.0 to 15.0.0.

Critical Bug Fixes

• The audio isolation issue in active talkers where some participants could not hear some remote participants is fixed.
• The issue of hard-muting or unmuting of participants is fixed.
• Web SDK: Issues that occurred while switching the camera and microphone source for local stream are fixed. However, the switching might randomly fail on Firefox.
• Android SDK: The following issues are fixed:
  • The issue where the application was blocking microphones after disconnecting a conference is fixed.
  • The issue of no audio for remote participants on reconnection is fixed.
  • The issue where the active talkers count must be automatically set to 1 when the battery goes below 15% is fixed.
  • The issue where the bandwidth information overlay was not displayed on the player is fixed.
• iOS SDK: The following issues are fixed:
  • The memory issue is fixed.
  • The player issue is fixed.
  • The reconnection state issue is fixed.

Known Issues

The following known issues are currently researched and are planned to be fixed in the subsequent releases:

• Audio-only calls on Mac/Safari.
• Available bandwidth management of Safari subscriber streams.
• MP4 transcoding of videos with aspect ratio other than 16:9.
• In the event of a heavy packet loss, sometimes subscriber streams freeze on Firefox.
• Sometimes media device switching fails on Firefox.

These issues are not serious in nature, but may impact some workflows.

Breaking Changes

There are no known breaking changes in this release. Your application will continue to work without changes if you have downloaded the SDKs shipped this release. We strongly recommend that you upgrade to the latest SDKs.