Changelog
Stream now supports full HD encoding for portrait/vertical videos. Videos with a height greater than their width will now be constrained and prepared for adaptive bitrate renditions based on their width. No changes are required to benefit from this update. For more information, refer to the announcement.
A new property hideLiveViewerCount has been added to Live Inputs to block access to the count of viewers in a live stream and remove it from the player. For more information, refer to Start a Live Stream.
Stream has added a new notification event for Live broadcasts to alert (via email or webhook) on various error conditions including unsupported codecs, bad GOP/keyframe interval, or quota exhaustion.
When creating/editing a notification, subscribe to live_input.errored to receive the new event type. Existing notification subscriptions will not be changed automatically. For more information, refer to Receive Live Webhooks.
Stream has introduced automatically generated captions to open beta for all subscribers at no additional cost. While in beta, only English is supported and videos must be less than 2 hours. For more information, refer to the product announcement and deep dive or refer to the captions documentation to get started.
Stream will now return HTTP error status 424 (failed dependency) when requesting segments, manifests, thumbnails, downloads, or subtitles for videos that are in an errored state. Previously, Stream would return one of several 5xx codes for requests like this.
Clipping is now available in open beta for live broadcasts and recordings. For more information, refer to Live instant clipping documentation.
In certain cases, videos uploaded with an HDR colorspace (such as footage from certain mobile devices) appeared washed out or desaturated when played back. This issue is resolved for new uploads.
HLS output from Cloudflare Stream on-demand videos that use Transport Stream file format now includes a 10 second offset to timestamps. This will have no impact on most customers. A small percentage of customers will see improved playback stability. Caption files were also adjusted accordingly.
In some cases, playback via SRT protocol was missing an audio track regardless of existence of audio in the broadcast. This issue is now resolved.
Low-Latency HTTP Live Streaming (LL-HLS) is now in open beta. Enable LL-HLS on your live input for automatic low-latency playback using the Stream built-in player where supported.
For more information, refer to live input and custom player docs.
Stream now supports adding a scheduled deletion date to new and existing videos. Live inputs support deletion policies for automatic recording deletion.
For more, refer to the video on demand or live input docs.
Stream supports adding multiple audio tracks to an existing video.
For more, refer to the documentation to get started.
Cloudflare Stream now supports player enhancement properties.
With player enhancements, you can modify your video player to incorporate elements of your branding, such as your logo, and customize additional options to present to your viewers.
For more, refer to the documentation to get started.
Previously, generating a download for a live recording exceeding four hours resulted in failure.
To fix the issue, now video downloads are only available for live recordings under four hours. Live recordings exceeding four hours can still be played but cannot be downloaded.
Cloudflare Stream now detects non-video content on upload using the POST API and returns a 400 Bad Request HTTP error with code 10059.
Previously, if you or one of your users attempted to upload a file that is not a video (ex: an image), the request to upload would appear successful, but then fail to be encoded later on.
With this change, Stream responds to the upload request with an error, allowing you to give users immediate feedback if they attempt to upload non-video content.
Generating MP4 downloads of live stream recordings is now significantly faster. For more, refer to the docs.
Stream now supports adding multiple audio tracks to an existing video upload. This allows you to:
- Provide viewers with audio tracks in multiple languages
- Provide dubbed audio tracks, or audio commentary tracks (ex: Director’s Commentary)
- Allow your users to customize the customize the audio mix, by providing separate audio tracks for music, speech or other audio tracks.
- Provide Audio Description tracks to ensure your content is accessible. (WCAG 2.0 Guideline 1.2 1)
To request an invite to the beta, refer to this post.
Cloudflare Stream now supports VP9 when streaming using WebRTC (WHIP), currently in beta.
Cloudflare Stream's WHIP and WHEP implementations now support Trickle ICE, reducing the time it takes to initialize WebRTC connections, and increasing compatibility with WHIP and WHEP clients.
For more, refer to the docs.
The “per-video” analytics API is being deprecated. If you still use this API, you will need to switch to using the GraphQL Analytics API by February 1, 2023. After this date, the per-video analytics API will be no longer available.
The GraphQL Analytics API provides the same functionality and more, with additional filters and metrics, as well as the ability to fetch data about multiple videos in a single request. Queries are faster, more reliable, and built on a shared analytics system that you can use across many Cloudflare products.
For more about this change and how to migrate existing API queries, refer to this post and the GraphQL Analytics API docs.
Cloudflare Stream now has no limit on the number of live inputs you can create. Stream is designed to allow your end-users to go live — live inputs can be created quickly on-demand via a single API request for each of user of your platform or app.
For more on creating and managing live inputs, get started with the docs.
When playing live video, Cloudflare Stream now provides significantly more accurate estimates of the bandwidth needs of each quality level to client video players. This ensures that live video plays at the highest quality that viewers have adequate bandwidth to play.
As live video is streamed to Cloudflare, we transcode it to make it available to viewers at multiple quality levels. During transcoding, we learn about the real bandwidth needs of each segment of video at each quality level, and use this to provide an estimate of the bandwidth requirements of each quality level the in HLS (.m3u8) and DASH (.mpd) manifests.
If a live stream contains content with low visual complexity, like a slideshow presentation, the bandwidth estimates provided in the HLS manifest will be lower, ensuring that the most viewers possible view the highest quality level, since it requires relatively little bandwidth. Conversely, if a live stream contains content with high visual complexity, like live sports with motion and camera panning, the bandwidth estimates provided in the HLS manifest will be higher, ensuring that viewers with inadequate bandwidth switch down to a lower quality level, and their playback does not buffer.
This change is particularly helpful if you're building a platform or application that allows your end users to create their own live streams, where these end users have their own streaming software and hardware that you can't control. Because this new functionality adapts based on the live video we receive, rather than just the configuration advertised by the broadcaster, even in cases where your end users' settings are less than ideal, client video players will not receive excessively high estimates of bandwidth requirements, causing playback quality to decrease unnecessarily. Your end users don't have to be OBS Studio experts in order to get high quality video playback.
No work is required on your end — this change applies to all live inputs, for all customers of Cloudflare Stream. For more, refer to the docs.
You can now enable and disable individual live outputs via the API or Stream dashboard, allowing you to control precisely when you start and stop simulcasting to specific destinations like YouTube and Twitch. For more, read the docs.
URLs in the Stream Dashboard and Stream API now use a subdomain specific to your Cloudflare Account: customer-{CODE}.cloudflarestream.com. This change allows you to:
Use Content Security Policy (CSP) directives specific to your Stream subdomain, to ensure that only videos from your Cloudflare account can be played on your website.
Allowlist only your Stream account subdomain at the network-level to ensure that only videos from a specific Cloudflare account can be accessed on your network.
No action is required from you, unless you use Content Security Policy (CSP) on your website. For more on CSP, read the docs.
You can now change the start and end times of a video uploaded to Cloudflare Stream. For more information, refer to Clip videos.
The Live Inputs API now supports optional pagination, search, and filter parameters. For more information, refer to the Live Inputs API documentation.
The Stream Player now displays a button to activate Picture-in-Picture mode, if the viewer's web browser supports the Picture-in-Picture API.
During or after uploading a video to Stream, you can now specify a value for a new field, creator. This field can be used to identify the creator of the video content, linking the way you identify your users or creators to videos in your Stream account. For more, read the blog post.
The Stream Dashboard now has an analytics panel that shows the number of minutes of both live and recorded video delivered. This view can be filtered by Creator ID, Video UID, and Country. For more in-depth analytics data, refer to the bulk analytics documentation.
The Stream Player can now be configured to use a custom letterbox color, displayed around the video ('letterboxing' or 'pillarboxing') when the video's aspect ratio does not match the player's aspect ratio. Refer to the documentation on configuring the Stream Player here.
Cloudflare Stream now supports the SRT live streaming protocol. SRT is a modern, actively maintained streaming video protocol that delivers lower latency, and better resilience against unpredictable network conditions. SRT supports newer video codecs and makes it easier to use accessibility features such as captions and multiple audio tracks.
For more, read the blog post.
When viewers manually change the resolution of video they want to receive in the Stream Player, this change now happens immediately, rather than once the existing resolution playback buffer has finished playing.
When viewing ads in the VAST format in the Stream Player, viewers can now manually start and stop the video, or control the volume.
If you choose to use a third-party player with Cloudflare Stream, you can now easily access HLS and DASH manifest URLs from within the Stream Dashboard. For more about using Stream with third-party players, read the docs here.
When a live input is connected, the Stream Dashboard now displays technical details about the connection, which can be used to debug configuration issues.
The Stream Player now shows the total number of people currently watching a video live.
You can now configure Stream to send webhooks each time a live stream connects and disconnects. For more information, refer to the Webhooks documentation.
The Stream Player can now be served from a FedRAMP compliant subdomain.
You can now start and stop live broadcasts without having to provide a new video UID to the Stream Player (or your own player) each time the stream starts and stops. Read the docs.
Once a live video has ended and been recorded, you can now give viewers the option to download an MP4 video file of the live recording. For more, read the docs here.
The Stream Player now displays preview images when viewers hover their mouse over the seek bar, making it easier to skip to a specific part of a video.
All Cloudflare Stream customers can now give viewers the option to download videos uploaded to Stream as an MP4 video file. For more, read the docs here.
You can now obtain a signed URL token via a single API request, without needing to generate signed tokens in your own application. Read the docs.
You can now give your viewers the option to download videos uploaded to Stream as an MP4 video file. For more, read the docs here.
Cloudflare Stream now encodes videos with fewer artifacts, resulting in improved video quality for your viewers.
If you use Cloudflare Stream with a third party player, and send the clientBandwidthHint parameter in requests to fetch video manifests, Cloudflare Stream now selects the ideal resolution to provide to your client player more intelligently. This ensures your viewers receive the ideal resolution for their network connection.
If you use Cloudflare Stream with a third party player, and send the clientBandwidthHint parameter in requests to fetch video manifests, Cloudflare Stream now selects the ideal resolution to provide to your client player more intelligently. This ensures your viewers receive the ideal resolution for their network connection.
Cloudflare Stream now delivers video using 3-10x less bandwidth, with no reduction in quality. This ensures faster playback for your viewers with less buffering, particularly when viewers have slower network connections.
A brand new version of the Stream Player is now available for preview. New features include:
- Unified controls across desktop and mobile devices
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Intelligent mouse cursor interactions with player controls
- Phased out support for Internet Explorer 11
For more, refer to this post on the Cloudflare Community Forum.
Videos uploaded to Cloudflare Stream are now available to view 5x sooner, reducing the time your users wait between uploading and viewing videos.
You can now upload videos up to 30GB in size to Cloudflare Stream and also now upload an unlimited number of videos to Cloudflare Stream each week
You can now use the tus protocol when allowing creators (your end users) to upload their own videos directly to Cloudflare Stream.
In addition, all uploads to Cloudflare Stream made using tus are now faster and more reliable as part of this change.
Videos with multiple audio tracks (ex: 5.1 surround sound) are now mixed down to stereo when uploaded to Stream. The resulting video, with stereo audio, is now playable in the Stream Player.