Genvid SDK 1.4.0

Welcome to Genvid Technologies SDK 1.4.0. While this release is not yet ready for production deployment, it is robust enough today to allow developers to start developing a full Genvid Streaming Experience into their existing projects.

We are hard at work, and a version of our SDK ready for production deployable builds are coming soon. We expect future releases will allow for a smooth transition. In the meantime, we recommend you start your integration today using our local development environment.

Current functionalities

We currently deliver core functionality which allows you to run your game and stream it to YouTube, along with extra game events and messaging to make it a true Genvid Streaming Experience.

  • D3D11 video capture
  • WASAPI audio capture
  • Video encoding (H264 + AAC)
  • Video streaming to YouTube
  • Streaming of additional arbitrary game events and notifications
  • Scalable event messaging system
  • Automatic synchronisation between video and game data streams
  • Native and Web SDK for easy integration
  • Sample tutorial project
  • Sample Unreal Engine 4 project
  • Exhaustive documentation
  • Local deployment tools and scripts
  • Cloud deployment tools and scripts (still in beta)
  • Unity engine integration with the Genvid SDK (still in beta)

More to come

Additionally, we are working on a full new feature pipeline to be released after the initial launch:

  • A bastion host to manage your clusters directly on the cloud
  • More secure handling of secret parameters
  • User authentication and validation
  • More video format support
  • Hardware encoding
  • Multi datacenter support
  • Multiple broadcast sessions management
  • Multiple audiovisual and data streams coming from the same or multiple instances
  • Support for audio/video streams coming from external sources
  • Instant replay
  • Live video edition and basic composition effects
  • Offline recording and playback of data streams
  • Offline broadcast session editing

Major changes in this version

Genvid-UI split in 3

Genvid-UI is now 3 services. The cluster-api service allow to manage a specific cluster, the bastion-api manage access to the cluster, as well as the creation and destruction of new clusters, and the genvid-ui provide the frontend for both services, like the original one. Takes notes that the interface for those services are still in beta and likely to change in the future.

New SDK version for Unity Plugin

The Genvid SDK is now using a different method to integrate the Genvid SDK that is less code heavy and even easier to use. We are now using a C# wrapper for the Genvid SDK which allow compatibility with other C# sharp application. GenvidPlugin is now only used for the video capture of the Unity application. Please consult the Unity Sample Integration page for more details on the files and how to do the proper integration.

Simplified Web SDK integration for Unity sample along with exhaustive documentation

The Unity sample web page is using less files for a simplified project structure and we created detailed documentation on each section for each files. The Genvid Web SDK integration information available in this page is compatible with most project and we strongly recommend to take a look at it if you are unsure on how to do your Genvid Web SDK integration. Look it up in the Web Sample.

Minor changes and other fixes

  • [sdk] Add support for NV12 texture buffer format.

  • [sdk] Fix support for sending arbitrary video frame format.

  • [project] You can now add your template links for Genvid UI in your

    Genvid Project.

  • [toolbox] The python toolbox now validate the settings with the cluster api.

  • [toolbox] The python toolbox now used the cluster API for opening links.

  • [toolbox] local.py open now returns the list of links.

  • [toolbox] Better check for valid DNS addresses on Windows.

  • [toolbox] Genvid-UI can set the log level.

  • [toolbox] The list of logs can now be managed by cluster-api.

  • [toolbox] Bring back logs in DockerToobox.build_docker()

  • [toolbox] static_binding now used GENVID_STATIC_BINDING environment.

  • [data streams] Websocket streams now suppport compression.

  • [documentation] Add a section on how to add a new game.

  • [documentation] Fix some typos in the list of stream parameters (video.source.id3d11texture2d).

  • [cloud] Add support for AWS availability zone of the game instance.

Known bugs

We weren’t able to fix some bugs in time for this release, but we intend to fix them shortly.

Error at the initialization of Vault

We have a race condition during Vault initialization. Running the setup command a second time fix the problem.

The application doesn’t work properly after Windows comes back from sleep

Nomad has some difficulties with sleeping jobs, including itself. This is unlikely to get fixed in Nomad, but shouldn’t happen in production environment. The best workaround you could have for that is to not allow Windows to go to sleep when you are running the service, or simply to restart the service with a local.py reinstall (unfortunately, local.py restart is not sufficient).

The YouTube stream isn’t properly reset after a manual restart

If the services are stopped and restarted shortly after, the YouTube streaming service will consider it as part of the same streaming session. Although a desirable effect most of the time, this could lead to showing up the previous session due to the long latency between the services and the actual view. A future version will provide a proper way to request a new stream, but until then, you can either reset your stream key from the YouTube dashboard or simply wait a little longer (a few minutes should be enough) before restarting the service.

Audio captures microphone, or loops infinitely

Since we capture audio with a loopback device, every sound going through the machine running the game will get captured. This not only includes system alerts or microphone input, but it also includes your web browser. When viewing your game stream using the same machine which is running the game, the game will also capture its own audio stream with ~10s of latency, yielding some echo with progressively worse sound quality (since it is compressed every time it is streamed). The recommended workaround is to disable audio altogether (genvid.encode.input.silent = true in your config file), or to use a separate machine to observe the website. These issues are moot when the game is deployed in a cloud infrastructure.

Audio is out of sync

The audio might be out of sync by a slight margin. We intend to fix this in an upcoming release. In the meantime, you can add delay to the video by setting a video delay in your config file; the default value is genvid.encode.output.videodelay = "1250ms" (the format is a string ending with ms).

AWS servers are not working properly after a shutdown

If you shut down the servers, they lose their public IP addresses and the system fails to take the new addresses into account. You must reinstall the servers by doing a cloud.py reinstall which takes a very long time. We are currently working on a solution that will be available on the official release of the cloud support.

Video capture is not supported in Unity editor

If you are running the stack and are attempting to start the application inside the Unity editor, you will get an error. We recommend for now to run the stack only when your application is built as an executable file. Though, we did add an option to deactivate the Genvid SDK in the editor for our Unity sample via a simple click.

Small hang can be noticed when losing Unity application focus

If you are running your Unity application with the stack and decide to proceed to a different window, you are bound to get a small hang several seconds later. This hang disppears when moving the mouse. This hang doesn’t affect the video, audio and data capture.