Genvid SDK 1.32.0

Welcome to Genvid SDK 1.32.0. This release is ready and stable for integration and can be used for local development and limited cloud deployment. We are still missing some features for a complete production deployment which can be provided through other software. Please contact us at support@genvidtech.com if you’re planning a production deployment.

We are still committed to a regular pace for our releases until we get all the features done for a comfortable production deployment. We always work to ensure a smooth upgrade between releases and provide as much backward compatibility support as possible. A complete list of our Known Issues and Workarounds is available to you in our AnswerHub. Please contact us if you have any issues.

Current Functionalities

Here is a summary of our current functionalities. See Major Fixes and Changes below for the list of new features in this release.

  • Automatic synchronization between video and game-data streams.
  • Video streaming to YouTube and Twitch.
  • JavaScript SDK for embedded webpage.
  • Multiple distributed sources of A/V and Data.
  • Streaming additional arbitrary game events and notifications.
  • Scalable event messaging system.
  • Windows C++ API with a C# wrapper.
  • Video encoding (H264 + AAC).
  • Unity3D integration (Game and Management).
  • Unreal Engine integration (Game and Management).
  • D3D11 or raw frame video capture.
  • WASAPI audio capture.
  • Tools and scripts for managing your local and remote clusters, with example scripts for AWS and Azure.
  • Live video editing and basic composition effects (beta).
  • RTMP Ingest server (beta).
  • REST API to control the services (beta).
  • Metrics feed (beta).
  • Load-testing library.
  • Multiple integration samples.
  • Extensive documentation.

Major Fixes and Changes

Minor Changes and Other Fixes

  • [documentation] Added missing tags to metrics tables.
  • [sdk] Fixed an issue where command messages with empty values were not processed.
  • [sdk] Fixed an issue where the audio buffer could generate glitches.
  • [toolbox] Improved genvid-sdk upload-images-sdk by making it discover the list of available images from the SDK folder.
  • [toolbox] Fixed an issue where genvid-sdk package was returning an error when the source was a single file, or when no name was set in the call.
  • [toolbox] Fixed an issue where the retry_request parameter was ignored when the method genvid.toolbox.ClusterAPI.get_cluster_info was called.
  • [gvencode] Fixed an issue where audio and video desync when the delay between the last received frame and the end of a stream is too important.
  • [bastion-api] Improved Cluster-UI and Bastion-UI on small devices to avoid overlapping and hidden content.
  • [bastion-api] Fixed an issue where the error “too many transactions” was displayed when updating more than 12 images in a cluster.
  • [studio] Upgraded version of sliders in UI from 11.0.3 to 15.4.0.
  • [studio] Improved autocut documentation.
  • [consul-template] Upgraded consul-template from v0.24.1 to v0.27.1.
  • [terraform] Improved our Terraform modules by replacing the deprecated template provider with the new templatefile function.
  • [ami, vhd] Fixed an issue where ldconfig was segfaulting when trying to update or install new libraries on the Linux servers. The new images no longer set the kernel sys parameters differently from the default Debian setup.
  • [ami, vhd] Fixed an issue where there were missing base packages when using Python on our Linux server image.
  • [cluster-api] Fixed a security issue by setting the sandbox path to /dev/null for all consul-template execution.
  • [cluster-api] Added new /v1/template_renderer API to cluster-api which allow it to render a template folder and custom environment variables.
  • [consul] Fixed an issue where default values were not used if the Consul folder did not contain all Key/Values pairs.
  • [twitch extension] Fixed an issue where Twitch CSP blocks script-src when it points to external files.

Known Issues

Unity Sample build fails when Unity 2020 LTS is the only version installed

Building the Unity Sample when the only Unity version installed is Unity 2020 LTS fails with the error: “Cannot find executable in the path:Unity.exe”.

As a workaround use the “-v” option when running the build script.

Ex: py unity.py prepare -v 2020.3.20f1

Only one application with the Genvid SDK integrated may run at a time if not launched using Nomad.

If an application using the Genvid SDK is launched without Nomad, a default session name is assigned to it. This is useful when testing your application in the Unity engine, Unreal engine, or booting your application manually.

Currently, the Genvid SDK is unable to support multiple applications launched this way unless you change the environment variable GENVID_SESSION_NAME to a unique name. You can also launch your applications via Nomad to avoid this issue.

We will fix this in a future release.

Azure reports requested instance size not available.

On Azure, we are using a compute instance type Standard_NV6 for the game machine. For some accounts, only the promo version of this instance type is available (Standard_NV6_Promo).

When doing the Terraform setup on the Azure module, you may encounter the error:

The requested size for resource 'XXXX-game-1' is currently not available in location 'XXXX'

As a workaround, go to your Terraform Settings page and change the instance_game_type to Standard_NV6_Promo, then go to the Commands page and try Plan apply -> Apply again.

Streaming to an iOS device with the Standalone player is currently not functional.

Streaming to an iOS device (iPhones and iPads) with the Standalone player is currently not functional. This issue will be fixed in a future release.

When changing Availability Zones in Azure, resources need to be destroyed and rebuilt.

When changing AZs in Azure, deleting the public IP might fail due to it not being detached from the virtual machine. This is a bug in the Terraform provider. See the issue on the Hashicorp Github for more information.

As a workaround, manually detach the offending public IPs from the virtual machines in the Azure portal.

genvid-sdk upload-images-sdk command fails to upload the Docker image on Azure Cloud.

Some Docker images can’t be uploaded to Azure Cloud using the genvid-sdk upload-images-sdk command due to large sizes. (You will get an SSL error and a Max retries exceeded message.)

As a workaround:

  1. Open the Azure UI.
  2. Upload your image manually.
  3. Run genvid-sdk upload-images-sdk again.

Required to manually remove the subdomain NS record when updating the subdomain on an existing AWS cluster.

When creating an AWS cluster using basic_cluster_alb_ssl or minimal_cluster_alb_ssl, the domain and subdomain are provided. When updating an existing cluster’s subdomain, the route53 NS record for the previous subdomain needs to be removed manually from the main domain. This is due to how the NS record is handled within our Terraform.

Unable to delete subnets in cluster basic_cluster_alb_ssl using AWS.

When changing subnet_cidr_block_size in basic_cluster_alb_ssl, decreasing the number of AZs, or reordering existing AZs, the cluster will get stuck trying to delete the subnets.

Reapplying the configuration won’t resolve the issue.

Workaround: delete and recreate the cluster.

Bastion cluster Settings page modal window not closing.

In the Bastion Settings page for a cluster, the Properties modal window for custom tags doesn’t close when you click outside of it.

As a workaround, click on Properties again to close the modal window.

Limitations

Loading configurations in the incorrect order can overwrite values.

Whether you’re using SSL on a cloud or a local cluster, if you load youtube.sample.hcl before loading the web sample, the web sample will overwrite the value associated with the embed_ssl from the web.hcl file.

Large NTP time offsets will prevent the stream from playing.

If you encounter large NTP time offsets, your stream may stop playing. As a workaround, make sure that the game machine is configured to update its clock automatically. For local configurations, replace the AWS IP address with pool.ntp.org.

See the AWS configuration section for more information.

Studio can’t take inputs of the same control from multiple windows.

If Studio is opened in more than one browser window and inputs are received from different sources to one control, the final value will then bounce between the different inputs instead of updating it to the latest one. For example, in Audio Mixer Widget, if a user changes the slider of Master Gain to 20 db and another user then changes it to 0 db, the slider handle will bounce between 20 db and 0 db instead of being set to 0 db.

Sending input from multiple Studio windows to one control is not recommended until we resolve the issue.

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 a production environment. The best workaround at present is to not allow Windows to go to sleep when you are running the service, or simply to restart the service with a genvid-bastion reinstall. (Unfortunately, genvid-bastion restart is not sufficient.)

The SDK clamps framerates under 1.0.

To prevent issues, we raised the lower limit for the framerate to 1.0 for any stream. The SDK will clamp the value to 1.0 FPS if it’s less than 1.0.

Default value for an Azure resource group name may be too long.

If no values are provided for the variable resource_group_name, the value is set to a combination of {bastionid}-{clustername}. This can yield names longer than 64 characters, which is the maximum number of characters allowed for an Azure resource group name.

To avoid this problem, always provide a value of 64 characters or less for the variable resource_group_name.

See the Azure Github for more information on Azure naming conventions.

AWS clusters subnet collision error.

If you reduce the subnet_cidr_block_size and increase the number of AZs for an AWS cluster at the same time, it causes a subnet collision error.

If you encounter this issue, reapply the configuration to resolve it.

No new tags on Azure disk when updating a cluster.

When applying new tags to Azure clusters, tags will not be applied to disk unless the virtual machine instance that owns the disk gets recreated during the apply process.

As a workaround, delete and recreate the cluster to resolve the issue.

Cluster names are limited to 64 characters.

Cluster names are limited to 64 characters due to limitations with the file system in Windows. Things like the system’s username and cluster name factor into the max number of characters of the file directory.

While it is technically possible to go above 64 characters, the results can be unpredictable.