Ant Media Server v3.0

We’re excited to introduce Ant Media Server v3.0 🚀

This is not just another release. It’s a major step forward that lays the groundwork for the next generation of Ant Media Server (AMS).

Compared to the last version (2.17), this release focuses on three main areas:

Cleaning up the code base for the future
Adding new capabilities and plugins for modern streaming workflows
Improving security and stability
Table of Contents
Getting Ready for the Future
New Streaming Capabilities
New Plugins
MoQ Plugin
AI Plugin
Partner Plugins
Security & Stability Improvements
Conclusion
Getting Ready for the Future
With v3.0, we removed many deprecated methods and outdated structures to simplify the code base. For API, deprecated methods have already been replaced by more powerful ones. In this release the old and deprecated methods are completely removed.

This makes AMS easier to maintain, easier to extend with plugins, and more stable for long-term development.

Ant Media Server Deprecated Feature Removals
Ant Media Server Deprecated Feature Removals
New Streaming Capabilities
With v3.0 we have some new features on streaming. Some of these extensions are involved in the code base. Also some new features are implemented in new Plugins as an extension of Ant Media Server.

Let’s start with the new features developed in the code base.

Introducing AV1 Codec: AV1 codec is one of the new features now supported in AMS. AV1 codec promises better compression, lower bandwidth usage, and more future-proof streaming.
Re-streaming via SRT: SRT workflows are improved with re-stream support. This helps distribute streams across multiple endpoints not only with RTMP and also through SRT.
Improvement on VoD Streaming: We also improved Video-on-Demand (VOD) streaming. You can now add metadata when uploading VOD via REST and search VODs using metadata. This makes content management more flexible.
Enhancements on LL-HLS: Low-Latency HLS continues to improve with LL-HLS cluster play support. Also we are happy to include that Ant Media Server web player can now play LL-HLS streams. This means you won’t need any other player while switching between play protocols.
Security Improvements: We also had additions for security improvements, including the Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS) header and fixes for known vulnerabilities.
You can reach the whole list of the new implementations in v3.0 here.

New Plugins
Beside the features listed above, we also introduced great features with the new plugins to extend streaming capabilities. As a good news we have some plugins from Ant Media Server community. Also more plugins are on the way and coming soon.

MoQ Plugin
Media over QUIC (MoQ) is a promising new real-time streaming protocol. Ant Media Server now supports it with MoQ plugin. You can read this blogpost to understand how to install it on AMS and use it.

moq-hero
AI Plugin
This plugin acts as a bridge between Ant Media Server and mainly Python modules that process video frames. It streams video frames from an ongoing stream to external Python modules, enabling use cases like object detection and other AI-based processing to be handled by external AI workflows.

Ant Media Server and AI
Ant Media Server and AI
Partner Plugins
Besides these plugins we have new plugins listed in Ant Media Server marketplace which are created by Partners.

Scribe: Automatic subtitling for live video streams using speech-to-text technology. More details are here.

Scotty: Easy Server-Side Ad Insertion to seamlessly deliver ads within live and on-demand streams without interrupting playback. More details are here.

Security & Stability Improvements
Indeed, we haven’t inserted new features only. Besides them we focused heavily on making the system more stable and predictable. This release also includes various bug fixes and security improvements. You can reach them here.

Conclusion
As we announced before we plan to release a new version each quarter. This time it was a major release v3.0. With v3.0, we continue improving the Ant Media Server experience by simplifying the code base, adding support for new codecs and protocols, improving APIs and SDKs, and expanding the plugin ecosystem. We will come with a new minor release with some new good improvements. Please keep following us.