Ferncast keeps on improving service quality and customer experience

The new version aixtream 2.1 enables offline updates to enhance customer service

Ferncasts software solution aixtream is a scalable software, running as server or VM installation. It is constantly being improved and new features are added. The version 2.0 was a great step in terms of performance and stability and Ferncast is investing now to expand its service quality and to answer customers’ requests with the release of version 2.1.

aixtream v 2.1 includes the following features:

Service center: final preparation for the Customer Service Center

This includes support for offline updates via USB and FTP. Once the Customer Service Center is available to users, they will be able to download update files from there and manually start the update process. The Customer Service Center will also include additional benefits for Ferncast customers: license files and updates can soon be managed by the users themselves, without help from Ferncast employees.

Christian Thierfeld, Front End developer at Ferncast, said: "“We focused a lot on the needs of our customers. With aixtream 2.1 we start introducing the Customer Service Center integration into aixtream. The first milestone is the new software update system which shall reduce administrative efforts on the customer’s and Ferncast’s side and make future feature updates more easily availa-ble. Looking forward to the next step, we are in the process of transitioning the device management. We will continuously be adding more components to the new customer service center to further enhance the quality of our services.”

DVB audio

Starting with v2.1, it will be possible for users of DVB use cases to have RDS (Radio Data System) information in separate PIDs (Packet Identifiers). This feature was requested by multiple high-end professional customers of aixtream DVB. There have also been multiple quality-of-life improve-ments for DVB. For example, the system now recognizes if a set target bitrate is reasonable or out of bounds.

Major improvements related to online audio streaming (especially with Ybrid) and audio-on-demand processing. The improvements include better error and retry handling and management of default metadata. Ybrid received a lot of attention, as we are working closely with nacamar GmbH to optimize our implementation according to their input. This ensures aixtream stays the premier Ybrid streaming platform.

Moreover, some other features have been added or improved in version 2.1 in addition to general bug fixing. Among these features, customers can find:

• UI
  - Various UI improvements
  - Validate integer and float inputs
  - Archive: Allow sorting of files and directories by name or modify time
• HLS - playlist
  - Optimized playlist generation (fixes very long playlists)
  - Several other bug fixes

aixtream version 2.1 will be released today to the customer base.

www.ferncast.com