Improving Stability: Nimble Streamer Unveils the Out-of-Process Transcoder Mode

We're excited to introduce the latest innovation in Nimble Streamer: the Out-of-Process Mode for Live Transcoder scenarios. Designed to tackle stability challenges, this feature takes streaming technology to new heights.

The Out-of-Process Mode isolates the transcoding process from Nimble Streamer's core. This allows Nimble to restart transcoding scenarios without disrupting the entire system. It helps in cases like these:

• Some encoder, decoder or filter libraries crash due to internal faults and cause server to crash.
• The library or process in use is hanging up and hangs the server.
• Some process is leaking the memory and it affects the entire server RAM usage.
• When NVENC GPUs are used in different scenarios, some of those GPUs may fail which may lead to hanging multiple scenarios.

As a result, with this feature now you can avoid any un-expectected issues. For example, you may upgrade to a new NVENC driver and not be afraid that it will crash the entire server.

So this flexibility translates to uninterrupted streaming operations and efficient streams troubleshooting.

First, make sure the latest version of Nimble Streamer and Transcoder is running. Upgrade them as described in our OS-specific documentation.

Enabling out-of-process transcoding

Navigate to a list of Transcoder’s scenarios, and click on "pencil" edit icon. Click the "Out-of-process" checkbox in the appearing dialog box and then click OK button. Alternatively, you may set this checkbox while editing a Transcoder’s scenario, via the same edit icon.

At this moment, Nimble initiates a separate process called nimble_scenario_transcoder, in which the scenario will be running. It's completely detached from Nimble Streamer, and can be shut down or restarted without interruption of any other input or output streams. The re-instating occurs automatically, as Nimble is monitoring the flow of incoming and outgoing frames on the Encoder. If these frames cease to appear in the output, the scenario is automatically restarted.

In conclusion, Nimble Streamer's Out-of-Process Transcoder Mode marks a huge step towards bolstering stability in streaming scenarios. We invite you to experience it firsthand. As we continue to innovate, we highly value your feedback to further refine and enhance our offerings.