Updates

Core Player

• Added the ability to configure when live streams time out. The new liveTimeout configuration option accepts a number. The default, undefined behavior is dependent upon segment length and differs slightly across providers. To configure a stream to never time out, set this value to 0.
• Added the ability to modify headers mid-stream with a new licenseRequestFilter configuration option in Fairplay DRM blocks. This option already works with Widevine and Playready.

Recommendations

• Added a new recommendations interface called Recommendations Shelf, which allows viewers to browse JW Recommended videos throughout the playback experience. This feature, available to all customers with a Recommendations entitlement, will provide more paths for engaging with content that is most relevant to your audiences, ultimately deepening engagement and powering additional monetization opportunities. To enable the shelf, include "displayMode": "shelf" within the related block in your setup configuration. The current overlay interface remains default behavior when displayMode is undefined or set to overlay.
• Added a new localization option, localization.close to customize the text of the close button added in the recommendations shelf. The default text is “close.”
• Updated the default localization.related text to “More videos.” This localization option affects the Recommendations Shelf button above the control bar in shelf mode, as well as the tooltip and the overlay title in overlay mode.
• Updated the default discover icon in the control bar to improve discoverability.
• Known issue: We’ll be making the new recommendations shelf fully accessible by keyboard in 8.2.0.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue causing single-variant audio streams to error very slowly. Streams now error within 30 seconds.
• Added an ARIA label for the “Live” button, which was erroneously omitted from previous versions.
• Fixed a bug that caused in some audio-only streams to not start in the hlsjs provider.
• Fixed an uncaught type error when loading a Related playlist in conjunction with a manual playlist. Functionality was not affected.
• Fixed an issue where autostarting JW Live streams that return a 404 did not display the fatal error after setting up, resulting in a blank screen.

Updates

Core Player

• Added support for TTML captions with DASH streams.
• Added a new localization option, localization.copied. The word “Copied” appears as default text whenever a viewer clicks on the link option in the sharing menu. This new option can be used to customize or translate that text.
• Improved readability of the live/not live indicator. Instead of an SVG icon, the word “Live” is now plain text, which can be localized with localization.liveBroadcast.
• Updated the default text for localization.liveBroadcast from “Live Broadcast” to “Live.”

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue with DASH streams where the correctly labeled captions track did not work and an internal text track labeled “Shaka Player TextTrack” was being shown in the menu.
• Improved the spacing between the current time and local time in Edge browsers.
• Fixed an issue where the play button was not perfectly center-aligned at low breakpoints.
• Fixed an issue where the play display icon appeared when transitioning between media instead of the buffer icon.

Known issues

• DASH streams encoded with gaps may buffer indefinitely in IE and Edge.

Service release, no new features.

Service release, no new features.

Updates

Core Player

• Improved the user experience when the preload configuration option is set to metadata (default) or auto. Video content will now preload during ad playback, resulting in a seamless transition from pre-roll and mid-roll ads to the video content on most reliable connections. Players with preload set to none won’t load content in the background. The visual quality and buffer events still fire in the same order as they always have, but before the play attempt event, instead of after play.

Ads

• Updated FreeWheel ad plugin to include URL request parameters noting the stream is live vs VOD.
• Improved the IMA ads UI to account for Google ads with built-in skip buttons, countdowns, etc.
• Modified and improved adimpression/aderror events to include the full list of wrapped tags.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue affecting DASH streams where a manual quality selection reverts to “auto” after a midroll ad.
• Fixed a bug where chapter marker cue points were not correctly aligned on the timeslider.
• Fixed a bug that broke the error state layout when a video’s description was too long.
• Fixed an issue where multiple players embedded on the same page would all have the same sharing embed code.
• Fixed incorrect reported user agent detection for Edge 14 on Windows phones.
• Fixed an issue with the addButton API where an erroneous undefined class was added in the DOM when the optional class parameter was not set.
• Fixed a bug causing the Next Up overlay to flicker when the cursor remains hovered over it.
• Fixed broken fullscreen functionality when a JW Player container div has a numeric div ID.
• Fixed an issue where the fullscreen button tooltip would appear clipped by the edge of the player if the fullscreen localization text (localization.fullscreen) was too long.
• Fixed a problem with 2G connections where the player showed a network error if setup did not complete within 25 seconds. Now, the player will show a timeout error if setup does not complete within 30 seconds.
• Fixed an issue where 360 videos could not render in VR mode if included in JW Platform-hosted playlists. Now, all 360 videos in a single or multi-item playlist will play as expected.

Ads

• Fixed an issue with incorrect order of wrapper tags reported in adImpression/adError events. Specifically tag field now has the last tag that resulted in impression/error and wrappedTags array has all preceding tags.
• Added wrapperAdSystem array to Impression/Error events that reports ad system for all wrapper tags, but the last one, that goes into adsystem (same pattern as above).
• Fixed an issue with the VAST plugin where empty VMAP responses could result in infinite buffering for autostart players.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue with DRM streams using FairPlay, where skipping to the next playlist item resulted in a fatal error.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue in the Google Analytics Pro plugin where older types of GA embeds were not working.

Updates

Core Player

• Added support for the most recent Google Analytics embed type, gtag.js. Older types of embeds are still supported.
• The player now marks events sent to Google Analytics nonInteraction: true if they were not manual viewer interactions. This enhancement increases bounce rate accuracy.
• Improved the design and interaction of the discovery and playlist overlay in small players, making it our most accessible overlay yet. The overlay now supports swipe interactions and keyboard shortcuts, making it easy to navigate between items. You can page through the list of items either by swiping left or right on touch devices or using the keyboard’s left or right arrows. The overlay can be closed using the escape key. Finally, you can tab through all the elements in the overlay and interact with them using the enter key.
• Improved the user experience with new Discover and Playlist headings, which provide context for the discover and playlist overlays. The headings and the tooltips for the overlay’s icon in the control bar can be customized in a setup block with localization.related and localization.playlist.
• Improved the autoplay experience on mobile by showing controls when playback starts. Previously, viewers could not control the video until they unmuted the video by tapping an icon in the lower right corner of the screen. Now, the mute icon will still appear in the corner when controls fade away, but tapping on the screen brings up the controls immediately.

Ads

• Added the ability to localize the “Loading Ad” message for IMA and FreeWheel plugins.
• Added the ability to set the number of allowable redirects in IMA above the default for cases like header bidding.
• For FreeWheel, added a new configuration option customadunitname that allows for specifying the SLAU query parameter for each ad break.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed a bug where DRM protected content could not play after non-DRM protected items when using .load().
• Fixed an issue where live streams would not fall back to a backup stream when the first variant could no longer be played.
• Fixed a bug causing content to scale improperly on Edge 16 with the HTML5 provider.
• Fixed an issue causing some page styles to bleed into the playlist overlay.
• Fixed a bug where the poster image would not display on audio-only playlist items.
• Fixed an issue in HLSjs causing a loop when parsing null characters in ID3.

Ads

• Fixed an issue with the VAST plugin where the player could hang when a VPAID JS tag returned a Flash creative when using HLS
• Fixed a bug in the VAST plugin where the error pixel might not fire if no ad response was received
• Resolved an issue where controls=false was being overridden when certain VPAIDs ended
• Fixed an issue with the VAST plugin where skipping multiple midrolls using %s rather than specific offsets could cause playback to start from the beginning.

Updates

Core Player

• Added a callback, onXhrOpen, which can be used to set custom XHR headers in HLSjs for AES-protected HLS streams. The callback gets executed after an XMLHTTPRequest is initialized and before the request is sent. withCredentials is unaffected by this change. If configured, it gets set before onXhrOpen is called. Refer to our configuration reference for implementation details.

Ads

• Fixed an issue with the VAST plugin where the player could hang when a VPAID JS tag returned a now Flash creative when using HLS.
• Fixed a bug in the VAST plugin where the error pixel might not fire if no ad response was received.
• Resolved an issue where controls=false was being ignored when certain VPAIDs ended.
• Fixed an issue with the VAST plugin where skipping multiple midrolls set using %s rather than specific offsets could cause playback to start from the beginning.

Updates

Core Player

• Expanded HLSjs usage to Android Chrome, where it is now the default for HLS playback. This makes the HLS experience more feature rich and includes support for 608 and in-manifest VTT captions, as well as improved playback stability and support. HLS.js usage can be disabled by setting hlsjsdefault to false, which will result in the player using native Android HLS playback.
• Improved our Discover recommendations engine by reducing the likelihood of a viewer seeing a repeat of videos they’ve already seen either by choice or via auto-advance. Items that are manually clicked will not be recommended again for 10 minutes, and items that are automatically advanced will be excluded for one hour.

Ads

• Updated the requestTimeout configuration option to apply to the IMAad plugin, where it previously only applied to VAST.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue where some captions did not appear properly center-aligned.
• Fixed a bug where audio-only videos did not display the poster image if set to autostart.
• Fixed a bug where the poster image would not be visible when calling load().
• Fixed an issue causing playback to stall when an empty child manifest is selected. After a failed attempt to play a quality, the player now will remove the quality option from the quality menu.
• Fixed a bug causing the colors in 360 videos to appear inverted on iOS devices.

Ads

• Fixed an issue with autostarted players when Safari 11’s “Never autoplay” setting is enabled. Ads now correctly play after user interaction.
• Fixed an issue where the buffer icon would display during IMA fullslot ads.
• Fixed an issue where the IMA timeout aderror was not firing correctly in certain scenarios.