Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue on Android Chrome where after the pre-roll, a player configured with a Widevine protected playlist item errors, displaying a "File could not be played message"

Updates

Core Player

• Improved media notifications on Android by including poster images and publisher domain names.

Ads

• Added a new ad error code (900 / 60007) that gets raised when there’s an attempt to load ads on Android 2.3, which is not supported.
• Added creativeID from the VAST XML response to the VAST admanager’s adImpression/adError events.
• For Video Player Bidding, segmented bidresponsetime by now also reporting the script loading time and the time between adBidRequest and adBidResponse.
• Improved “Ad loading” messaging for the VAST admanager to only show when an actual ad is being loaded.
• Improved reporting of Video Player Bidding impression tracking when the DFP mediation layer is used.
• Added breakstart and breakend events to Google DAI.
• Removed ad countdown and pod count messaging in Google DAI “live” scenarios to prevent incorrect messaging.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed a bug preventing poster images from displaying during playback of audio-only streams with the audio/mp4 MIME type.
• Fixed an accessibility issue in Firefox that allowed the video tag itself to be focusable.
• Fixed an issue where setting up the player twice resulted in duplicate analytics pings being fired for certain events (eg. completes).

Ads

• For FreeWheel, modified the default admanager URL (which loads when a publisher hasn’t specified their own) to load successfully over both HTTP and HTTPS.
• Fixed an issue with the VAST admanager where certain preroll VPAID ads would incorrectly show the skip button when the vpaidcontrols config option was set.
• Fixed an issue with SpotX Video Player Bidding where the startdelay parameter was being passed incorrectly for midrolls.
• Fixed an issue where calling load() while the player is in the “Loading ad” state could cause infinite buffering in very low-bandwidth situations.
• Fixed an issue with the VAST admanager where setting the offset for two ads where one is set to be pre and the other 0 would prevent the second ad from playing.
• Fixed an issue with Google DAI on Safari where seeking past multiple unplayed midrolls could cause the player’s timeslider to stall or jump back and forth.

Updates

Core Player

• Improved the playback experience by maintaining quality between videos in a playlist. The player starts subsequent videos in an embed with the quality that most closely matches the previous item based on bandwidth comparisons.
• Improved the playback experience by preserving the viewer’s bandwidth estimation and using it to select an initial quality level when playback starts.
• Added a new configuration option, defaultBandwidthEstimate, which sets an initial bandwidth estimate in bits for all viewers. To set the highest quality as an initial estimate, reference the highest bitrate from your manifest.
• Improved the “Auto” quality label in the settings menu to also show the quality being played when “Auto” is selected.
• Improved the experience of watching live streams that do not have a DVR window. Instead of the pause icon, which used to pause the stream and resume behind the live edge, the player now features a new stop icon, which resumes from the live edge when playback resumes. The player appears paused on the last frame watched. Note that for visual clarity, small players will display a pause icon in the center of the screen while exhibiting the new “stop” behavior. Via API, the pause method will achieve the behavior described here, while the stop method will stop playback and put the player in the idle state.
• Live streams without a DVR window no longer get behind the live edge, and the live icon is no longer clickable to return to the live edge.
• Added a new localization option, localization.stop for the new stop icon in live mode.
• Added right click support via long press on iOS and Android devices. Long pressing displays the JW Player right click menu. The menu automatically fades out within three seconds if not interacted with.
• In accordance with GDPR data transparency compliance, added a video information overlay accessible via an option About this video in the right click menu. The viewer’s Client ID is displayed in the lower right corner, which can be used to request data from JW Player.
• Added a new localization, localization.videoInfo, which can be used to localize "About this video" text in the right click menu.

Ads

• For Video Player Bidding, expanded the number of possible bidResults to include expanded error tracking.
• For Video Player Bidding, added the priceInCents to the adImpression and adError events for all mediation layers.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue where DASH streams with large gaps at the beginning of the manifest did not play on IE11 and Edge.
• Fixed an issue where HLS streams missing a frame in the first segment would not start playing with HLSjs.
• Fixed an issue with 608 captions in HLS streams where the captions would flicker in and out with HLSjs.

Ads

• Fixed an issue with the Google IMA plugin where second ad in a pod might not unpause after being paused.
• Fixed an issue with the VAST ad plugin where error tracking pixels weren’t firing for all wrapped tags if only included at the root of the XML response.
• Fixed an issue with the VAST plugin where content would display before a preroll ad if scheduling was done at the playlist item level.

Fixes

Ads

• For IMA, fixed an issue with a mute-state incompatibility between Browser Autoplay Policies and Video Player Bidding, where autostart-muted ads might incorrectly fail to play even though the browser would allow it.

Updates

Ads

• For Video Player Bidding, created a new mediation option when the SpotX bidder is in use ‘jwpspotx’ which allows SpotX to act as the primary adserver.
• Updated the FreeWheel ad plugin to start sending video playback events to the adserver.
• Created a new timeout config option for the IMA ad plugin vastLoadTimeout and extended the default to 10 seconds from 5.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue preventing DASH streams from being cast from the idle state.

Updates

Core Player

• We’re optimizing the click-to-play button to drive more plays for our publishers. Some customers may notice their play button is more stylized than before.
• When the player is within range of the live edge, viewers will now see the video position at the end of the timeslider. Previously, a slight gap erroneously implied the viewer was not at the edge.

Ads

• Created a new 'startOnSeek' ad rule. This can be used in conjunction with seek() in lieu of a play event to define a start position and begin playback. This prevents viewers from being bombarded with ads when starting content playback from somewhere other than the content’s beginning.
• Expanded Video Player Bidding functionality to the VAST plugin. Video Player Bidding was initially only available for IMA plugin.
• For Video Player Bidding, created a new mediation layer JWPDFP that combines both existing mediation layers (JWP and DFP), allowing the SpotX bidder to take advantage of the benefits of both mediation layers.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue causing the recommendations shelf to appear over ads.
• Fixed an issue causing the live icon to flicker on and off when a viewer falls behind the edge in a DVR/live stream.
• Fixed an issue in IE and Edge where the stretching configuration option was not respected if set to a value other than uniform.
• Fixed an issue with live videos causing the position in the control bar to change constantly within a few second range, which negatively impacted the viewer experience.
• Fixed an issue with captions not working in 360 videos in Safari.
• Fixed an issue causing the page to scroll to a random point when players embedded with an iframe were clicked using Safari on iOS.

Ads

• Fixed an issue where the VAST [ERRORCODE] macro was not being automatically filled if present at the root of the XML rather than within the element in the InLine or Wrapper elements.

Updates

Core Player

• Updated the player to check for browser-level autoplay restrictions.
• Updated the player to autoplay with sound if possible, autoplay muted if possible when there are no ads, or autoplay muted ads if autoplayadsmuted: true is set. The player will fall back to click-to-play after exhausting all autoplay options.
• Added the ability to start playback from a non-zero position. You can register seek as a function of the ready or playlistItem events, so that the player starts playing from a specific point.
• Added support for DASH streams on desktop Safari. NOTE: DASH streams are not supported on iOS Safari, nor with Airplay on desktop devices.
• Added user agent detection for UC browser, where previously it was reported as Chrome. UC browser can be detected using the getEnvironment() API.
• Implemented licenseResponseFilter for DASH streams and Fairplay. These methods allow customers to modify or access responses from license requests. This is needed for license wrapping implementations.
• Added a new API method, getCurrentTime(), which exposes the current time value of content. For on-demand streams, currentTime will be the same as the position. For live or DVR streams, the currentTime will not be modified based on duration or seekable range.
• Improved the user experience on mobile devices by allowing the viewer to pause playback of videos that autostart muted without unmuting first.
• Expanded media preloading capabilities to preload subsequent media before the current media ends. As is the case with preloading media that will play after an ad break, this behavior will only occur when the preload configuration option is set to metadata (default) or auto. Players with preload set to none won’t load content in the background.

Recommendations

• Made the recommendations shelf the default display mode for related playlists. For more information, please see the configuration reference and the release notes for v8.1.10.
• Improved accessibility for the recommendations shelf so that viewers can interact with it using a keyboard or screen reader. Viewers can use the left and right keys to paginate through the shelf and the escape key to close the shelf when not in fullscreen mode.

Ads

Google IMA

• Passed the results of the autoplay restrictions check to the ad plugin using the two new fields in the IMA ad request, setAdWillAutoPlay and setAdWillPlayMuted. This is necessary for AdX/AdSesnse.

FreeWheel

• Added the adLoading parameter to the adError event.
• Updated the requestTimeout configuration option to work.
• Added the streamType: live configuration option for denoting live streams with FreeWheel ads.
• Improved the user experience by making the player click-to-play when the browser suppresses autostart.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue causing the pause event to trigger twice when serving a mid-roll ad.
• Fixed an issue preventing the controls from fading away if you mouse out of the player over the controls.
• Fixed a bug with VTT captions reducing the horizontal space for captions, which drastically increased the number of lines of text per caption.
• Fixed an issue where the player did not successfully cast playlists if the JSON file was greater than 56.2kb in size due to a memory restriction on chromecast devices

Service release, no new features.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue causing style bleeding in recommended videos interfaces.

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.