Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue causing the floating player to go back to its original location on complete of each playlist item. Skipping to the next video by clicking a thumbnail or the next up button was unaffected.

Updates

Core Player

• Added a new object, floating, which keeps the player visible when the original player location is scrolled out of view by minimizing it to the bottom right corner of the screen (and the top of the page in portrait mode on small screens). Viewers cannot hide the floating player and send it back to its original location when floating.dismissible is set to false. Learn more about floating in our documentation.
• Removed a previously undocumented configuration option, floatOnScroll, which was available for a beta version of the floating player. Please use the new floating block above.
• Added the ability for the viewer to drag and reposition the floating player anywhere on the screen. Dragging is disabled during ad playback.
• Added a new object, autoPause, which automatically pauses the video when less than 50% in view, including when the player is no longer in the active tab. Learn more about autopause in our documentation.
• Added support for CMAF format streams across all browsers.
• Improved handling of relative protocol urls so that JW Player hosted protocol-relative playlist urls can play when accessing a webview that has js embed with file:// protocol. Only jwplatform playlist urls starting with "//" are changed to be loaded over https. URLs for other domains or for ad tags must be fully resolved in the setup configuration.
• Improved the user experience by retaining the paused state after a viewer seeks while paused. Developers who have worked around this in the past by calling pause() on seek no longer need to use the API, but anyone who wishes to resume playback automatically after a seek event now must call play().
• Improved clarity by hiding the settings menu gear icon in the control bar if the only submenu option is also a shortcut icon in the control bar, which applies to sharing and captions.
• Added a volume slider to control bar only players, which is used to play audio. Setting a player’s height to 42px automatically puts the player into control bar only mode.
• Added a reference dialog for keyboard shortcuts within the player, which can be accessed via the right click menu or evoked by pressing SHIFT+?.
• Added support for all playlists to use our recommendations user interfaces by setting related.displayMode to shelf or shelfWidget. Read more about this option in the configuration reference. The default interface for playlists that are not generated through our recommendations product remains as overlay.
• Removed the localization option, playlist, which localized the tooltip text, overlay heading, and aria-label HTML attribute of a playlist overlay. To customize this text, please use related.heading within the intlblock.
• Added a shortcut to sharing in the right click menu.
• Added automatic localization support for six new languages: Russian, Indonesian, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, and Finnish. Check our support article for a full list of the 21 supported languages and to submit a request for additional languages.

Advertising

• Deprecated the on(‘adManager’) event for Google IMA and Freewheel, which fires when the ad manager is loaded. on(‘adsManager’), with an “s”, should be used instead.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed a typo in the French translation of the word share.

Advertising

• Fixed an issue causing audio to play in background.

Fixes 

Player

• Fixed an issue with HLS live streams where in-manifest VTT captions were not displaying consistently throughout the video.

Fixes 

Player

• Fixed an issue with HLS live streams where in-manifest VTT captions were not displaying consistently throughout the video.

Updates

Core Player

• Improved the casting experience by starting a casted DVR stream at the live edge instead of at the beginning of the stream.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue where custom right click text was not appearing when the player was automatically localized.
• Fixed a bug that caused a javascript exception when exiting fullscreen by pressing the escape key.
• Fixed an issue causing the play icon on small click-to-play players to spin when clicked.
• Fixed a Flash issue preventing seeking in DVR streams in IE 11 on Windows 7.
• Fixed an issue in Safari where clicking on the rewind button during a live stream with DVR would seek back inconsistently, instead of ten seconds.

Fixes 

Core Player

• Fixed an issue where screen readers did not read the mute button correctly.
• Fixed an issue in Safari when using the left and right arrow hotkeys to seek where screen readers did not announce the seek if there were multiple players on the page.
• Improved ads accessibility by not fading controls when using the keyboard to navigate and ensuring the skip button is in the correct tab order from left to right. Note that due to third-party limitations, ads rendered in iframes and through the Google IMA plugin may not be accessible.

Updates

Core Player

• Added a new error code, 102007 (ERROR_XHR_FILE_PROTOCOL), which fires when a player fails to set up on a page that is using the file:// protocol.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue where HLS DVR content did not start playback at the live edge.
• Fixed a bug where the settings menu would be displayed in the idle state if it was opened via a load API call.
• Fixed an issue where timeline thumbnails and chapter cue points did not display on touch devices when dragging to seek.
• Fixed an issue where sharing.on('open') erroneously fires multiple times after calling load.

Advertising

• Fixed an issue where the opacity of the ad video element was 0 for some VPAID Google IMA ads, which increased the hidden ad rate recorded by ad verification vendors.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed a bug where WebVTT did not show after a discontinuity in HLS streams.
• Fixed a bug where WebVTT did not show when captions were enabled after a seek in HLS streams.

Updates

Core Player

• Added a new property to meta events, metadataType, which indicates the type of metadata available in the event. Possible values are: media, program-date-time, id3, date-range, scte-35, and unknown.
• Added a new event metadataCueParsed which is triggered once the metadata cue point is buffered.
• Exposed CUE-OUT, CUE-IN, and DATERANGE SCTE-35 metadata tags that are parsed in an HLS manifest. When a metadata tag becomes active, the following SCTE-35 meta events are fired: #EXT-X-DATERANGE, #EXT-X-CUE-OUT, and #EXT-X-CUE-IN.

Localization

• Added automated localization support for Hebrew.
• Added new localization options and updated all automated localization files to include translations for “Mute,” “Unmute,” and “Exit Fullscreen” icon tooltip texts and ARIA labels.
• Changed the default English localization text for slider from “Seek Slider” to “Seek” to reduce screen reader redundancy.
• Improved readability, punctuation, and string concatenation for all right-to-left languages, including Arabic and Hebrew.

Accessibility

• Added screen reader support to announce the video position changes when using the left and right arrow keyboard shortcuts while not focused on the timeline element.
• Added screen reader support to announce volume changes when using the up and down arrow keyboard shortcuts while not focused on the volume slider element.
• Improved volume keyboard accessibility by separating the mute icon from the volume slider. Now, when a user tabs to the mute icon, hitting enter will mute or unmute the player. Tabbing out of the mute icon, the volume slider will appear and can be controlled. Tabbing out of the volume slider will hide the slider and move focus to the next focusable icon.
• Fixed a bug causing the volume slider to be read as a “left-right slider” when it is actually an “up-down slider.”
• Added a blue focus ring that appears around any focused element when accessed by keyboard, which improves focus visibility.

Advertising

• Improved ad rendition selection in Freewheel by passing the player’s bitrate estimate to the AdsManager.
• Added a new bidding configuration option, no_vpaid_ads to the optionalParams object, which restricts VPAIDs and only serves mp4 ads with no SpotX VPAID wrapper.
• Added pause reasons to the response for on(‘adPause’) in the VAST, IMA, and Freewheel clients.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue where loading an HLS stream via load API does not display the selected captions track, though it is shown as selected in the UI.
• Resolved an issue in which alternate audio tracks may not be detected for HLS streams when no video codec is specified in the manifest.

Advertising

• Fixed an issue where the player fell back to the very first standalone ad in an ad tag even if there is a standalone ad directly after a pod item. This occurred in cases where the "fallbackOnNoAd" attribute is set to true and the pod item failed to play.
• Fixed a bug in the VAST client causing some VPAID ads to throw a Javascript exception when an ad completes playback in Microsoft Edge.

Updates

Core Player

• Improved handling of cross-origin 360/VR videos in Chrome 70 and Safari 12 so that instead of displaying a blank screen, the player errors with a new 307012 code.

Advertising

• Ungated VAST 4.1 tags, enabling ad tags marked with the latest VAST version to play. VAST 4.1 features that are not yet supported in JW Player will be ignored.
• Added automated localization of all Google IMA text to match the player’s language. Developers may also declare a two-letter ISO language in advertising.locale.

Fixes

Core Player

• Addressed uncaught TypeError that occurs when provided double value for currentTime property on HTMLMediaElement is non-finite.
• Fixed an issue where the error screen was still present after calling .remove() when the player experienced a setupError.

Advertising

• Fixed an issue in Google IMA where content did not background load during a pre-roll on an autostarting player.
• Fixed broken countdown timers in some ads when vpaidcontrols was set to true.
• Fixed a bug in Freewheel causing the adPlay event to fire twice on mobile devices.