Updates 

Advertising

• Added support for playlist-level configuration of Freewheel where the freewheel object can now be nested within an individual playlist item object.
• Added localization support and automated translations for all text in the captions styling menu (26 new fields in all).

Fixes 

Core Player

• Fixed a bug in Safari where captions were not displayed after a midroll ad.
• Fixed an accessibility issue in Firefox where focusing on the player selected the wrong DOM element.
• Fixed an accessibility issue found in desktop Firefox and Chrome where keyboard shortcuts sometimes stopped working in fullscreen mode after interacting with other elements.
• Fixed a bug preventing long lines of captions from wrapping to the next line.
• Fixed an issue causing style bleeding from the page onto the player version number in the right click menu.
• Fixed a rare issue where live HLS streams would intermittently freeze when loading on browsers other than Safari.
• Fixed a bug on our smallest players causing unintentional seeking when hitting the play/pause button.
• Fixed a bug in Android Chrome where players with floating configured pins the player to the top of the page and is draggable while in fullscreen mode.
• Fixed an issue causing the text of the LIVE button to wrap to multiple lines instead of taking up available space in the control bar on large screens when the text is localized to multiple words.
• Fixed a typo in a Russian translation.
• Fixed an issue in Android Chrome where the player received an orange focus ring in fullscreen mode.
• Fixed an issue where the player remains in playlist mode (displaying the next up and more buttons) when it is loaded with a single item playlist after being initialized with a playlist of multiple items.

Advertising

• Fixed an issue in Freewheel where a Google IMA parameter, vid_t, was erroneously added to ad requests.

Updates 

Core Player

• Added support for viewers to change the way captions are styled from within the settings menu on desktop devices. Automated player translation support for all of the new text introduced in the menus and options will be available in 8.12.2.
• Added a new configuration option, liveSyncDuration, for live HLS streams, which enables players to attempt to start live streams at a specified latency target between 5-30 seconds instead of the default 25 seconds. This value also affects where the “live” button seeks to when behind the edge.
• Reduced 232403 errors caused by loading stale levels that return a status 403 in JWP-hosted HLS streams.

Advertising

• Added VAST 4.1 compliant support for the advertiser node in ad tags in both the VAST and Google IMA plugins.
• Added an available -list suffix to our playlist item-level macros that will result in the macro replacement not URI encoding commas.
• Added a new ad rule in the VAST plugin, deferAds, which does not play ads whenever a player is playing in an inactive tab, and resumes on the last unplayed ad when the tab becomes active again. Learn how to configure this rule in our documentation.
• Improved creative selection in the VAST by using bandwidth estimation to choose a rendition with the most appropriate bitrate when there are multiple options with the same dimensions.
• Improved creative selection in the Google IMA plugin by passing bandwidth estimation to the ads manager.

Fixes 

Core Player

• Fixed an issue where controls did not automatically hide after inactivity on mobile devices.
• Fixed a bug where the keystrokes expected to enable and disable keyboard shortcuts were not working as expected.

Advertising

• Fixed a bug in Google IMA causing JavaScript exceptions.

Fix 

Advertising

• Fixed an issue with the GDPR consent management provider where specifically requesting version 1.1 of the getGDPRConsentData led consentString to not be populated.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue causing some DASH streams with embedded captions that use cue alignment to throw a 240000 error in Safari.
• Fixed a bug where keyboard shortcuts didn’t work while interacting with the settings menu.
• Fixed the misalignment of control icons that appear in the middle of the screen on small players.
• Fixed issues with misaligned vertical and horizontal webVTT captions that use cue positioning.

Advertising

• Fixed an issue in VAST and IMA where the adPlay event only fired once per VPAID ad pod.
• Fixed an issue in IMA where the player erroneously passed a skip offset value in ad requests, which is supposed to be set by GAM in the ad response. In VAST, skip is set to 1 in the request when skip is defined in the ad schedule, and 0 when it is undefined.

Updates

Advertising

• In VAST and Google IMA, added better support for domain tracking within AMP based urls.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed a bug where shelf widget UI would change size when the player entered floating state.
• Fixed a bug where swiping did not paginate through the shelf UI on iPad OS.

Advertising

• Fixed a bug where the player duplicated custom parameters in ad requests when using Google IMA.

Updates

Core Player

• Added the ability to disable keyboard shortcuts via a toggle in the right click menu.

Advertising

• In VAST and Google IMA, added support for IAB GDPR Transparency and Consent Framework v2. This framework introduces major enhancements and efficiency improvements, including mobile CMP support. It also expands the consent string to include ‘transparency’ features, including publisher controls and additional flexibility for vendors.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed a bug causing player touch events to register on the element beneath the player in Safari iOS.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the player from being in focus when playback was initiated via the play button.

Advertising

• Improved the floating player to ensure that the “X” to dismiss is present during ad playback without needing to hover or click.

Fixes

Core Player

• Fixed an issue where a dismissed floating player floats again when scrolling.

Advertising

• Fixed a bug in VAST that added a skip button to ads that were not configured to be skippable.

Service release, no new features.

Service release, no new features.

Updates 

Core Player

• Improved accessibility on iOS in Safari by inheriting all captions styles set on the device.
• Added automated translation support for Greek.
• Added internationalization support for all fields in the keyboard shortcuts menu released in JW8.8.0, as well as automated translations for all 24 supported languages.
• Improved float on scroll behavior on mobile so that the player sticks to the top when it reaches that position, rather than first scrolling out of view and popping back into place. With this change, the float on scroll feature is truly “float on scroll” on desktop, but more accurately behaves as “sticky” on mobile.

Advertising

• In VAST, added support for the [DEVICEUA] tracking pixel or __device-ua__ in the ad tag, which sends the user’s device agent. Also added the ad tag support in Google IMA.
• In VAST, added support for the [PAGEURL] tracking pixel, which sends the page where the ad is intended to play.
• In VAST, added support for the [REGULATIONS] and [GDPRCONSENT] macros, which tell the ad server if GDPR regulations are being used and if consent has been granted, respectively.
• In VAST, added support for the [ADSERVINGID] macro, which adds the AdServingId value to the tracking pixel, which is parsed from the node.

Fixes 

Core Player

• Fixed a bug causing a black screen during playback of an audio-only mp4, rather than the poster image persisting in the player.

Advertising

• Fixed a bug in DAI where the player buffered infinitely after resuming playback from a mid-roll.
• Fixed an issue in Google IMA where custom macros added in the custParams block were not being replaced by the correct values.
• Fixed a bug in VAST causing the skip button to show on nonskippable VPAID ads when vpaidcontrols: true.
• Fixed a bug causing VPAID creatives to be cancelled after 15 seconds due to stall detection.