Service release. No new features. 

In this release, we've added support for #EXT-X-PROGRAM-DATE-TIME and Google Analytics 4. We also fixed several bugs pertaining to inconsistent arrow key behavior, floating player activation, and incorrect time display.

New Features

• Both HLS and DASH manifests support #EXT-X-PROGRAM-DATE-TIME. See getAbsolutePosition and absolutePositionReady.
• Google Analytics 4 is supported.

Bug Fixes

• The inconsistent behavior with the left arrow key and DVR streams on Chrome and Firefox has been fixed.
• Our floating player is no longer activated during PIP mode.
• VOD content that displays as live during casting has been fixed.
• The seek bar displays the correct time when clicking play without briefly showing an incorrect time.
• VPAID ads no longer play at 100% volume when the player is set to volume: 0.
• The addCues property has been fixed to add cues to the time slider correctly.

In this latest release, we're introducing a fresh chapter bar redesign as the default view and fixing various issues.

New Features

• Our chapter bar redesign has been set as the default view.
• Chapter tracks display correctly when using the duration config option.
• In-manifest captions appear as intended when the starttime value exceeds 0.
• The Outstream player has been updated to play audio-only ads.
• The autopause functionality works when floating is set to never.
• Caption positioning has been improved.
• On desktop, the default floating behavior no longer appears at the top right.

With 8.26.8, various UX and ad improvements and a fix have been released.

New Features

• Floating player will now float up (previously only floats down) in portrait mode on mobile.
• Picture in Picture (PiP) icon can now appear in the control bar on mobile.
• Added a new ad macro for video duration named integer-duration that returns an integer.
• Removed the ability to go fullscreen during an ad with the Freewheel plugin.

Bug Fix

• Fixed an issue causing clickthrough to be blocked on certain VPAID ads.

With v8.26.7, we've updated our HLS.js dependency version in addition to several other updates and fixes.

New Features

• Updated our HLS.js dependency to version v1.2.9.
• Updated the logic of autopause to prevent the autopause event from firing when player would go into floating.
• Updated our player element to use classes instead of IDs in some instances to prevent duplicate IDs in the DOM.
• Added additional adWarnings when the VMAP schedule is missing schema elements.
• Updated our CEA 608 positioning to be centered aligned.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue causing the preview thumbnail to crop at the edge of the player.
• Fixed an issue where our liveTimeout setting defaulted to null.

With v8.26.5, we've enabled the ability to resize the player on Tizen, removed the timer on DVR live streams, and addressed several player issues.

New Features

• Enabled the ability to resize the player on Tizen.
• Investigated and added the aria attribute to wherever it may have been missing.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue causing ad pods to not surface the skipoffset in our VAST plugin.
• Fixed an issue that caused the playlistitem event to fire twice when the setPlaylistitemCallback is present and the playlistitem is dynamically changed.
• Fixed an issue with our VAST plugin that blocked clickthrough functionality on certain VPAID creatives.
• Fixed an issue with casting on customer receivers where setting the appid did not work with DRM.
• Fixed an issue with navigation on the settings menu on Tizen when audio tracks were rendering with caption tracks.
• Fixed an issue causing the player not to rotate between landscape modes in fullscreen on Android.

Deprecation

• Removed the timer on DVR live streams as scrubbing backwards would show negative times.

In this release, we've added the ability to pass parameters into the ad request for FreeWheel and corrected a caption selection issue.

New Features

• FreeWheel global parameters (afid, sfid, vcid) can now be passed into the ad request through the Freewheel plugin.
• You can append additional FreeWheel MRM ad server capabilities to the `flag` parameter and pass them in the ad request through the Freewheel plugin.

See our FreeWheel ad break recipes for examples of how to include these new parameters. 

Bug Fix

• On iOS mobile web, caption selection is no longer impacted after exiting full-screen mode during live streams.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue causing a DAI live Dash stream to not enter ads mode
• Fixed an issue on smaller viewports causing auto pause:false to not work in combination with autostart: viewable
• Fixed an issue with .stopCasting() function not working
• Fixed an issue causing some Dash streams to stop playback after a few minutes
• Fixed an issue with our Google Analytics plugin causing play, pause and seeks events from firing
• Fixed an issue where floating did not function when settings was controls:false
• Fixed styling issue with our Tizen controller and tooltips.
• Fixed an issue on Tizen with the time-slider not functioning properly

New Feature

Google SEO Optimization can now be set up on the JWP Dashboard:

• This new player configuration automatically populates the necessary structured data used by Google search crawlers to index videos in Google Search with Key Moments.
• This player configuration can be controlled in the JWP Dashboard or directly in the Player Configuration.
• For customers who want to implement Key Moments within their own VideoObject structured data, our Google SEO Optimization support page has guidance on how to fill out the necessary parameters to deep link to specific timestamps with JWP.

Bug Fix

Fixed an issue where Starter accounts were unable to update their player settings.

With the release of v8.26.1 we will slowly be introducing a new UI for Chapters! Hope you all enjoy!

New Features

• We have revamped our old Chapter UI to a more modern look.
• Updated our Shaka dependency to v4.2.1.
• Updated our HLS.js dependency to v.1.2.1.
• Added better error handling for Buffer Append errors in HLS.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where Chromecast would not update the playback URL when the web player did.
• Fixed an issue where the pause request would be ignored while the "player is buffering".
• Fixed an issue where the volume did not persist after being changed and the page would be refreshed.