Bring Your Own Renditions (BYOR) is now available in beta, giving you the ability to upload custom pre-encoded renditions into the JW Platform. With BYOR, you can manage media, deliver streams, protect content, and monetize playback using renditions created outside of JWPC's automated pipeline.

New Feature

BYOR lets you bring externally transcoded renditions into the JW Platform for delivery through JW Player’s infrastructure. This provides a modular solution for broadcasters with advanced quality and workflow requirements.

Key benefits:

• Maintain full control over video quality, bitrate ladders, and encoding configurations
• Use existing renditions generated by third-party or hardware encoders
• Deliver renditions with full support for streaming, DRM, and monetization

See our documentation to learn more. 

We’re excited to introduce Streaming Custom Reports. This feature enables deeper, more granular analysis of your streaming data, helping you uncover trends and insights tailored to your business needs.

New Feature

Streaming Custom Reports help you build flexible analyses of your streaming performance, extending beyond the high-level insights of the streaming analytics of the Analytics overview page:

• Create tailored reports to explore viewer behavior, device usage, and content performance at a granular level.
• Use prebuilt Quick Start reports (Top Countries, Top Platforms, Top Media, Daily Totals) to jump right into analysis.

Access Streaming Custom Reports

Follow these steps to start building custom reports:

1. Go to Reports > Streaming > Create Report.
2. Select from available fields and measures to build your report, or use one of the Quick Start reports.
3. Explore and save the insights.

NOTE: Custom reports are limited to a maximum of 93 days from the selected start date, regardless of the date range you select.

JWP 8.38.4 introduces a new configuration option for video thumbnails, adds support for unencoded Google PPS segment values and the HLS #EXT-X-SESSION-DATA tag, and includes player performance improvements to optimize preview image requests.

New Features

• The player supports unencoded Google PPS (enablePPS) segment values in ad requests for compatibility with ad partners.
• The enableVideoThumbnails config option allows disabling motion thumbnails to display static posters.
• The player supports the HLS #EXT-X-SESSION-DATA tag, enabling access to SSAI session information in VOD playback.

Bug Fix

• The player optimizes preview image requests, preventing redundant file downloads.

Dynamic Ads are now available to help you customize ad experiences based on your goals and viewer expectations. This feature can be used both with ad schedules and Dynamic Strategy Rules, giving you greater flexibility to manage ad delivery.

New Feature

Dynamic Ads let you define ad rules directly from your JWP dashboard, balancing audience experience with monetization potential.

Key Benefits:

• Tailor the viewing experience with intuitive, non-technical ad rules
• Set ad rules based on customer goals
• Boost monetization through increased opportunities for ad fill and impressions
• Use preset rules to easily align your ad strategy with industry specifications

Dynamic Ads can be used when defining an ad schedule or creating an advertising library within Dynamic Strategy Rules.

Contact your JWPC representative to get started with Dynamic Ads.

You can now retrieve the placement_name and country_code metrics in your Dynamic Strategy Rules analytics.

New Feature

The placement_name metric supplements the existing placement_id metric, while the country_code metric provides additional granularity alongside the US_UK_OR_ROW metric. Both metrics can now be included when querying data through Data Sharing.

You can now retrieve the watched_duration_audible metric in your play session monthly analytics.

New Feature

The watched_duration_audible metric can now be added when querying data through Data Sharing. This metric represents the total duration of content watched with audio unmuted, in seconds.

Easily create and fine-tune captions and chapter points with our new interactive timeline.

New Feature

The dashboard’s tracks editor now features an enhanced timeline that lets you manually set or adjust the time codes and durations of captions and chapters. Zoom controls give you precise editing capabilities, whether you’re working on short clips or long-form content — helping you deliver more accurate, polished media experiences.

For more information, learn how to add closed captions and chapter markers. 

This release resolves an issue in version 4.23.0 that could cause an App Store submission rejection.

If you are on 4.23.0, do not submit that version to the App Store. Update directly to 4.23.1 to ensure compliance and stability.

iOS SDK 4.23.0 introduces support for raw VMAP XML ad schedules in JWAdsAdvertisingConfig and JWPlayerItem objects, enhances compatibility with Google IMA ads, updates the PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy file, raises the minimum supported iOS version, and includes bug fixes to improve playback behavior and stability.

New Features

• Support for raw VMAP XML schedules has been added to JWAdsAdvertisingConfig and JWPlayerItem objects.
• Autostart (vpa) and mute (vpmute) parameters are now appended to Google IMA ads.
• The PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy file has been modified to clarify that JWPC does not track user-specific data.
• The minimum supported iOS version has been raised to 15.0.

Bug Fixes

• Custom data (.userInfo) is now sent to custom Chromecast receivers.
• When displayInLandscape is true, content remains in fullscreen mode regardless of device orientation.
• Seamless playback continues after exiting Picture-in-Picture (PiP) mode.
• Viewers can seek within the DVR window during live streams.

Deprecation

• iOS 14 is no longer supported.

This release includes improved ad loading behavior on iOS and automatic preroll setup for Dynamic Ads.

New Features

• iOS respects background ad loading settings providing smoother playback without interruptions.
• Dynamic Ads automatically enables preroll support, ensuring compatibility across embed types.