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.