Bug fixing was the name of the game for February and March. Our roll-out of our new player continued and with it reported bugs from our users.
Because of many of the bugs reported, we made the decision to completely change (again) the loading sequence of our videos to address many issues that popped up that were not accounted for when writing the new player code. That did bring on a host of other bugs but in the end we are in a much better place than we were a few months ago.
Our goal to have all accounts using the new player by February was achieved. By the end of February we had the new player added to all accounts and all accounts using it by default. They also had the option to switch to the old player if they wanted. That option is still visible today and will be there for at least a few more months.
All accounts were successfully moved over to our new infrastructure, completing a huge undertaking that we are glad is over.
We did release a few new features and most notably our new Gallery Module. More details on that below.
Features Added
Improvements
Upcoming
- Inline timeline added
- 4.2 player turned on by default for all accounts
- IP Watermark
- Optional shadow for player
- Spotlightr Galleries Module
- Retired “My Files” with replacement being introduced
- API support for changing video source remotely for all videos
- Playlists for new player
- Free accounts now have all resolutions created for videos
- Email publishing option now includes copy/paste functionality with Gmail
- Various smaller 4.2 new player bugs
- Error display handling
- New video upload bugs
- Video upload notification fix
- Include Personalization in Polaris accounts
- Player shadow rework
- Watch page nomenclature across platform
- Custom thumbnail
- Watch page title
- Embed/Watch page conflicts fix
- Autoplay bug fix and improvements
- In app upgrade display issues fix
- Whitelabel fixes
- Mobile tap gesture fixes
- Galleries UI enchancements
- Analytics View/Load count bug fix
- Player controls and timeline bug fix
- Favicon fix for re-branded browser tabs
- Watch Page description text improvements
- Improvements in handling non-standard aspect ratio videos
- Play button animation bug fix
- IP Watermark bug fix
- Improvement to Gallery trailer video
- Gallery access code configuration bug fix
- Toolbar background color in playlists and galleries bug fix
- Pre-roll videos bug fix
- iOS playback bug fix
- Improvement to player with always visible controls, removed shadow effect
- Show remaining time and video duration bug fix
- Image on pause and end card content bug fix
- Floating videos bug fix
- Improvement to skip and rewind feature
- Video playback in Galleries bug fix
- View count in watch pages bug fix
- Hiding controls with gates bug fix
- Gallery access code editing bug fix
- Changed & defined player default colors
- Youtube video and autoplay bug fix
- Mobile video rotation bug fix
- Fallback code with Watch page bug fix
- Multiple pop-up videos on mobile bug fix
- Improvements to mobile timeline controls
- Chapter markers bug fix
- Multipe bugs with overlays fixed (timing, displayer, saving)
- Improvement to browsing content with player timeline
- Improvement to loading thumbnails for linked videos
- Thumbnail image history fix
- Improved Gallery code management related to using all codes
- Improved 4.2 HLS support
- Added HLS protection to demo video
- Overlay form submissions bug fix
- Email gate time bug fix
- Deleting overlays bug fix
- Affiliate profile errors in app bug fix
- Credit card not displaying for some users bug fix
- On-finish action bug fix
- More improved mobile video manipualation (pause/play/show controls)
- Improved performance related to portrait display videos
- Added support to pause other videos on page when one is played
- Evergreen webinar diplay controls bug fix
- Forwarded query paramters bug fix
- Thumbnail for vimeo and dropbox bug fix
- Publishing options for emails UI rework
- Various player icon alignment fixes
- Galleries are getting more features and improvements like different templates and styles
- Stripe integration for payment access to Galleries
- Reworking UI of various panels (overlays, gates, etc)
- Custom thumbnail rework
- Improved bandwidth reporting (more refined reporting for customers)
This has been one of the most requested features we’ve had over recent years and we were finally in a place early this year to begin work on it. The first release is now live to customers and the module is stable.
Our Galleries are pages dedicated to one or more videos that can be published and hosted by us or embedded into your web pages.
There are a variety of customization options to choose from with a lot more of that coming. You can also restrict access to the Gallery pages using access codes. And those codes can be configured to expire on a certain date, after a certain amount of time, or after a certain number of times the Gallery was accessed.
We are now working on a Stripe integration so you can connect your Stripe account and collect one-time and subscription payments for access to your Gallery pages!
You can get more details about this module in our article dedicated to this feature.
As you probably know, security is and always will be a big part of our feature-set. We’ve introduced an IP watermark feature which will display the IP address of the viewer. This is mainly used for those people concerned with viewers using a screen-recorder to pirate copies of their video content.
Here is where you can activate that feature and how it will look on the video:
Here’s what’s next…
The next 3 to 4 weeks will be dedicated to more bug fixing and continued work on Galleries. We’ll be rolling out our Stripe integration by the end of April and you can being accepting payments for access to your video content!