-
December 13, 2019
YuJa Mobile for Android 2.0.1 Published to Google Play Store
AnalyticsWe have successfully published a new version of the YuJa Mobile for Android application to the Google Play Store.
- Refreshed User Interface and Navigation Experience
The application introduces a refreshed UI and menu navigation experience. This includes a new Navigation Bar that provides quick access buttons for Channels, Recording, Uploads, and Downloads.
- Ability for Users to Download Media for Offline Viewing
Approved content can now be downloaded within the mobile application for offline viewing (without WiFi or network connectivity).
- Variable Speed Playback Capabilities
New variable speed playback options are also available within the Media Player for both video and audio content.
- New Playback and Caption Bar Capabilities
Added new playback options including auto-replay, play-in-background and full-screen playback. Also added capability to modify the caption style and size.
- New Mobile Capture Framerate and Resolution Settings
Improved the user interface of the mobile capture workflow, as well as added the ability to record captures at different resolutions and framerates.
- Improved Media Playback Experience Across Devices
Introduced a more modern mobile playback experience with improved stability across both older and newer devices.
- New Instrumentation to Receive Reports of Crashes and Abnormal Situations
We now have integrated application instrumentation to receive crash reports and abnormal terminations. Along with this, an improved process to resolve issues more quickly by acting on the crash data has been defined.
- Refreshed User Interface and Navigation Experience
-
October 9, 2019
United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20191011 Released
Analytics General Platform HTML5 Video Conferencing Media Management Media Player United States Zones Video QuizzesWe have successfully pushed an update to all instances residing in the United States. Please note that this release will be pushed to Canadian and European Union zones next week. This release includes over 175+ new features and improvements.
- IMS Caliper Analytics 1.1 Certification Achieved
Our big data analytics achieved a major milestone by being awarded IMS Caliper Analytics 1.1 certification. Interested organizations can take advantage of this optional SKU that is available to all Enterprise Video Platform customers. A little more on IMS Caliper: “Caliper Analytics enables institutions to collect learning data from digital resources to better understand and visualize learning activity and product usage data, and present this information to students, instructors, and advisors in meaningful ways to help inform: student recruitment and retention plans, program, curriculum, and course design, student intervention measures”
- New Ad Astra Integration for Integration with Enterprise Scheduling Systems
A new Ad Astra enterprise scheduling integration is now available to all organizations. Room calendars can by synch-ed and then mapped to specific Software Capture and Hardware Hub capture resources. This enables fully automated scheduling, recording, publishing and distribution.
- New Reflective Pause Question Type for Video Quizzes
A new question type called Reflective Pause is now available within Video Quizzes. This question type is designed to re-focus the viewer on the video content through the use of a rhetorical and thought-provoking question. This tool is a new capability to ensure that all video content – including compliance training, security compliance, etc. – receives the focus and attention of the viewer.
- Improved Device Source Preview Window
Improved the view of the Source Preview shown within the Devices tab of Admin Panel. Also, clarified case where there is no active signal to show a status of No Active Signal instead of an error state.
- Deprecated Video Classroom Name within Platform
As we have transitioned fully to an HTML5-based Video Conferencing tool, the old tool’s name (Video Classrooms) has – for the most part – been transitioned-out from the Platform. - New Overlay Style Captioning for Single Stream Videos
A new overlay caption style, similar to Netflix and YouTube, provides viewers with the opportunity to use the full window for viewing the video instead of allocating a significant portion to a fixed caption bar. The same 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA)-compliant user-selectable opacity, color and font settings are also available with this new capability. - Improved Performance for Folders with Pictures
The load-time performance for folders containing a large number of pictures is now considerably better (10x faster).
- Performance Improvements for Change Owner Capability
Improved performance within the Change Owner dialog for institutions with over 25,000 user entries. - Simplified Process to Request Data Backups
Organizations wishing to request a copy of their organization’s Storage may initiate the request directly within the Admin Panel’s Storage Quota tab. Please note that Professional Services may apply to the fulfillments of these requests. - Media Chooser LMS Extension Offers More Clear Action and UI
The available actions within the LMS Media Chooser are now shown more clearly within the Top Bar. This is aimed at improving the user experience for novice users who may be using the video tools to embed their first video or create their first Video Assignment.
- Ability to Watch a Video in Chrome within an Inactive Tab
Users watching video content within one Chrome tab, while actively navigating within another tab, can now continue to listen to the YuJa-hosted video. Previously, due to a recent Chrome update, the video would automatically pause when the Chrome tab became inactive.
- Improved Test Proctoring Workflow for Courses with Multiple Instructors
Courses with multiple instructors co-teaching can now designate where proctored test recordings should go.
- IMS Caliper Analytics 1.1 Certification Achieved
-
March 9, 2019
United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20190308 Released
Analytics General Platform HTML5 Video Editor United States Zones Video Editor Video QuizzesWe have successfully pushed an update to all physical zones residing in the United States. Please note that this release will be pushed to Canadian and European Union zones next week. This release includes over 20+ improvements.
- Performance Enhancements and Minor Improvements
We also added about a dozen fixes to various stability improvements and edge cases. Highlights of the fixes are noted below:
#163670023 – Visual Analytics – Set of small consistency fixes across the Content tab focused on correcting data aggregation issues, consistency between tabs, and calculation method for a number of fields. Adjustments made in this ticket will affect calculations going forward.
#163768811 – Visual Analytics – Improved performance of Contents tab where creation visualizations necessitated calculating large volumes of playback position data.
#164117963 – Mobile Apps – Improved channel load performance in situations where channels have a large number of videos published to it.
#164188942 – Admin Panel – Significant performance improvements to Accessibility Dashboard where loading large volumes of internal and external caption requests. Also made the individual caption request lists to be fetched asynchronously.
#164342266 – Infrastructure – Improved, cloud-hosted media recoverability algorithm to cover some recovery scenarios not previously addressed.
#161461360 – Video Editor – Made zoom-level warning message less obtrusive.
#164224624 – Video Editor – Resolved issue where the Play button needed to be pressed twice when commencing a video quiz.
- Performance Enhancements and Minor Improvements
-
February 9, 2019
United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20190208 Released
Analytics General Platform HTML5 Video Conferencing Media Management United States Zones Update Video Editor Video QuizzesWe have successfully pushed an update to all physical zones residing in the United States. Please note that this release will be pushed to Canadian and European Union zones next week. This release includes over 60+ new features and improvements.
-
Media Chooser for Blackboard Extension Now Supports Video Quiz Insertion and Multi-Column Gradebook Integration
Similar to the Canvas implementation introduced in the last release, we have rolled out Blackboard support for Video Quiz insertion within the Media Chooser. This includes deeper native LMS-specific integration for Video Quizzes that expand upon the more limited LTI-based Gradebook integration (which we still support). The result is that users can create video quizzes, insert them virtually anywhere in the LMS and better track the results with multi-column gradebook integration. We’ve implemented it for all LMS’s, however we are releasing it in stages. Now that Canvas and Blackboard have been released, D2L Brightspace and Moodle are next.
Note: Depending on your Blackboard Building Block plugin version, you may need to request an update from your assigned Customer Success Manager. -
Video Editor Supports Auto-Save to Prevent Accidental Loss Due to Refreshing the Page or Navigating Away
As users are performing video edits, the Platform now tracks draft edits in situations of user or web-browser error such as accidentally navigating away from the editor. This feature stemmed from user feedback interviews which indicated that, though rare, losing an edit is a very frustrating and time-consuming experience. Now – we hope! – it should be a thing of the past. -
Video Editor Now Offers Advanced Capabilities to Increase Audio Levels
Content where, perhaps, the audio track is too soft can now be improved with advanced support for audio amplification and re-encoding. Users can choose to amplify audio by 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x, 2x and 4x for any recording or uploaded media. -
Video Editor Supports Additional Video Insertion Options
Content owners now have more flexible options to perform video insertions, video overrides, as well as bumper and trailer video insertions. This extends upon the, more limited, Current Time (Override) mode. -
More Modern Chat Capabilities within Video Conferencing Application
Mirroring the modern look-and-feel of our Live Stream chat capabilities, we’ve introduced a better chat that includes Platform avatars, a more responsive look-and-feel, as well as support for sending URLs. -
Improved Ability to Customize Thumbnail Displayed for Audio Files
Custom thumbnails for audio-only files are now used within the in-player experience while listening to the audio file. Previously, the thumbnail only showed up in the Media Library view. -
Visual Analytics and Courses & Groups Sections Now Show Sub-Channel Relationships and Hierarchies Within Drop-Downs
Drop-downs and filter fields within the Visual Analytics and Courses & Groups now provide a better visual indication of Sub-Channels contained within parent Media Channels.
-
-
December 20, 2018
United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20181221 Released
Analytics General Platform HTML5 Video Conferencing HTML5 Video Editor Media Management United States Zones Video EditorWe have successfully pushed an update to all physical zones residing in the United States. Please note that this release will be pushed to Canadian zones next week. This release includes over 50+ new features and improvements.
-
Video Editor Caption Edits Can Now Automatically Update Indices and Transcripts – We added selection toggles to the Video Editor’s Save dialog that enable users to select if they would like their caption edits to also update the index and transcript (both PDF and text transcripts). In the next release, we will be adding some further improvements to provide both a Replace Existing option to complement the Save as New Video option.
- Improved Robustness of Video Analytics Percentage Watched Detection – We resolved an internal tracking issue that could prevent the Percentage Watched value from being computed properly.
- Improved Moodle Media Chooser Integration with Some Moodle LMS Versions – Implemented a new YuJa Media Chooser for Moodle plugin which invokes an account creation only in the specific case when the YuJa button is pressed. Please email your Customer Success Manager to receive the latest plugin.
-
Left Navigation Bar Expansion Behavior Makes It Easier to Perform Drag-and-Drop Operations – To make it easier to navigate while performing drag-and-drop operations, opening a folder via the tree-like structure does not trigger a navigation action.
-
Improved Left Navigation Bar Keyboard Accessibility and Visual Cues – Improved both keyboard-only navigation of the Left Navigation Bar and added a visual key to indicate the highlighted folder. Also added folder expansion with the Spacebar key.
-
Improved Capabilities to Establish a System-Wide Publishing Delay within the Admin Panel – Previously establishing a system-wide publishing delay required Professional Services to deploy an on-demand module. Now organizations can use self-service options within the Admin panel to establish a System-Wide Publishing Delay and Content Owners can override this with Publish Now and Skip Publish options.
-
Video Editor Timeline Now Shows Blur Regions and Image Insertion Visual Indicators – We improved the timeline to show visual indicators for elements added as video overlays.
- Faster Analytics Visualization for Media Objects with 250,000+ Data Points – We completely re-tooled the visualization generation algorithm used within the Visual Analytics’ Contents tab to more quickly process the analytics visualizations. This will improve the overall speed and ensure that analytics load properly for heavily used media.
- Blackboard Media Chooser Extension Now Compatible with Blackboard Build Contents section – The latest Media Chooser extension can be used to insert media into Blackboard’s Build Contents section. We encourage our Blackboard customers to request the newest Media Chooser for Blackboard from their Customer Success Manager.
- New Blackboard Integration Supports Blackboard Web Link Module Including Ability to Add Homepage Web Link – To provide improved support to our Blackboard customers, we have released a new integration capability that allows organizations to add a My Media link directly onto non-course level pages via the Blackboard Web Link Module.
We also used this release to improve about 35+ other smaller items. In the next release, we are deepening our Device Auto-Scheduling capabilities around delegating schedule opt-out, support for audio-only editing capabilities, improved zoom-in and zoom-out within the video editor, video conferencing improvements, the ability to insert video quizzes using your respective LMS’s Media Chooser extension, and much more.
-
-
September 14, 2018
United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20180914 Released
Analytics HTML5 Player HTML5 Video Conferencing HTML5 Video Editor Live Streaming United States Zones UpdateWe have successfully pushed an update to all physical zones residing in the United States. Please note that this release will be pushed to Canadian zones next week. This release includes over 60+ new features and improvements.
- Link Documents to Live Stream Events – Added both the ability to view documents side-by-side within the Live Stream Player, as well as implemented the ability to pre-insert documents into a scheduled live stream event (or dynamically while the event is in-progress).
- Clear Video Analytics for Particular Videos – To better support a content owner’s ability to re-use content and derive clear insights, we now offer the option to clear analytics data on a per-video basis.
- Upload Custom Thumbnails of Any Digital Asset – Extended our custom video thumbnailing support to include audio, YouTube, Vimeo, hyperlinks and documents. This enables content creators to provide thumbnails that better reflect the content of the underlying digital asset.
- Branding Capabilities of the Platform’s Main Navigation Bar – Organization administrators can now customize the Platform even further with the ability to change the colors of the top-bar and button links.
- New Moodle Roster Sync Plugin – For our customers that use the Moodle LMS, we have implemented a native LMS plugin that complements our IMS-certified LTI integration to provider course roster sync-ing. To learn more, view the help documentation.
- Increased Maximum Sub-Channel Support to 20 – The Sub-Channel capability within the Media Channels has been increased from up-to-6 sub-channels to up-to-20 sub-channels.
- Improvements to Video Ingestion of Rare Media Encodings – Added additional browser support for playback of HLS streams where the HLS chunk length is not aligned.
- Performance Improvements for Organizations with 1,000+ Active Courses and Groups – Optimized the speed and performance of a number of search and input fields to better handle situations with hundreds or thousands of active courses.
- Ported Over Text Overlay and Video Insertion Capability to Video Editor – Completed the feature migration from the legacy editor to the HTML5 editor. This release, we ported over the capability to insert text overlays and perform video insertions via the HTML5 video editor.
- New HTML5 Video Conferencing Capabilities – Addition of a “Laser Pointer” tool to the whiteboard and improvements to acoustic echo cancellation.
Next release, we’ll be introducing the ability to: 1) upload organization-wide XML formatted device schedules; 2) customize the display-name shown for the role name; 3) add new video editor capabilities to blur regions for a specific time-period, use the full capture editing toolset on uploaded videos, remove a video stream and more.
- Link Documents to Live Stream Events – Added both the ability to view documents side-by-side within the Live Stream Player, as well as implemented the ability to pre-insert documents into a scheduled live stream event (or dynamically while the event is in-progress).
-
June 16, 2018
United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20180615 Released
Analytics General Platform HTML5 Video Conferencing HTML5 Video Editor Media Management United States Zones UpdateWe have successfully pushed an update to all physical zones residing in the United States. Please note that this release will be pushed to Canadian zones next week. This release includes over 80+ new features and improvements including:
- Improved Compliance with SCORM 1.2 Standard – Using video content as a SCORM object is now significantly easier with the ability to download a self-contained SCORM archive with pre-generated manifest. The SCORM object automatically updates a “video view completion” score based on the percentage of the video that was viewed. This can be directly integrated with SCORM-compliant LMS Gradebooks.
- Dynamic UI Update Improvements – We improved our in-browser cache optimization to enable faster updates of on-screen UI element updates within narrow bandwidth and processing constraints. The end result will be snappier and more dynamic on-screen UI updates.
- Full Role-Based Start Page Customization – Organizations can now customize the Start Page for each of the roles within the system. This is a pre-cursor to a unification we have planned between Media Channels and Media Library that will improve the viewing experience within the Media Library.
- Additional Performance Improvements to Media Library for Large Entity Sets – We rolled out the second set of improvements to the front-end performance when loading ultra-large sets of User Collections and Folder objects.
- Minor Accessibility Improvements to HTML5 Video Editor – In addition to some minor UI improvements, we improved the tooltip accessibility, resolved some issues related to captioning long videos, and resolved some “z-order” issues with certain front-end elements.
- UI, Stability, and Functionality Improvements to HTML5 Video Conferencing – We implemented a more versatile front-end model that enables us to create better user experiences. We eliminates some sources of premature disconnections, improved whiteboard usability, added mute/suppress buttons for video and audio sources, and improved mic and webcam detection. In the next release we expect to add WebRTC-based screensharing (which didn’t make this release’s cut-off) and more!
- Maintenance Fixes – We resolved a number of issues including:
- Media Extension Mac Download Issue – Resolved issue which prevented the Mac Software Capture from being downloaded from the Media Extension in certain cases.
- Browser Detection for Analytics Reporting Issue – Resolved an issue where the browser type was not properly being detected for the Analytics reporting.
- Embedded Live Stream Player Branding Issue – In a number of cases, the organization’s branding was not properly used within the embedded Live Stream Player.
- Downloading of Hub-Recorded Podcasts – Resolved an issue where, in some cases, captures recorded with the Hardware Hub could not be downloaded as a single-stream podcast.
- Channel View Auto-Update Issue – Resolved an issue where our in-browser caching resulted in a failure to dynamically update the page seamlessly, particularly within content published to a given Media Channel.
The next release we expect to add some new functionality and UI improvements to the Zoom Connector, the ability to lock specific user account roles (a heavily requested capability), ability to pre-schedule email-based delivery of analytics reports, new HTML Video Conferencing capabilities, admin-only Act as User capabilities, and more.
- Improved Compliance with SCORM 1.2 Standard – Using video content as a SCORM object is now significantly easier with the ability to download a self-contained SCORM archive with pre-generated manifest. The SCORM object automatically updates a “video view completion” score based on the percentage of the video that was viewed. This can be directly integrated with SCORM-compliant LMS Gradebooks.
-
March 3, 2018
United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20180302 Released
Analytics General Platform HTML5 Player iOS App Live Streaming Media Management United States Zones Video Editor Video QuizzesWe have successfully pushed an update to all physical zones residing in the United States. Please note that this release will be pushed to Canadian zones next week. This release includes 150 new features and improvements including:
- Easier to Use Main View with Action Buttons for Common Workflows – The Platform user interface has been updated to include the most common tasks as Action Buttons in the top-bar. Users can access media channels, create captures, and manage & uploads media all from the main screen.
- Refined Media Player with Better Search Visualization and Small-Screen Capabilities – We’re introducing a new Media Player which offers even easier to navigate search-inside-video capabilities, improved embeddability in smaller windows, and better support for mobile devices and tablet screen sizes. We also added some new capabilities including topic highlighting in the auto-scrolling sidebar, better search-inside-video sidebar, and a simplified Play-Bar.
- Live, Multi-Source Room Preview Snapshots of Active Captures – The latest Software Capture applications for both PC and Apple, as well as the latest Hardware Hub firmware now supports multi-source preview within the Admin Panel’s Devices tab. Administrators can now keep tabs on active room recordings with periodically updating snapshots of actively recording rooms and lecture halls.
- New Quiz Question Types and Refined Quiz-Taking Interface – The Video Quiz suite now has new question types including Multi-Select, Short Answer and True-False options.
- Auto-Captioning Support Now Available in Six New Languages – As part of the more powerful Artificial Intelligence-based auto-captioning engine we integrated in the last release, we are now introducing the ability to auto-caption in additional languages including French, Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
- Improved Support for Legacy Browsers – Our focus was improving support for the deprecated since IE Edge – but still used – Internet Explorer browser.
- Improved Media Library Performance – We optimized a number of heavily used search and general sub-routines to make them much faster. Our performance tests in various physical zones showed improvements in overall Media Library load time and snappier navigation.
- Additional Infrastructural Work for HTML5 Video Conferencing – While still in an alpha state, we have continued to bolster the infrastructure, as well as, migrate over functionality from our Flash-based Video Classroom. We expect this suite to enter Beta in the March / early-April timeframe.
-
February 13, 2018
United States Zone – Performance Optimization for Analytics
Analytics Fixed United States Zones UpdateWe have successfully pushed 5 optimizations focused on improving the dynamic generation and loading of the new Overview tab for Visual Analytics. The result of this optimization is that on our customer’s production data workloads, there is a 5x improvement in load speed compared to the version we deployed on Friday.
-
February 10, 2018
United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20180209 Released
Analytics General Platform Media Management United States Zones UpdateWe have successfully pushed an update to all physical zones residing in the United States. Please note that this release will be pushed to Canadian zones next week. This release includes 75 new features and improvements including:
- New Visual Analytics Overview tab – After extensive research and feedback about what Administrators wished to see in the Analytics Overview, we’ve incorporated more relevant statistics and a more attractive look-and-feel.
- Improved Media Preview for Non-Video Digital Assets – Organizations storing digital assets such as Word, Excel, PowerPoints, PDFs, images, etc. now have the ability to click on the thumbnail to view an inline preview of the file.
- Refreshed Visual Analytics UI and Color Scheme – Alongside the new Visual Analytics Overview tab, we also refreshed the other Usage & Analytics suite, as well as resolved a dozen-or-so related issues. Among other things, this includes improves aesthetics of the Contents tab and provides easier-to-read graphs.
- Performance Improvements to LMS Media Extensions – Re-factored the algorithms that the Media Choosers use to make them even faster when there are thousands of video objects in the Internal Library for a given user. While most users won’t notice the improvements, those power-users with thousands of video assets will certainly take note.
- Better Quota Management Capabilities including Self-Service Preview – Ability to send “approaching assigned quota” and “quota exceeded” emails when users are approaching or have exceeded their admin-allotted quota. We also now provide a way within the user’s My Account settings to view their current data usage.
- New Social Syndication Tab within Media Details – Improved workflow for Content Owners to cross-syndicate media to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube with API-level integrations with each Platform.
- Minor Improvements to Media Player – We added some minor improvements to the Media Player including in the scenario when the Thumbnail Bar is hidden. In this situation, when hovering over the scrubber bar, it shows the thumbnail for that region of the video.