Category: United States Zone

• September 14, 2019

  United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20190913 Released

  United States Zone

  We 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 200+ new features and improvements.

  1. 360°/VR Video Media Player Now Moved to General Availability
     By popular request, the Professional Services Team migrated the 360°/VR Video Media Player, a previously custom capability, to a feature available in all instances. The new 360°/VR Video enables the viewing of 360-degree VR content and supports perspective changes via the gyroscope (when viewed on a mobile device).
     
  2. New Advanced Visual Search Capabilities
     The Visual Search capabilities introduced in the last release are now even more powerful with the following new additions that incorporate “fuzzy search”, advanced filtering options and improved performance:
     
     • Implementation of a Fuzzy Search algorithm – Established a fuzzy search that will match against a threshold of about 80%. This enables keyword searches such as engineer~ which will, for example, return engineers and engineer.
     • Ability to Restrict Searches to the Current Folder – New option within the Advanced Search operations to restrict search matches to media contained in the current folder.
     • Ability to Restrict Searches to a Given Channel – New option to restrict search for content to a particular Media Channel by using the channel: attribute. An example is channel:”MATH 235″.
     • Searching for YouTube and Vimeo Videos Included – Linked YouTube and Vimeo videos will be searched based on the available metadata fields.
     • Support for Prefix Searching – New option to search based on a keyword prefix via keyword* search operator. For instance, entering te* returns results with words starting with te including tell and test.
     • Support for Owner Filter – New option to filter searches based on the owner of the media via the owner:”{Your Name}” search option.
     • Custom Metadata Schema Search for Non-Videos – Visual Search now will search a custom Metadata Schema applied to non-video assets.
     • Speed Improvements with Large Match Sets – When searching for words that are mentioned thousands or tens-of-thousands-of-times in a given folder, the search results will now be returned within seconds instead of over a minute.

     

  3. Go Back Folder Quick Link for Faster Folder Traversal
     Within My Media’s Action Bar, a new Go Back button enables users to traverse to the parent folder of the current location.
     
  4. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Capabilities Extend to Video Sources Recorded by PC and Apple Software Capture Application
     To enhance our Visual Search capabilities, we now will perform a full OCR scan of video sources – not just the screen source – recorded by the Software Capture for PC and Apple applications.
  5. Media Player’s Slide Text Section Supports Multi-Source OCR
     Within the Media Player, recordings that have multiple sources with OCR results for the same time point – which is now possible with the newly introduced multi-source OCR – will now be shown.
  6. HTML5 Video Conferencing Now Offers Breakout Room Capabilities
     The Video Conferencing product now includes the ability to create and manage Breakout Sessions with attendees. Future releases will further refine this capability so we certainly welcome your feedback on features and improvements we can make.
     
  7. Extended API to Support Automatic Publishing Capabilities When Auto Scheduling
     To better support end-to-end automatic scheduling and publishing workflows, the RESTFul API now supports automatic publishing when performing auto-scheduling operations.
  8. Media Player Improvements When Viewed in Portrait Mode on Mobile Devices
     This release includes improvements to the Media Player when viewed on mobile devices in portrait mode. A new top-and-bottom viewing capability for multi-stream videos ensures a crisp viewing experience irrespective of the mobile device form-factor or screen orientation.
     
  9. Better Notifications for Auto-Scheduled Software Capture Applications
     To ensure that Administrators are informed on the status of auto-scheduling events when using the Software Capture applications, the Devices tab within Admin Panel now has a new status called Not Ready, as well as new notifications.

     
     The Not Ready status indicates that the Software Capture application is not in a state to record. For example, there could be a firewall issue, device conflict or perhaps the computer is logged out. Further, if an error blocks the use of a particular source, an error message will show up above the affected source. Please note: The full capabilities of this feature will be realized with the upcoming versions of the PC and Apple Software Capture applications that are forthcoming next month.

  10. Ability to Lock / Override Roles for Users within Specific Courses
      To support scenarios where a Student role (such as a “student helper” or “course note-taker”) needs Instructor-level permissions within a given course, we now provide a manual “override” of the role value supplied by the Learning Management System.
      
  11. Video Quiz Audit Log Capabilities
      To ensure the integrity of the Video Quiz-taking process, Content Creators and Administrators now have an Audit Log capability. This provides granular information on creation, editing, quiz attempts and user submissions.
      
  12. Improved Screen Reader Support for Media Player Sidebar
      This release improves the screen-reader accessibility support of the Media Player’s Sidebar. Specifically, we applied user-interface changes to ensure that screen-readers can fully narrate the options in a consistent and clear manner.
• August 7, 2019

  United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20190809 Released

  United States Zone

  We 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 160+ new features and improvements.

  1. New Visual Search Available to Upgrade Across All Instances
     All the sub-system infrastructure and related metadata upgrades to take advantage of the new Visual Search is available to organizations. Within the next 60 days, this will be turned on incrementally to all customer instances, however we will provide the opportunity for Administrators to request it be turned on within their instances. New capabilities of the new Visual Search include:
     • Ability to perform full media library searches across all videos within all metadata types including captions, optical character recognition (slides) and comments.
     • Capability to see all matches across the timeline of the video as clickable push-pins.
     • Play All Matches feature that generates a dynamic playlist of five-second snippits of all search matches.

     We will continue to refine and improve this capability over the coming months and value your feedback in improving the quality of the visual search across your production data workloads.
     

  2. Ability to Perform an OCR “Sweep” on Uploaded Media
     Content Owners uploading content can now trigger an OCR sweep of their uploaded media using the same OCR-generation algorithms that run when processing content captured via our capture tools. This ensures that uploaded content displaying significant textual content can take advantage of our Visual Search capabilities.
     
  3. Improved Zoom Connector Integration
     The Platform’s Zoom integration is being migrated from a traditional API integration into a Zoom Marketplace application. For organizations enabling this Product SKU within their Instance, this provides an easier installation process, as well as a more future-proofed integration via Zoom’s preferred integration method. To learn more, visit our Zoom integration steps available here.
     
  4. Sub-Channel Rosters Can Now Be a Subset of the Main Channel Roster
     To provide more flexible intra-course sharing of content, Media Sub-Channel rosters can now be a customizable subset of the full course roster of the main Media Channel. This enables new scenarios such as, among other things, providing specific accessibility accommodations to subsets of course participants.
     
  5. Video Quiz Creation and Administration Now Within Media Details
     Content Creators can now create and manage their video quizzes directly within the familiar Media Details view. Previously, quiz content was managed in a special section within My Account settings. Over the coming months, we will continue to introduce new quiz capabilities, as well as improved creation workflows.
     
  6. Video Quiz Creators Can Now Add Hints to Questions
     Video Quizzes now support the ability to add a Hint to a question. Users who opt to view the Hint are displayed to the instructor within the YuJa Gradebook.
     
  7. Richer Video Quiz Question and Answer Fields including LaTeX Support
     To support more sophisticated formatting options, the question and response fields now allow entries that can exceed 140 characters and be formatted via a built-in formatting toolbar. For users wishing to create richer formatting for STEM-based content, we have also integrated support for the LaTeX language in the question and response fields.
     
  8. More Intuitive Question Markers Below Timeline of Video Quiz
     The Video Quiz timeline incorporates new question markers that “fill in” as a particular question has been completed.
     
  9. Improved HTML5 Video Conference Replay
     This release, we completely overhauled the conference replay to be more robust. This should provide both a more intuitive replay experience, as well as fewer situations with video conference replay issues.
  10. More Intuitive Thumbnail Selection Option within Media Details
      Based on customer feedback, we improved the selection of custom thumbnails within the Media Details. The new selection uses an image carousel with more clear delineation of the current thumbnail being used.
      
• July 12, 2019

  United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20190714 Released

  United States Zone

  We 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 180+ new features and improvements.

  1. Improved Media Channels Interface with Drag-and-Drop Channel Reordering
     The release introduces a more compact, flexible and configurable Media Channels view. This includes a more compact video thumbnail, improved visibility of tabbed Sub-Channels, and most importantly, the ability to re-order published content with convenient drag-and-drop facility.
     
  2. Improved Media Thumbnails within Media Library View and Loading Performance
     The new, more compact Media Thumbnail has also been incorporated into My Media and EnterpriseTube. New content will also more clearly show key attributes, including duration, using a gradient overlay which uses the available space better. We also made the entire experience load faster.
     
  3. Video Quizzes Now Offers “Skip for Now” and “Disable Fast Forwarding” Options
     Over the coming months, the Product Team will be introducing over 50+ new interactive video and text quiz capabilities. This release, the Platform now offers two new quiz capabilities to disable fast-forwarding during video quiz attempts, as well as the ability to provide the answer immediately following a question submission.
     
  4. Improved Optical Character Recognition Algorithm Deployed
     As part of a longer-term project to improve the searchability and quality of auto-generated metadata, the Platform now has an improved Optical Character Recognition (OCR) algorithm. New content will automatically take advantage of the improved OCR algorithm that, among other things, will read the text off recorded slides better.
  5. Improved Auto-Generation of Table of Contents Based on Screen Transition Algorithm
     As part of the same longer-term project to improve the searchability of auto-generated metadata, the Platform now has an an improved algorithm for pre-generating the Table of Contents shown within the Media Player. This algorithm leverages screen transition data to better detect truly distinct presentation segments and, in turn, generates a more relevant Table of Contents section.
  6. Improved Iconography for Admin Panel, Analytics and My Account
     The Platform now incorporates clearer and more understandable iconography for the Left Navigation Bar within the Admin Panel, Visual Analytics and My Account.
     
  7. New SIS, LMS and SSO Auto-Merge Module
     Organizations now have new integration options with the ability to integrate the Platform directly into a Student Information System (SIS) while using both a Learning Management System (LMS) and Single Sign On (SSO) system. Both courses and users will be cross-matched among the systems for a consistent and unified media experience.
     
  8. New Podcast Syndication Capabilities
     For organizations looking to cross-syndicate channels to other forms of distribution, Media Channel owners can now generate an RSS Feed that can be enabled on a per-channel basis. This can be “consumed” by RSS syndication tools such as Apple iTunes.
     
  9. Auto-Resizing Media Details Dialog that Fits Better within an LMS and Smaller Screens
     The Media Details pane has been improved to dynamically adjust to the available size in two ways. First, the window vertical scroll adjusts to keep the Save buttons visible. Second, the horizontal space is used more efficiently with the left icon labels tucking away when there is not an ideal viewing size.
     
  10. Improved Resolution of Default Thumbnail
      For new video content, the Platform now generates and associates a higher resolution thumbnail. Previously, the thumbnail generated could appear slightly grainy when viewed within a mid-sized browser window. Please note that this is not retroactive on existing media.
  11. More Flexible External Sharing with the Share Dialog
      The Share dialog now supports the ability to input an email address to send a recipient a direct link to a video. Email recipients will get an email and if they have an associated YuJa account, they can also access it within the Shared with Me section of their account.
      
  12. Folders and Channels Can Now Be Sorted by Last Viewed
      Now that the Platform offers the ability to adjust the order of your content, the Product Team has also released a Sort By Last Viewed option to all production zones.
      
  13. Improved the Video Editor’s Launch Behavior
      Since the Video Editor opens in a new browser tab, the Platform now provides an on-screen notification that it is being launched.
      
  14. Improvements to Media Player Layout and Multi-Source Sync Performance at Faster Speeds
      The Media Player now has an improved capability to play multi-source content, in synchronicity, at faster speeds. Previously, we saw edge cases where, in certain browsers, at higher speeds (1.75x or faster), that the sources could become slightly out-of-sync.
  15. Improved Network Quality Detection and Notification of HLS Bitrate
      The Media Player now has an integrated notification of the current bitrate being streamed, as well as more reliable adherence to automatic or manual adjustments to the bitrate.
      
  16. Video Conferencing Have Ability to Change A/V Sources
      The beta HTML5-based Video Conferencing product now has the ability to switch webcam and mic sources while in a video conference meeting.
      
  17. EnterpriseTube Tools Can Be Turned On-and-Off
      Organizations now can selectively enable the EnterpriseTube Library and Events tab. The Product Team also moved the EnterpriseTube administrative tools into the Admin Panel Platform tab for a more consistent experience.
      
  18. Coming Soon – New “Visual Search” to Replace Existing “Intuitive Search” Capability
      You may have noticed an emphasis on improved metadata generation in this release. This is part of a new Visual Search capability that the Product Team is launching soon. This will eventually replace the current search capabilities (called “Intuitive Search”). This new Visual Search will enable users to:
      • Perform a deep search across all their media content and see playable push-pins where there are matches in the captions, optical character recognition, index and more.
      • Click Play All Matches to dynamically generate a unified playlist clip that shows all the matches. This enables a user to quickly find topics of interest and watch just those topic excerpts.

      Over the coming weeks, we will be launching some new media processing “horsepower” that will re-process in the background the petabytes-on-petabytes of existing media data. The end result is that all your content will be able to take advantage of this new capability.
      

• June 2, 2019

  Software Capture for PC Version 8.0.1 Released to US Zone

  United States Zone

  We have released a new Software Capture for PC version (8.0.1) that focuses on improvements to organization-wide distribution and management of the Software Capture for PC application. Please note that this release will be pushed to Canadian and European Union zones next week. To take advantage of these new capabilities, please update the installed application.

  1. New Shared Admin-Controlled Default Profile
     New capability called Shared Default Profile enables organizations to customize the default Admin-controlled profile that appears when the Software Capture application is used by any user on the computer. This provides Administrators with greater control to manage how software captures occur within their environment.
  2. Audit Tracking for Tracing Individual Recording Events
     The new version of the Software Capture for PC now provides audit logging of actions when using the Software Capture application. This will make it possible to review and trace individual recording events and actions.
     
  3. Capture Profile Now Tied to MAC Address
     Capture Profiles are now tied to the MAC Address. With many of our organizations re-imaging machines over the summer months, to ensure that Profiles persist even across system refreshes, Capture Profiles are now associated with the MAC address of the machine they were created on.
  4. Configuration File Option for Silent Mode Installation
     To provide improved installation-at-scale configurability, the Software Capture installation with silent mode can now utilize an accompanying configuration file. Currently, this configuration file supports automatic registration. In the future, new auto-configuration capabilities will be added.
  5. HTTPS Proxy Support with Auto-Detection
     Support for HTTPS proxying including auto-detection of situations where an HTTPS proxy is necessary to route traffic within the environment.
  6. Improved Firewall Traversal
     Transition of outbound port access to Port 443 to be more compatible with an organization’s existing firewall configuration. With more stringent firewalls, this capability will reduce the likelihood the Platform’s use will require a firewall change.
• May 11, 2019

  United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20190517 Released

  United States Zone

  We 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 110+ new features and improvements.

  1. Improved EnterpriseTube with Dynamic Video Masthead
     The EnterpriseTube has been upgraded with some new capabilities, as well as a visual refresh, which includes:
     • Dynamic Video Scroller – New dynamically scrolling video bar of Featured Videos which replaces the static image masthead.
     • New Branding Options – Added the ability to customize the font color in the Navigation Bar of the EnterpriseTube. We will be adding additional color customization options in the next release.
     • More Modern Iconography – As part of a visual refresh of many of the icon bars in the upcoming release, we added new icons for the Home, Library and Events tab.

     

  2. Improved Ability to Edit Existing Device Schedules
     We made the previously introduced Device Scheduling Editing capability more robust and have re-released it. The previous version of this had the possibility of losing a recurring schedule because it performed a full deletion and re-addition; this version truly edits the existing schedule.
  3. New Video Monitor for Exam Proctoring SKU Available
     We’re introducing a new SKU called Video Monitor for Exam Proctoring. Among other things, this workflow enables users to initiate controlled recordings during active test taking, accept configurable Terms and Conditions, capture appropriate imagery of government-issued photo ID, and record multi-sources during online test activity.
     
  4. Improved AI-based Whitespace Generation within the Transcript for Auto-Captioned Content
     We’ve incorporated a sub-module on top of our existing AI-based Captioning capabilities. This aims to provide more effective whitespace within both the viewable and downloadable Transcript. Please note this is not retroactive and will only affect newly auto-captioned content.
     
  5. Better Security Timeout Notification Inside LMS Windows
     Within an LMS, if the Platform’s security timeout occurs, a clearer UI notification shows up for the user. Previously it showed the Login screen which was confusing to users.
     
  6. New Custom Full URL Branding SKU
     We have standardized the Full URL Branding capability as an available Product SKU. This SKU enables organizations to deploy a fully custom URL for their platform instance. Previously, Professional Services offered this as a custom service.
  7. New Collapsible Media Sidebar within My Media
     To better accommodate narrower LMS windows, such as Canvas, we have introduced a feature for users to collapse the Media Side Bar into a narrower sidebar.
     
  8. Login Activity Available on Admin Panel’s Overview Feed
     Mirroring the RESTFul API for Login data, we incorporated this same capability in the Overview feed.
  9. Improved Device Management APIs
     Our RESTFul API SKU now includes improved capabilities to manage Devices including retrieving active schedules, establishing and deleting schedules, and making updates to specific device parameters.
  10. Ability to Set Automatic Play Flag into Direct Link and Embed Codes
      The Media Player now supports the ability to auto-play based on settings the following flag on or off: autostart=1
• April 16, 2019

  United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20190419 Released

  United States Zone

  We 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 120+ new features and improvements.

  1. Improved In-Depth User-Level Analytics Within an Integrated View
     We introduced an improved user-level analytics view that shows Platform accesses, total play length, and usage summary for each video. The content can also be downloaded as a spreadsheet within this view.
     
  2. New Video Player Overlay Style Mirroring Popular Entertainment Video Streaming Platforms
     In addition to the Fixed Play Bar style, we are introducing a new Overlay Play Bar style that is activated on hover and displays the Play Bar controls against a translucent background. This mirrors popular video entertainment streaming platforms such as YouTube and Netflix that your users are familiar with.
     
  3. Improved Fault Tolerance of Live Stream Player in Intermittent Bandwidth Scenarios
     The Live Stream Player and related infrastructure will now perform better in low-bandwidth and intermittent-bandwidth scenarios. This includes auto-recovery logic if the connection degrades and then subsequently recovers.
  4. Storage Analytics View Loads Data Points More Quickly
     The Storage sub-panel within the Analytics’s Overview now loads 3x faster with an optimized algorithm for dataset retrieval.
     
  5. Media Ingested by Watch Point Now Performs HLS Transcoding
     The same HLS transcoding capabilities performed for all other media ingestion workflows is now also available for media uploaded via Watch Point.
  6. Multi-Level Captioning Workflows Now Integrated with Media Choosers
     In a previous release we introduced the ability to have multiple caption providers with different permission groups. This capability’s breadth has now been extended to the Media Chooser plugins.
     
  7. Multi-Select Roster Deletion Clean-up Workflow
     We improved a previously cumbersome workflow of bulk deletion of users with a new capability to bulk-select users, as well as bulk transfer those user’s assets to an Administrator’s account.
     
  8. Improved Organization of Accessibility Tab’s Status of External Captioning Table
     The external captioning table is now better organized chronologically with more clear column headers.
  9. Improved 21st Century Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) Support with Enhanced Customization of Closed Captioning Bar
     We now provide Administrators with the ability to customize the visual aesthetics of the Caption Bar including color, font size, font opacity, and background opacity. As well, we provide viewers the ability to adjust this, based on their personal preferences, right inside the Media Player.
     
  10. Ability to Add Closed Captioning Files to Videos Via Drag-and-Drop
      Within the Media Details panel, we now support the ability to ingest external caption files via drag-and-drop.
  11. New In-Video Commenting Style
      To better accommodate smaller screen-sizes – such as when a video is embedded directly into an LMS Assignment – we refined the Create Comment dialog into a more modern and compact widget that sits alongside the appropriate location on the video timeline.
      
  12. Beta Support for Video Conferencing on iOS and Android Devices
      Our beta Video Conferencing application now supports WebRTC-enabled mobile devices for both iOS and Android devices.
  13. Additional API-Level Support including Rate Limiting, Branding, and Replace Video
      Customers using our APIs can request the new capability set which includes additional video management facilities, as well as security improvements such as rate limiting.
  14. Delcom Button Color Customization
      Organizations using the Software Capture’s Delcom button integration can now customize which status colors should be used for each event.
  15. Infrastructural Aspects of End-User Audit Tracking
      We also wanted to provide a preview of some infrastructural aspect that are going into production throughout the quarter. This will give administrators a Birdseye View of the activities going on within their Platform instance. The core infrastructure for customer-visible audit tracking is now in place and we are now in the process of instrumenting all applications and devices accordingly. Below is an early preview of the functionality for a Software Capture recording.
      
• March 22, 2019

  United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20190322 Released

  United States Zone

  We 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 120+ new features and improvements.

  1. Video Editor Supports Telestrations Diagraming Overlays
     Inspired by Sunday football, we incorporated freehand telestrations capabilities into the video editor. This features multi-color pen selection with the ability to annotate freehand on top of a video source. As we observe how users take advantage of this capability, we’ll continue to incorporate further capabilities.
     
  2. Media Chooser for Moodle Extension Now Supports Video Quiz Insertion and Multi-Column Gradebook Integration
     Similar to the Canvas, Blackboard and D2L Brightspace implementations introduced in the last few releases, we have rolled out Moodle 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.
     
  3. Video Quiz Insertion Improvements
     To ensure a video quiz can be used for multiple assessments simultaneously or sequentially – and at the same time export as multi-column gradebook for each course – we enhanced our native API integration for each of LMS. We also incorporated about a dozen smaller fixes and improvements including an improved overlay mode layout when viewing four-or-more response options.
  4. Improved 4k and 2k Video Support Processing Support
     As more organizations generate ultra resolution quality, we have added improved capabilities to manually adjust between various resolution types. Further, our transcoding and transmuxing sub-system will now more quickly process 2k and 4k content.
     
  5. Video Conferencing Improvements in Intermittent Bandwidth Scenarios
     We released and improved fault tolerance in intermittent bandwidth scenarios, as well as recovery mechanisms. We’re aiming to release Android (tablet and phone) browser support for video conferencing in the next major update.
  6. Video Quiz Overlay Style Now the Default for Tighter LMS Locations
     We now show the overlay style by default within the LMS, as well as incorporated a View External button. This button enables quiz-taker to view the video quiz in an external browser with the video and questions shown in a side-by-side layout. This serves the ability to show video quizzes in more confined spaces, while still providing the end-user with a variety of viewing options.
     
• March 9, 2019

  United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20190308 Released

  United States Zone

  We 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.

  1. 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.
     

• February 23, 2019

  United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20190222 Released

  United States Zone

  We 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 80+ new features and improvements.

  1. Media Chooser for D2L Brightspace Extension Now Supports Video Quiz Insertion and Multi-Column Gradebook Integration
     Similar to the Canvas and Blackboard implementations introduced in the last few releases, we have rolled out D2L Brightspace 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, Blackboard, and D2L Brightspace are released, Moodle is next.
     

     

  2. Improved Viewability of Embedded Quizzes
     Our new LMS-specific quiz integration released this past quarter with multi-column gradebook integration has created new use-cases around embedding quizzes. To improve the viewability in “tight spaces”, we’ve created a special overlay mode in instances where the side-by-side layout isn’t possible. Note: To take advantage of this new style, the quiz will need to be re-embedded within the LMS.

     

  3. Improved Performance of Visual Analytics’ Bandwidth Summary and Top Videos
     Improved the query performance for loading the Top Video and Bandwidth Summary analytics data.

  4. New Fast “Initial Thumbnailing” Algorithm Implemented
     We’ve improved the algorithm used to generate thumbnails to generate it very quickly after the video file has uploaded to the Platform. This is part of a new smarter heuristic project we are working on during the month of March to improve job queueing behavior and sub-task execution.

     

  5. Multi-Caption Account Support for Organizations
     To provide support for organizations using multiple caption accounts – across various departments and hierarchies – organizations can setup integrations with multiple, simultaneous caption vendors and/or accounts.

     

  6. New In-Progress Recording Indicators within Media Library
     As a precursor to end user-facing audit logging project for non-admin users (also a project this quarter), we are introducing a Processing icon indicator that appears for in-progress (and un-uploaded) captures. Once our end user-facing audit trails are finished, a user will be able to accurately and fully trace the current status of any uploaded or recorded media item. These capabilities will be released in phases through the month of March and April.

     

  7. Video Editor Now Has Ability to Set the Primary Stream
     For multi-stream recordings, Content Owners can now select which source is the primary source (the one that initially appears as the larger source).

     

  8. Audio-Only Files Now Generate Audio Waveforms
     The Video Editor has extended support for the audio waveforms to include audio-only media.

     

• February 10, 2019

  Update for YuJa Software Station for Apple Available to US, CAN and EU Zones

  Canada Zone European Union Zone United States Zone

  We have successfully pushed an updated YuJa Software Station for PC to all physical zones residing in the United States, Canada, and the European Union.

  1. General Stability Fixes and Minor Improvements
     We also added about a dozen fixes to various stability improvements and edge cases. Highlights of the fixes are noted below:

     
     #162584536 – Apple Capture – Resolved edge-case in media recoverability where shutting down ungracefully could leave a permanently processing live stream and a completed one.
     #162665441 – Apple Capture – Resolved rare issue where a scheduled live stream could crash the application.
     #163203646 – Apple Capture – Resolved issue where a video stream could freeze and become offset of the other when the YuJa app icon is clicked on.
     #163099066 – Apple Capture – Resolved rare issue where the software capture application could crash when an error alert dialog was intended to indicate an abnormal issue.
     #163525685 – Apple Capture – Improved client-side media recoverability when an abnormal issue causes a media fragment.
     #163598316 – Apple Capture – Improved partial screen recording error handling by preventing the capture area from being too small to practically record. Previously this could result in a crash of the screen capture module.
     #163638006 – Apple Capture – Improved error logging in situations which result in a crash state.