I. Conversion engine and storage concept of videos / screenshots was completely rewritten

1. For each type of video – standard (public and private) and premium – now you can specify a separate list of formats that will be created automatically based on the source. Each of these formats allows you to specify individual settings and restrictions on the duration of the video (in seconds or in %, number of parts from which the video should be formed), separate watermark image.

2. The possibility to enable saving of video source.

3. Video formats can be removed / added at any time. When removing a format, all files of this format will be removed automatically, when adding – they will be additionally created on the basis of video source or on the basis of files of other formats.

4. Screenshots are divided into 2 groups: overview and timeline. Overview screenshots are created based on video source and present the video for a user. You can set either a fixed number of overview screenshots for all videos or the interval at which they will be made (thus, videos of different duration will have a different number of overview screenshots). Timeline screenshots are configured for each video format separately and are created based on files of this format (and not the source). Timeline screenshots are intended for displaying at video key points in the player, but may also be used in other places where you need to show a camera report of the video.

5. For overview and timeline screenshots you can specify separate formats. You can specify a separate size, separate quality settings, and separate watermark image for each format of screenshots. Screenshots formats can be added / removed at any time, the required files will be created / deleted automatically.

6. The concept of a conversion queue and conversion servers was added. Now any operations with content are created as tasks (9 types of tasks). Some tasks are executed on the main server and do not require conversion servers. Tasks that include working with video content are running on conversion server(s). At installation time, one default conversion server is created, which is physically located at the same server. If necessary, you can add any number of third-party conversion servers and execute all of the most complicated operations there. This can be done at any time (it is only needed to install the necessary server libraries on conversion server and copy a small PHP script). Thus, we resolved important issue of conversion performance optimization.

7. Support for multi-server storage of video was expanded:

(a) Now you can customize the load balancing of video streaming between servers in one server group by weight coefficients as well as by country (CDN organization). So, having servers in the U.S. and Europe, you can display the same video to different users from different servers.
(b) FTP support was added when working with multi-servers.
(c) Constant background check for video files on all servers was added, thus you will know any failure in the storage system.
(d) Now you can check video streaming from each server by direct link or through download script. This is done so that when enabling / disabling antihotlink protection, you can quickly verify that all works as required.

8. Manual operation with screenshots was re-worked taking into account multi-format support and splitting screenshots to overview / timeline groups. Creating new screenshots from video was put on the background displaying the progress bar, what made it much more convenient (in the first place, you see how much is left to wait, and secondly, you can continue working with the admin panel in the same browser – it was impossible previously).

9. Import and export of videos was rewritten taking into account all new features and some serious issues found in previous versions:

(a) It is possible to skip lines that caused the error.
(b) It is possible to specify the video duration in standard format (previously it can be specified only by number of seconds).
(c) We added a feature to specify a list of users who post videos, so that you don't need to specify separately for each video, but you can specify a single list from which the user will be randomly selected for each video.
(d) The operation of import data check was put on the background displaying the progress bar. Also, major waiting problems were corrected, which customers faced in the previous versions when importing a large number of videos.
(e) It is possible now to specify video screenshots in the archive.

10. Complete logging of video conversion and post-conversion processes was added. We have tried to derive as much useful information as possible that will allow quickly finding any problems and operatively resolving them. Logs on each video are now available in videos list in the admin panel.

11. Support of 5th type of content was added – fake video.

12. Video mass edit feature was added, which allows not only mass editing some fields of the selected (or all) videos, but also allows for much more:

(a) Select video post date in the specified range - that is, randomly distribute videos to different dates.
(b) Add or remove tags, categories and models.
(c) Create or recreate files of selected video formats.
(d) Mass delete source files.

II. Website engine and performance

13. We optimized the most troubled website blocks: list_categories, list_tags, tags_cloud.

14. Protection against server overload was enhanced. Statistics was added on triggering of overload protection.

15. Collection and displaying of performance statistics for individual pages and blocks was added. This statistic is very important to optimize various website aspects. It allows you to analyze the caching strategy and adjust it, and also find the most critical factors in terms of performance. Also the feature to reset the accumulated performance statistics was added.

16. Search in templates was added in admin panel. This is very convenient if you need to change some design aspect in bulk that could potentially be in several places of your website. Now you can search for anything directly from the admin panel.

17. The concept of pagination was changed: URLs now render page numbers, and not numbers of the first element on the page as it was previously. Also, any list can be changed into AJAX pagination, while keeping the old-way links for search engines.

18. The concept of including javascripts was changed. Now they are included automatically, depending on the blocks that are inserted in page. Each block knows which javascript is required and includes it.

III. Player and its use in KVS

19. The feature to set user redirect when you click on the video area during playback was added.

20. Display of permalink was added (link to the page with this video at your website).

21. The feature was added to specify advertising string in player control bar and click URL on it.

22. Now you can specify that all links from the player are opened in the same browser window.

23. Now you can show related videos in the player.

24. Now you can protect videos from copying through capture software (you can set the interval at which customized text is shown in various parts of the player, such as IP and current user login, for example).

25. Now you can show video timeline screenshots for the current video file (if they are enabled for this video format) as you scroll.

26. In player embed mode for different advertising options now you can redirect user to a page with this video at your website.

27. In connection with the added video multi-format feature, now you can customize the list of formats for users with different access levels (as in YouTube – 360p, 480p, etc. – all this is configurable). It is very hard to explain these options quickly; they need to be thoroughly investigated. Using them you can, for example, set non-registered users to view only a shortened video version in bad quality, but selecting 720p option, they will go to sponsor’s website, or to your sign-up page or just somewhere else. At the same time registered users can watch videos in HD, using the same 720p option. This is just one of dozens of usage examples; your fantasy is unlimited here, except the fact that the maximum number of options in the list is 3.

28. In general, the feature was added to specify different player settings for different types of users. Thus, you can show ads in the player for guests only, and not show it for members, etc. KVS has 3 access levels for users: unregistered (guests), standard and premium users.

IV. Various aspects of operation and administration

29. The link to the website from admin panel was added.

30. Now you can fully customize the columns of video list in the admin panel (which now are much more) in the personal user settings. Also you can show a thumb on the video list in the admin panel.

31. The feature to view video directly from the list in the admin panel was added.

32. The feature to lock individual videos so that they cannot be edited or deleted at the website was added.

33. DVDs were introduced, which can be used to group together a list of video (scenes). DVDs are independent objects that can be shown at the website as a list, show DVD data, the lists of scenes for them, they can be rated and comments can be added for them.

34. Custom fields in the categories and category groups were added.

35. For all pages in the admin panel, a unique HTML title was made, thus history navigation became easier, and it is now easier to deal with several open windows.

36. Rating and comments for content sources and models were added.

37. Set of personal data of models was expanded for models.

V. Statistics

38. Statistics was fully transferred to a JS+cookie concept. Calculation of no-cookie traffic was added.

39. Calculation of your embed code displays on other sites was added. When you set referrers for monitoring – the number of embed codes will also be recorded for referrers.

40. The feature to reset statistics for a specified period was added.

VI. Website and website blocks

41. Login block – now you can set up protection against logins from multiple people using the same account. You can specify the number of unique IP, IP masks, browsers and countries, which are allowed for a specified period of time. If for any member at least one of these conditions is violated – there comes the ban. There may be two types of the ban: temporary – when the email is sent to user asking to confirm, and permanent ban. You can adjust the number of permitted temporary bans after which comes a permanent ban. Of course you will be able to see the information why the user was banned and how many times, you can unban him if necessary.

42. You can now calculate the time the logged in user is at the website (optional). Thus, for each user, you can see average time spent by him at the website. Also, this feature allows displaying "online" indicator for each user and displaying users that are "online" right now.

43. Several corrections were made to all comments (for videos, albums, models, DVDs, and content sources):

(a) Not only IP is logged, but also the country.
(b) The feature to customize the behavior of captcha (whether to display to everyone, to guests only, do not show to anyone).
(c) If comments are set to appear immediately at the website, they nevertheless will fall in the list to check in the admin panel (previously, in this case the comments did not fall in the list to check).

44. The feature was added to the lists of categories and tags to sort the items by average rating of videos (albums) in that category / tag, and similar by the average popularity of videos (albums).

45. The feature was added to the lists of models and content sources to sort items by the average rating and average popularity of the videos that are related to the model / content source.

46. Block of feedback was added, which allows users to write any information to service admins.

47. Now anonymous users can upload videos (only members could do it previously). Now it's possible to do some of the fields optional (remove check), for example, description, tags, categories.

48. Now you can display the global list of images from photo albums – without connection to the albums.

49. In many list blocks, the feature was added to filter the items with empty description.

50. The feature was added to display the members of the website from the country of current user.

VII. Software plugins

51. Plugin support was added that can be easily installed/removed. Plugins will be used by us to provide different external features to our customers not requiring installing new versions of software.

52. Audit plugin allows you to test different aspects of your installation and operation:

(a) Availability of required privileges on system files.
(b) Integrity of the database.
(c) Correctness of all formats of video and screenshots (for the test video it is trying to create files of all video and screenshots formats).
(d) Caching of website pages and blocks.
(e) Deep content verification – completely checks for availability and size of all video files and screenshots.