KVS v3.3.0
Player fullscreen mode was reworked and usability was improved:
- Player scaling in fullscreen mode was fixed and now does not depend on source video or player window sizes. This also let us fix the issue when videos were not displayed correctly if the user enabled the fullscreen mode before the video’s metadata was downloaded.
- In window mode, the player now can be dynamically scaled to any size without player re-initialization.
- Control bar behavior can now be customized so that the control bar fades out.
- If control bar fading out is enabled, the bar will show when the video is paused.
- Keyboard controls were added: space pauses the video while up and down adjust the sound volume.
- Double-clicking the player switches between fullscreen and regular modes.
- In window mode, the player now can be dynamically scaled to any size without player re-initialization.
- Control bar behavior can now be customized so that the control bar fades out.
- If control bar fading out is enabled, the bar will show when the video is paused.
- Keyboard controls were added: space pauses the video while up and down adjust the sound volume.
- Double-clicking the player switches between fullscreen and regular modes.
In player settings, you can now set the default video slot. Previously, if no selected slot was saved in the user’s local storage, the player selected the first available slot as the primary one. Now this behavior can be customized.
In player settings, you can now disable remembering the selected slot in local storage. By default, the player remembers the slot the user selects (e.g. HD), and when serving the next video to the user, the player will select the default slot (provided the video has it). Now you can disable this behavior.
New ad type added, shown in the middle of the player window when the user moves the mouse over the player. The ad stays for as long as the mouse stays over the player.
You can now show custom logos in any corner of the player. Previously, you could only specify the offset from top left hand corner.
In the player’s JS API, you can now intercept clicks on control bar ads and use custom JS logic.
The player now has 7 slots.
Integration with videoswiper.com was added, letting you add videos to KVS from this site’s massive database via either embed codes or downloading videos to your server.
Conversion engine behavior when copying files was optimized. Now you can set up files to be copied to storage servers directly from conversion servers. This decreases the hard drive load of your primary server and speeds up content processing. By default this is disabled. To enable this feature, update the remote_cron.php script on the conversion server and tick the checkbox in conversion server settings in the administration panel.
Re-creation of video overview screenshots if the video has source files was added.
Checkboxes to launch overview screenshots and video formats re-creation were added to video edit page in the administration panel. These checkboxes are available only when a video has source file. Now, when you replace a source file, you can re-create all video-related files fast and easy.
Background task log was added, logging all background tasks after they are completed or deleted. Background content creation tasks are now closer tied to the content. For instance, when a background video or photo album creation task is deleted, the content object status is set to error instead of the object getting stuck in pending like it used to happen. The administration panel now lets you re-launch processing for content with error status, manually as well as through mass operation. Before, when background content creation tasks were deleted, they could not be re-launched and content was to be deleted and re-uploaded.
Working directories on conversion servers can now be cleaned when background tasks already copied to conversion servers are deleted. Before, conversion servers would sometimes freeze when there were too many deleted tasks assigned to it.
Database overload protection logic is now conceptually different. This lets you decrease the database load a lot, which is particularly important for high load sites. This new feature requires separate configuration. If you have database load issues, contact the support department for assistance.
When content is deleted, its view page cache is now purged. Before, the content page would stay cached until the cache was invalidated.
Old issue with new comments not showing on site because of page caching is now fixed.
Localization data is now supported in import, export, and feeds.
In localization language settings, you can now specify the localization area: titles and descriptions, or titles only. This defines whether description fields are shown during translation, and also defines the way translated / not translated object filters work in the administration panel.
In video and photo album import and export, you can now select the content provider URL field.
In video and photo album export, you can now export row with data field names.
Premium videos are now supported in import feeds.
In CSV export feeds, you can now specify static values for any field using static:. When such a column is specified, the feed will show for each row.
In export feeds, you can now send not just your preferred embed player width, but also the height. Thus you can now generate embed codes with fixed sizes, all sizes or just one (height or width).
In Statistics, you can now distribute permissions between administrators in a more advanced and detailed way.
You can now remove search queries from search statistics.
In Personal Settings, you can now show or hide the video player on the video edit page in the administration panel.
Keyboard shortcuts for the Save (Ctrl+S) and Save and close (Ctrl+Shift+S) buttons was added. In Personal Settings, you can customize the button order, which lets you set Save and edit next as the first available action.
You can now delete users with all their content with just one click.
Category auto-select plugin now can grab categories from tags.
Models have new fields: Country, City, State.
In referrer traffic statistics, comparison logic is now different when the referrer is a URL without http. In this case, the statistics will count not the site the user came from, but the URL of the page they visited. This lets you track traffic from partners who send it to your site with a custom parameter, e.g. http://domain.com?from=username. Traffic can come from various websites. To track all this traffic under one referrer, set its URL to from=username.
Pagination logic when pages do not exist is now different. These pages now return the 404 error. This fix may affect certain site pages and it is not enabled by default in this update. Contact the support department to have this enabled.
Access settings for site pages now let you make certain pages available to webmasters and trusted users only.
In the video_edit and album_edit blocks, visual protection from automated submissions was added.
In the video_edit block, you can now show channel list to upload a video to a certain channel on your site.
In list_albums, list_videos and list_content blocks, you can now display content uploaded by users from the current user’s country.
In list_albums, list_videos and list_content blocks, search_scope is a new parameter letting you search through titles only and not descriptions.
In list_albums, list_videos and list_content blocks, when search through categories, tags and models is enabled, the search will also include synonyms (pseudonyms).
In video and photo album upload, KVS will now check whether space is used as tag separator. KVS requires tags to be separated by commas, but many people use tags separated by spaces, which previously led to all tags separated in such a way being treated as a single tag. Now this is fixed.
In list_content_sources block, sorting content providers by albums was added.
In the global_stats block, you can now filter by categories, i.e. show statistics for content from a certain category.
The list_dvds block now has a new parameter, var_section, letting you build an alphabetic list of channels / DVDs.
The video_edit block now supports separate max video duration settings for premium and webmaster users.
Country codes in the $list_countries_codes variable are now available in the templates.
Bugs that have been fixed:
- Videos with ad links would not pause when the user clicks on video area.
- The video slots shown in the player did not depend on whether the video file is available, if the user has no access to this particular video format. This resulted in the slot shown with an ad link, although the slot would not show if the user had sufficient permissions.
- Problems with randomization of ad display if the page had several instances of the same ad spot.
- Video uniqueness was not detected correctly by import if instead of the link to the source file links to format files were provided.
- Uploaded images would not resize if their file names had spaces.
- Issues with pagination for number-based tags.
- Export feeds did not send the correct embed code sizes for hotlinked videos.
- HTTP parameters would not be removed when file names were assigned to videos uploaded via links on site.
- When object directories were manually changed in the administration panel, this could lead to faulty links.
- In list blocks, skip_xxx and show_xxx did not work correctly. They were triggered even when particular filter objects were sent to the lists. This resulted in empty lists. For instance, if in list_videos block the skip_categories parameter with a category list was enabled, this block would show empty list for all of these categories.
- In site engine, when the user status was refreshed, no user deactivation check was made. Thus, a logged in user was able to use the site until their session was active, even if this particular user was deactivated in the administration panel.
- Content statistics plugin did not track certain video content types.
- Some issues with photo gallery processing.
- When the audit plugin made a content check, screenshot source sizes were not checked. This could result in some faulty source files went undetected.
- The video slots shown in the player did not depend on whether the video file is available, if the user has no access to this particular video format. This resulted in the slot shown with an ad link, although the slot would not show if the user had sufficient permissions.
- Problems with randomization of ad display if the page had several instances of the same ad spot.
- Video uniqueness was not detected correctly by import if instead of the link to the source file links to format files were provided.
- Uploaded images would not resize if their file names had spaces.
- Issues with pagination for number-based tags.
- Export feeds did not send the correct embed code sizes for hotlinked videos.
- HTTP parameters would not be removed when file names were assigned to videos uploaded via links on site.
- When object directories were manually changed in the administration panel, this could lead to faulty links.
- In list blocks, skip_xxx and show_xxx did not work correctly. They were triggered even when particular filter objects were sent to the lists. This resulted in empty lists. For instance, if in list_videos block the skip_categories parameter with a category list was enabled, this block would show empty list for all of these categories.
- In site engine, when the user status was refreshed, no user deactivation check was made. Thus, a logged in user was able to use the site until their session was active, even if this particular user was deactivated in the administration panel.
- Content statistics plugin did not track certain video content types.
- Some issues with photo gallery processing.
- When the audit plugin made a content check, screenshot source sizes were not checked. This could result in some faulty source files went undetected.
In future plans...
Conceptual changes in the way video and photo galleries work. Universal grabber support for grabbers that will receive page URLs and return video / photo album data, which will let import this content to the site.
CDN invalidation for video screenshots.
Content data quality: more requirements and limits in the administration panel and on the site, e.g. min and max title and description length etc. Our direction is unifying these features and introducing a universal page with all the settings.
Conceptual changes in the way custom fields work, more features for improved usability.
New feature letting you mass edit video and photo album data via the import system. One of the import fields needs to contain video or photo album ID while other fields contain customizable data.
Import / export of videos and photo albums will support all content provider, channel, and DVD fields, and their groups as well. Thus, if DVD objects are used as seasons and DVD groups are used for TV shows, you will be able to run a single import operation importing all episodes, all season-related data plus all TV show related data without having to process these objects manually.
Changes in the way iframe embed codes work. Now, iframe embed codes are generated by site pages which offers a lot of customization options. However, in-depth statistics and white / blacklists are not currently available.
More usability improvements in the administration panel. Save and open next action support for all lists, not just videos and photo albums. Deleting objects from their editing pages. Deleting categorization objects together with content.
Mass import, export and editing of categorization objects.
Closer integration between the video player and JS ads, customizing JS ads manually without using the player’s API.
Creating a scheduling plugin that will publish content using daily content amount settings.
User blacklist.
Tons of other major and minor improvements are coming, stay tuned for further updates!