The completely new HTML5 player fully replaces the old Flash-based player KVS used to have. In the new player, HTML5 is the primary mode. The Flash component is activated only when the current video cannot be played in the user's browser using HTML5. Usually these are pre-IE9 browsers, or when it's a FLV video. We did what we could to keep the player's interface intact. We also tried our best to keep the old features and add new ones.
New player features:
- Full player skin control via CSS3. You can now add custom skins.
- Video metadata preloading is now available (except mobile phones). It makes your MP4 files start to play faster.
- The format switch is now an icon. You can add HD indication to let people know HD formats are available.
- Popunder support added. It works not by opening a new browser window, something that is often blocked by browser plugins, but via opening an ad page in the original page of your site. At the same time, the player page is opened as a new browser window, and video playback starts automatically. This will increase server load, but will also increase popunder ad conversion ratio.
- Related videos as HTML are now supported, with customisable layout. For this new feature to work, you need to modify site templates. These are not activated automatically when you update your copy of KVS. We will add more info on this in the FAQ.
- Timeline screenshots are now sent to the player in an optimised way. This lets the system make less Apache requests and decrease server load.
Old player features that are no longer supported:
- Placing the logo as a stripe in the bottom or at the top. These do not function properly on some devices.
- Skipping in FLV files: we no longer recommend using FLV; use MP4 instead.
- Ads displayed on mouse over: makes no sense for mobile devices.
- Old player JavaScript API that used certain functions with predefined names. This may result in your customised player features no longer working properly. You will need to rewrite your customisation using the new API. It will be described in the FAQ.
- Integration with the teasernet network. It is about to be replaced with VAST support in future.
- Any embed codes via Flash will no longer work.
- If you replaced KVS player with JW player, it will stop showing timeline screenshots.
New type of anti-hotlink protection: IP-based protection with 100% hotlinking impossibility guarantee. This protection feature also does not let users share direct links to video files. Links will only work for the IP they have been made available to. A disadvantage here is that you yourself will not be able to hotlink your videos on other sites. If you already hotlink your videos on other sites, you will not be able to use this protection. Old referrer-based protection is still around, but it does not show great reliability. After the update, the protection will keep working the old way. To switch to the new type, you need to go to Content Settings.
You can now enable player link encryption. This can protect you from third party content grabbers with almost a 100% chance. However, this protection will not cover download links if you allow video downloads for your users. These links do not use the player and therefore cannot be encrypted. Go to Content Settings to enable your player links encryption.
Videos now have the HD flag that is added automatically when the video has HD files. Due to this you can display a HD indicator in video lists as well as filter only HD or non-HD videos. After the update, your system will launch a background task to set this flag for all videos.
You can now enable stat logging for categories and tags in the video rotator. This lets a video have different CTRs in different categories (tags). This way, the rotation will be more efficient. Currently this is not available for screenshots. Most likely, we will add support for different best-performing screenshots in different categories (tags) in upcoming product versions, along with other rotator improvements.
When rotation is enabled, you can now go to video editor and see rotation summary for this particular video, including impressions, clicks, overall CTR and ranking, as well as CTR for each category (tag).
We moved the ZIP archive and source photo access settings to the list of album formats as a standalone pseudo format. Now, for source files of albums, you can assign an image that will be shown instead of a photo if the user has not been granted access to it. Also, you can delete ZIP files of source photos if you don't need them anymore.
We added a plugin generating users with premium membership of predefined duration in days or tokens. The output will be a list of login:password pairs, and you can market these as digital goods in online shops. This can be used as an alternative to payment processing services when you sell premium memberships.
Custom content post-processing plugin has been added. With it, you can easily add custom logic to video or album processing without having to modify the core engine. This plugin does not install automatically after you update your copy of KVS. Contact us if you would like to use it.
In the synonymizer plugin, you can apply a filter to the content being processed. Now, you can configure the synonymizer in such a way that it would be enabled only for videos from feeds or from grabbers while other videos will be ignored.
In the import feed list, mass activation and deactivation are now supported.
The way stats are sent via JavaScript has been optimized. Now there are 20-30% less Apache requests. For this update to work, you need to manually update the theme's JS files. For the new theme, it's main.min.js. For the old theme, please contact tech support about any updates.
For SEO satellites, you can set up a selection of default item titles along with satellite-specific titles.
In post list (list_posts) and post viewing (post_view) blocks, you can now display information about the video attached to the post.
In the list_videos and the list_albums blocks, you can now filter the list using any range of publishing date, e.g. videos for January, for February etc. This is based on the var_post_date_from and var_post_date_to parameters.
In the member list block (list_members), several new modes have been added: a) users the current user is subscribed to, b) subscribers of the current user, c) friend requests for the current user. Also, several new actions have been added: bulk unsubscribe from selected users, and bulk friend request confirmation.
In the member information block (member_profile_view), you now can display data that shows whether this user has been blocked by the current user, or vice versa, whether the current user has been blocked by them. Moreover, this block now supports unblocking action.
In model list (list_models) you can now filter models by city name.
Bugs that have been fixed:
- In certain cases, grabbers would create duplicate videos.
- In the rotator weighing matrix view plugin, global blocks information would not be displayed.
- In the signup block, sometimes user-uploaded avatars would not be saved.
- When uploading source video files over 4Gb in size, their original size would not be stored in the database correctly.
- On some operating systems multi-threaded import would not work correctly.
- In the category avatar generation plugin, resize logic was changed to avoid black bars on category thumbs.