yospaceCDS Release Notes

Release 2.8 - 15/5/2012 - "HLS Profiles"

Content Ingestion System / HLS Streaming Server

  • Added support for custom-defined adaptive bitrate profiles for HTTP Live Streaming

Content Management User Interface

  • Added ability to view and reset YouTube synchronisation status in Media Item Info tab
  • Supports localstorage for cookies for HTML5 compliant browsers
  • The Cue Points field now only appears once on the manual upload screen
  • Semantic checking of Cue Points is now supported.  Cue Points closer than 3 seconds apart are flagged by the UI.
  • Fixed an issue that under some circumstances the wrong Media Item ID is displayed in the Details panel of a Media Item.
  • Fixed an issue that causes a spurious error under rare circumstances when a Media Item is being removed from a Content Group using the Publishing tab.

Third-Party Ad Server VAST Response Handler

  • Supports VAST tracking URLs for analytics in LazyLoad Promotions

Release 2.7 - 13/12/2011 - "VAST, Access Control & Mid-Roll in Live"

Live Streaming

  • Advertising can be injected as mid-rolls within live streams based on timed intervals defined in the Advertising Template XML.

RSS Gateway

  • Fixed issue that reported items of over 15 minutes in duration incorrectly.
  • Fixed issue where metadata changes in input feeds were failing to be synchronised in some cases.

Content Ingestion System

  • Supports RTMP URLs for content ingestion.

Content Management User Interface

  • Added ability to search for content by ID or keyword across all Content Groups from the home screen.
  • Added Access Control Key settings page
  • Added Default Metadata Settings section in Edit Content Group page.  Content metadata will be automatically populated if content is manually uploaded into a Content Group with default metadata settings.
  • Added ability to configure metadata fields within the Metadata Set-up page so that they are non-editable in the Edit Content Group page. 

Content Access Gateway

  • Added Access Control URLs – using a shared secret developers can prevent Video Access URLs from being shared by end users.

Third-Party Ad Server VAST Response Handler 

  • Added ability to traffick ads using VAST responses from ad servers with automatic ingest of new ads.
  • Supports RTMP ingestion for ad URLs.

MediaItem API

  • Fixed an issue where a valid attempt to delete an item would occasionally fail with a "599" error.

Release 2.6 - 9/11/2011 - "Pre-Roll in Live"

Live Streaming

  • Live streams to iOS devices now support in-stream pre-roll advertising insertion on a per-user basis
  • HD resolutions now supported for live streaming outputs
  • Various improvements have been made to the Live Stream manager UI

Content Ingestion

  • Enhanced reporting on ingestion errors
  • Original content is always maintained upon ingesting advertising content; this allows for automatic retrospective encoding to new formats as they are introduced.

Job Processing System

  • Additional information is now provided on job completion in the log parameter on callbacks
  • Job completion or failure callbacks made back to customers' service will be terminated if the customer server does not complete within 20 seconds.

Content Management User Interface

  • Minor bug fixes

Media Item API

  • API callbacks and new status polling API now are provided for status updates and ingestion progress reports
  • MD5 hash can now be supplied in Media Item create method to detect earlier file acquisition issues
  • Fixed issue that locks an item if a re-ingest is requested without a MIME type specified by the call to the API

Release 2.5 - 1/9/2011 - "Live Streaming Manager"

Live Streaming

  • Introduced a new module, the "Live Streaming Manager" which handles generic live streaming encoding and publishing capabilities
  • Introduced Live Streaming API for creation and control of Live Streaming Configurations
  • Introduced Live Streaming Management interface, now part of Content Management User Interface

Content Ingestion

  • Upgrades to encoding subsystem; faster ingestion for long form content.

RSS Gateway

  • Metadata mappings are now supported for Brightcove JSON input feeds.

YouTube Syndication Services

  • Supports generic XML injection into YouTube API

Content Management User Interface

  • Accounts with more than one Usage Profile can now nominate the default Usage Profile to be selected in Upload screens for given users.
  • Enhancements to the help system: now supports context linking from the on-line help documentation
  • The Output Feed type 'Raw' now supports multiple web and mobile renditions.
  • Corrected minor issue where the Search box would automatically search even if you don't supply a search term after clicking it
  • Mid-roll cue points can be specified when Uploading and Replacing Media.

Media Item API 

RAMP Integration

  • Keywords are now extracted from the 'concepts' section of the RAMP response XML and put into a configurable Field Definition in the Metadata Set-up for a given account.

Release 2.4 - 2/6/2011 - "YouTube & Mid-Roll"

Mid-Roll Advertising

  • Advertising can now be inserted at arbitrary points within a stream playback on short or long form content (iOS devices only, support for all devices coming in R2.6).  See the accompanying documentation for more details.

Content Ingestion

  • Short form and Long form (streaming only) content ingestion processes have now been unified.  It is now possible to ingest content over 10 minutes from any of the standard input feed mechanisms including the Media Item API. 

YouTube Syndication Services

  • Output Feeds can now be synchronised with playlists in YouTube accounts.  A new section has been added to the Output Feed edit page and a YouTube Syndication set-up page has been added to the Account Settings menu.

Content Management User Interface

  • Added YouTube Syndication options on Output Feed pages and in Account Set-up menu
  • Added Universal Access URL configuration in Output Feed pages
  • Added URL Template to External Promotion screen to support Mid-Roll Advertising
  • Large Format option added to Input Feed edit page to enable or suppress generation of videos for tablet-sized displays
  • Poll interval in Input Feed page now defaults to 5 minutes
  • The "Revision Failed" message can now be cleared in the Content Group page by clicking on the error
  • Calls to server-side reduced to improve performance over slower internet connections
  • Fixed display of preview icons for audio-only content
  • Fixed a problem that occurred when setting a manual thumbnail using Internet Explorer 7

Media Item API 

  • Added the ability to specify cue points for mid-roll advertising

Release 2.3 - 13/4/2011 – "Universal Access URLs"

Content Management User Interface

  • UI Updated to new Yospace site style
  • It is now possible to customise your metadata schema using the Metadata Set-up screen
  • Menus now appear in the header section
  • Content/Source Group Edit screens are now wider
  • Preview player in Edit Source/Content Group pages plays while changing tabs
  • Improved Thumbnail tab layout
  • Videos can be displayed in a grid view "Quick" mode
  • Various minor fixes for IE 7 users

Content Access Gateway

  • Added Universal Access URL syntax.  This new URL syntax allows for a single URL to allow for a video to be accessed via mobile devices and from a customised template page containing an embedded player for web browsers and set-top boxes.

Release 2.2 - 2/3/2010 – "Housekeeping"

Content Management User Interface

  • Improved pagination scheme in Content Group screen; especially useful for Content Groups with large quantities of videos.  Multiple pagination links have been replaced with a slider control. 
  • Fixed issue that failed to correctly identify file types on manual upload in rare circumstances
  • Accepts content with MIME type of application/force-download (assumes the content is video)
  • Promotion set-up screens are part of new UI design
  • FTP Input Feed edit screen has "Use thumbnail from FTP Feed" option
  • Fixed issue where video duration would be reported in the UI for accounts using web-only delivery
  • Default iOS delivery mode is now Hybrid.  By default, videos greater than 45 seconds in length will be adaptive bit-rate streamed.
  • Various minor bug fixes

RSS Input/Output Gateway

  • Added RSS feed generation caching

Device Detection

  • Improved support for Android, Windows Phone 7 and Palm Pre devices

 

Release 2.1 - 26/12/2010 - "Media Replacement"

Content Management User Interface

  • It is now possible to ingest a replacement video for a given title using the new Media tab; content is ingested and only flipped over to the new content once the ingestion has been successful, allowing editors to revise videos without dropping the current story.
  • Home screen allows you to rearrange the different sections using drag and drop
  • Home screen configuration is now saved; your selection of open tabs and section ordering is now remembered 
  • Summary view now has a small thumbnail and delete button on each item of content.
  • Detailed status information now available on Input Feed page and by hovering the mouse over the status indicator in the Input Feed list.
  • When panels are loading content, activity indicators are now shown
  • Thumbnails with an aspect ratio of wider than 16:9 are now handled properly in the preview player
  • Fixed a bug where under certain conditions adding manual uploaded content into a group fed by an Input Feed can cause the corresponding output feeds to break.
  • The "Set Thumbnail" link will not be shown if the original content is not preserved within yospaceCDS

Content Access Gateway / Access Filtering / Device Targeting System

  • Item level Metadata can now be passed to third-party ad servers 

Media Item API

  • Update metadata function added.
  • Replace media function added.

Release 2.0.1 - 13/12/2010 - "Metadata"

Content Management User Interface

  • Added Auto-completion feature to Log In screen to allow easier swapping between accounts
  • Publish Dates are no longer mandatory in Media Item Metadata; if you do not specify a Publish Date, the creation date of the content is used instead.
  • Input Feeds can now be set to override the pubDate field with the date and time of ingest
  • Manually uploaded content now appears at the top of a Content Group
  • Minor UI fixes
  • Fixed an issue where Advert Groups could not be created
  • Name & Notes fields in a Content Group page can now only be edited by Administrator users
  • Exact Match web renditions are now defined as a priority list; the first format in the list that is available for the media item is matched
  • The quality selector is now displayed in Input Feed configuration screens, defaulting to High Quality.
  • Output Feeds can now be duplicated

RSS Gateway

  • Subject to feed set-up, changes in Metadata on source MRSS feeds will now reflect in the Media Item Metadata.
  • If an item within an RSS feed contains invalid data the feed will now continue to operate.  Instead, the field that contains the invalid data is not set, however the item is still ingested.
  • Implemented RAMP metadata update event handling
  • Poll intervals for a given feed has a minimum period of 5 minutes

Content Access Gateway / Access Filtering / Device Targeting System

  • Addressed an issue when a third-party Ad Server returns a valid, but non-existent Media Item ID as the advert to splice

Media Item API

  • Thumbnail URLs can now be specified on the creation of Media Items

Release 2.0 - 18/11/2010 - "Web & Mobile"

Content Management User Interface

  • Reimplemented using AJAX technologies providing faster response and many UI features such as collapsible sections, menus with persistence across sessions
  • Added Role Based Access Control, users can have one or more roles defining which functionality to which they have access
    • Superusers - access to all functionality
    • Content Editors - access to Content Management functions only
    • Content Contributors - access to manual upload content only
    • Advert Operations - access to all Advert Trafficking functions including set-up
  • Added Source Groups - special Content Groups whose contents cannot removed by anyone other than Superusers
  • Complete redesign of Edit Content Group page to provide editorial functions
    • Search for content function (case sensitive)
    • Detail and Summary display modes
    • Load More... option
    • Drag and Drop sorting of items
    • Ability to Edit Metadata in situ
    • Ability to define Thumbnail frame in situ
    • Ability to copy content into other Content Groups
    • Ability to delete content permanently or to force re-ingest
  • Output Feeds support new Advanced MRSS function
    • Ability to contain multiple MRSS media:content tags for different URL styles
    • Ability to contain Web style URLs as well as mobile style URLs
      • Specify URLs that match an exact format specification and link directly to binary file
      • Specify URLs that match to a format specification based on rules
    • Ability to specify thumbnail policy per media:content section
    • Web Style URLs support direct link to binary data as well as parameter based matching
    • Ability to define policy for populating the GUID and LINK tags
    • Ability to specify behaviour and appearance of Choice page mobile URLs
  • Output feeds now support different sorting styles including Custom Sort
  • Introduced Usage Profiles
    • Permit content to be ingested against a usage policy (mobile, smartphone optimised, tablet optimised, and any number of web formats)
    • Ability for arbitrary encoding renditions to be created and placed into arbitrary CDN locations
    • Usage profiles must be set-up by contact Yospace support, R2.1 (due December 2010) will introduce self-service screens
    • Original content can be optionally retained to allow for future renditions to be created
  • Added Extensible Metadata
    • Metadata associated with content can now be extended with user-definable field on a per-account basis
    • Added support for validated metadata types
      • Single line text
      • Multi line text
      • Rich text
      • Dates
      • Integers
      • Floating point numbers
    • Added Ability to map foreign tags on input MRSS feeds to metadata fields
    • Ability to define metadata fields in MRSS input feeds that will cause content to be re-ingested if their value changes
  • Added RAMP Integration
    • Transcript can now be updated by metadata transcription service RAMP into an specified metadata field.
    • Additional RAMP concepts and keyword metadata is stored against the metadata item
    • Feeds using the Advanced MRSS present additional RAMP information if such additional metadata exists

Content Access Gateway

  • Added Access URL syntax for Web access by specifying parameters which matches to the best available format
  • Added new Choice Page implementation to provide modular functionality and ability to fallback access modes.  Existing Choice Page functionality remains in place, but is now deprecated.

Release 1.14 – 1/7/2010

Content Management User Interface

  • Added ability to upload content using the Content Management UI by specifying a remote URL.
  • Added ability to set-up content adjustments on RSS and FTP input feeds
    • Frame Cropping
    • Aspect Ratio switching policy
    • Volume Adjustment
    • Enabling Deinterlacing
    • Truncation
    • Specifying point of automatic thumbnail

Release 1.13 – 26/5/2010

Content Management User Interface

  • Added new "Large Format" option on Input and Output Feeds, designed at supporting larger screen devices including the iPad.  The format renders to 640x360 in 16:9, or 512x384 in 4:3.  
  • Added ability to set-up advertising promotions trafficked by AdTech Helios.
  • Added ability to set-up advertising promotions trafficked by a generic third-party ad server.

RSS Input/Output Gateway

  • Fixed issue when reading MRSS input feeds where the 'medium' attribute assigned to content was being ignored

Release 1.12 – 21/4/2010

Content Management User Interface

  • RSS Input errors now are provided with more detail
  • Better user input error handling throughout
  • Added Apple Access Mode preferences in Output Feed configuration
  • HQ marker now appears on HQ-ready content titles

Content Access Gateway / Access Filtering / Device Targeting System

  • Support added for Reference Movie preference (Low & High, Medium & High)
  • Added Access Filtering service - a service for third-party mobile sites to filter devices that do not support video from parts of their sites

RSS Input/Output Gateway

  • Added ability for Input Feeds to publish HQ content before it has been encoded as standard quality
  • Added GUID-mapping Access Proxy

Release 1.11 – 15/3/2010

Content Management User Interface

  • Content Groups now can only be used by content; Advert clips must be loaded into "Advert Content Groups" and Promotions can only be set-up applying Advert Content Groups to Content Groups.
  • Added DoubleClick® DART Promotions -- using an external DART ad trafficking system to decide on advert insertion. 
  • Added Web Tracking URL allowing content access to be logged by a third-party system
  • Promotions can now be applied to all Content Groups or a specific Content Group
  • Promotions can now be set-up to add videos as pre-roll, post-roll or both.

Content Access Gateway / Device Targeting System

  • Support for external ad-trafficking servers
  • Switchable iPhone/iPad delivery policy per output feed
    • Force Streaming
    • Force Reference Movie Download
    • Hybrid Delivery
  • Remote access mode now supports CDN selection
  • iPhone/iPad streaming now starts at medium quality level
  • Optimised advert splicing for iPhone/iPad streaming

Job Processing System

  • Added BRANCH and ALL batch failure modes. See the Batch Jobs chapter in our Web Services API Guide.
  • Stalled batches are now automatically cleaned-up by a separate process.
  • Added timeouts to content fetch to prevent very slow loading content from consuming server resources.
  • Added Queue Management API
  • Added MD5 checksum parameter in Media Upload method.
  • Failed notifications will now automatically retry
  • Forced re-use of HTTP connections to prevent broken connections from being re-used and failing.

Release 1.10 – 4/1/2010

Content Management User Interface

  • Fixed non-Latin-1 character support presentation issues
  • Added support to enable HQ (H.264) processing of FTP/RSS Inputs and RSS Outputs (if account enabled)
  • Content Group selector sort order is now alphanumeric.
  • User feedback has been improved in the event of an error while working within the CMUI
  • Fixed minor UI issues

RSS Input/Output Gateway

  • Added user monitoring of RSS/FTP input feeds. Notifies users by email when their feeds are in an error state, or if they have not received new content for a specified period of time.

Content Access Gateway / Device Targeting System

  • Support for iPhone streaming H.264 with dynamic bitrate adaptation
  • Support for long-form content (videos over 20 minutes in length)
  • Fixed download problem for some Android devices
  • Enabled streaming for all Android devices

Job Processing System

  • H.264 processing added
  • Added DEFAULT_IMAGE_URL in Single Frame Thumbnailer (Conversion ID 9999) for specifying a default image if the file being thumbnailed does not contain a video track.
  • Added Asynchronous Upload Support

Release 1.9 – 23/10/2009

OS Compatibility

  • Now compatible with Solaris 10 and RHEL 5.
  • Centralised node configuration management

Content Management User Interface

  • Minor UI improvements

RSS Input/Output Gateway

  • Added support for parsing of Brightcove Media API JSON feeds
  • Feeds containing no <link> tag are now permitted 

Content Access Gateway / Device Targeting System

  • iPhone will now receive reference movies allowing automatic selection of video quality based on access bearer.

Job Processing System

  • FTP upload script now retries 3 before failing.

Release 1.8 – 8/7/2009

Content Management User Interface

  • Content Groups containing both audio and video content now supported.  
  • Enabled on-line help.
  • Mandatory fields are now highlighted.
  • Upload page now contains RSS Details form allowing an item to be uploaded and published in a single action.
  • Password change facility added.
  • Look and feel aligned with yospace.com web site.
  • Long GUIDs are now displayed better.

RSS Input/Output Gateway

  • Audio content can now be ingested.  Feeds can contain mixed audio and video content.
  • Support added for Brightcove v3 Media API (JSON feeds).
  • Support added for Brightcove v3 feeds containing RTMP URLs. 
  • Option now exists to ignore incoming RSS items with post-dated publish dates. 

Content Access Gateway / Device Targeting System

  • Supports audio only content, including audio-only RTSP streams.
  • Enhanced encoding of AAC audio for improved handset compatibility for streaming.
  • Improved support for corporate BlackBerry users for audio and video access.

Job Processing System

  • Added support for audio-only input

Release 1.7 – 21/5/2009

Content Management User Interface

  • It is now possible to delete or remove items of content from the Content Group edit screen.
  • Added DRM option to Output Feeds
  • Added RSS Details tab on Media Item edit page, allowing manually uploaded items to be included in Output Feeds
  • The output of an Output Feed can be accessed from the Manage Outputs screen.
  • Manage Outputs screen now shows Feed ID
  • Wider page layout
  • Number of videos can be displayed on a single page is now 12
  • Media Item edit screen is now structured into 3 tabs
  • Added optional account restrictions
  • Content Groups may no longer be selected as sources of advertising if they contain too many videos
  • Improved date parsing (see Supported Date Formats for more details)
  • Added an option on the create/edit Output Feed page to allow limitation of the number of items published
  • Fixed a bug where the wrong screen is shown following the removal of a Content Group from an FTP Input Feed
  • Added context help
  • The first input field on a screen will now be automatically focussed

RSS Input/Output Gateway

  • Improved RSS update queuing system
  • Output gateway now supports DRM-enabled feeds
  • Added localisation of dates for input and output feeds
  • Improved error message when trying to fetch a non-existent feed
  • RSS poller now can accept URLS containing username:password so it can fetch MRSS feeds behind HTTP authentication

Job Control System

  • Controller now uses default priority per client account
  • Notification failure monitoring per client account has been added
  • Web Services Job Upload API now accepts URLs with username:password to fetch content for processing behind HTTP authentication.

Job Processing System

  • Added the ability to all Conversion IDs to deinterlace an input video prior to encoding via the DEINTERLACE script parameter.
  • Improved audio and video synchronisation for MPEG conversions (5000 series IDs).
  • Improved audio and video synchronisation for transcoded output.

HTTP Delivery System

  • Improved cache directive HTTP headers
  • Enhanced internal system caching

Release 1.6 – 11/2/2009

Content Management User Interface

  • Fixed an error when editing a Promotion from the MediaPool detail screen.
  • Added support for creating and managing FTP input configurations.
  • Added support for tagging Promotions as being suitable for use in audio targeted output.
  • Fixed a bug where items with apostrophes in their name could not be deleted.

RSS Input/Output Gateway

  • Output GUIDs are now Yospace generated (in version 1.5, the GUIDs from the input feed were used in the output feed.)
  • Added support for the use of the content-encoding header in the MRSS source, if specified.

Job Control System

  • Performance improvements made to uniqueness checking on submitted content.
  • The webservice methods contentDelete, variantDelete and canonicalDelete can now return 'IO error' as a return status. In version 1.5, 'IO error' was returned as 'bad content identifier'. 'bad content identifier' is now returned if the specified content identifier does not exist.
  • Priorities per Client Application have been changed to have a default per Client Application. When a client application requests a job, the priority they specify is an offset from this default, and is limited to the range -5 <= offset <= +5. If outside these bounds, it is capped to the nearest bound.

Job Processing System

  • Added support for frame sizes of an odd number of pixels for the conversion scripts 1004, 2004 and 2005.
  • Added support for the creation of FLVs using the VP6 video codec.
  • Added support for the inclusion of the pixel aspect ratio when computing letterbox sizes.