This document summarizes changes made in each release of Brightcove since the Brightcove 3 Beta releases in March and June 2008.
See Upcoming Features and Service Changes for a summary of coming features, as well as future changes to the behavior of the Brightcove service, Brightcove Studio, or players that may require you to change the way you work with Brightcove.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove between the Brightcove 3.4.1 release on November 12, 2009 and the Brightcove 4 release on November 16, 2009.
With Brightcove 4, we're introducing Brightcove Express edition, designed to give smaller sites and starter projects access to many of the great capabilities that power online video for the world's most recognized brands. Brightcove Express provides a fast and affordable solution today as well as the flexibility to grow as your needs change. Brightcove Express is available in three packages that offer scaled sets of features, monthly bandwidth, and video title capacity. Read more about Brightcove Express and about Brightcove's editions and pricing.
Previously, you had to choose whether to set up your Brightcove account to deliver video by streaming or by progressive download. Now, with the Universal Delivery Service, you can configure your streaming account so that you can also use progressive download, in situations where that's the better alternative. Read more.
Brightcove's live video feature enables you to load and manage a live stream connection in a Brightcove player without any custom development or complex integration. Since the Brightcove live video integration is built on the same framework as on-demand video, you can take advantage of the rest of Brightcove's service capabilities. That includes full metadata, scheduling, advertising, geo-restriction, Media APIs, custom live video players, and the ability to mix on-demand and live videos together in the same playlists. Read more.
We have enhanced Brightcove's Advertising SDK with the addition of the Ad Rules SWF APIs. The Ad Rules SWF is an alternative solution that makes it much easier to integrate with third party ad libraries that control all aspects of advertising in Brightcove video players. The Ad Rules SWF is a Flash SWF file that a Brightcove player loads at runtime and that replaces the ad policy settings assigned in the Brightcove Studio Advertising module. This feature provides a solution for the most complicated ad integrations by giving developers significant flexibility, while still allowing use of other key Brightcove features, like Ad Translators and Ad SWFs. Read more.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 between the Brightcove 3.4 release on October 24, 2009 and the Brightcove 3.4.1 release on November 12, 2009.
The Brightcove Studio includes a new Analytics module. The Analytics module brings together information about your media and players. Using the Analytics module, you can generate up-to-date reports about how many viewers you have, how much viewers are watching your videos, when they stop watching them, and even where they are watching from. Read more.
In order to provide data to the Analytics module, Brightcove players leave a Flash cookie in viewers' browsers. This cookie is used to gather data for the analytics and reporting features. If your web site policies prohibit using cookies in this way, or if for whatever reason you do not want to use them, you can disable this analytics and reporting cookie feature in the Brightcove Studio.
We're changing the default settings for the multiple renditions Brightcove creates when you upload a video. Instead of 4 renditions, Brightcove will create 6 renditions. The new settings provide better support for high-definition and mobile video. The new encoding settings will be:
480x360 pixels; 680kbps total; 616kbps video, 64kbps audio; two-pass for FLV, one-pass for H.264
| Dimensions | Bitrates | Encoding passes |
|---|---|---|
| 320x240 | 264kbps total; 200kbps video, 64kbps audio | two-pass (FLV) one-pass (H.264) |
| 320x240 | 350kbps total; 286kbps video, 64kbps audio | one-pass |
| 480x360 | 512kbps total; 448kbps video, 64kbps audio | one-pass |
| 640x480 | 800kbps total; 672kbps video, 128kbps audio | one-pass |
| 640x480 | 1200kbps total; 1072kbps video, 128kbps audio | one-pass |
| 1280x960 | 1800kbps total; 1672kbps video, 128kbps audio | one-pass |
The dimensions listed are for 4:3 content; corresponding dimensions will be used for 16:9.
Brightcove Pro and Enterprise publishers can now integrate Brightcove with the Yahoo! Video Advertising Platform (YVAP) and the Yahoo! APT ad server, using the built-in Yahoo! ad integration available in the Brightcove Studio Advertising module. Currently, Yahoo makes Yahoo! APT available only to members of Yahoo!'s Newspaper Consortium. For more information, contact your Yahoo! representative. Read more.
Brightcove Pro and Enterprise publishers can now integrate Brightcove with the OpenX ad server, using the built-in OpenX integration available in the Brightcove Studio Advertising module. Read more.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 between the Brightcove 3.3.3 release on September 24, 2009 and the Brightcove 3.4 release on October 24, 2009.
In an upcoming release of Brightcove, we plan to provide greatly enhanced analytics and reporting features. In order to support these upcoming features and provide you with useful data as soon as the new analytics and reporting features are released, we've modified Brightcove players so that they now leave a cookie in viewers' browsers. This cookie is used to gather data for the analytics and reporting features.
If your web site policies prohibit using cookies in this way, or if for whatever reason you do not want to use them, you can disable this analytics and reporting cookie feature. If you currently use a TubeMogul player plug-in, it will conflict with Brightcove's analytics features. To avoid this conflict, you should disable analytics tracking.
To disable analytics tracking, in the Brightcove Studio, go to the Account Settings > Analytics page. Click the Analytics Settings - Edit link and select Disable. We expect this issue to be resolved by the time of the next Brightcove release in mid-November.
We've changed the URL for the Brightcove Studio to my.brightcove.com from studio3.brightcove.com. The old URL will redirect to the new my.brightcove.com URL, but we encourage you to update any bookmarks you may have to the new URL.
If the media sharing feature is enabled for your account, you can use the Media module to share videos to other Brightcove accounts with which you have a sharing relationship. Read more.
You can now use the Account Settings page in the Brightcove Studio to set the default time zone for all reports generated in the Reports page. Reports use the Pacific Standard Time zone by default.
The MediaControls BEML component now supports ad delivery. When initially released, the MediaControls BEML component did not have out-of-the-box advertising support. With this release, we have added built-in advertising support for this component. In order to enable your custom player templates built using MediaControls components to deliver advertising in a supported way, you will need to alter your BEML slightly. See our updated documentation for complete BEML examples. If you have already built custom ad support for your MediaControls player using our player APIs, we strongly advise that you update your custom player template to take advantage of the built-in ad support as soon as possible.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 between the Brightcove 3.3.2 release on August 27, 2009 and the Brightcove 3.3.3 release on September 24, 2009.
You can now search for players in the Player workspace in the Media module. You can search by Player Name, Player ID or Template Name.
This release includes low impact fixes to the Brightcove service platform. This includes fixes to the Advertising functionality in Brightcove players, low impact fixes for general functionality of Brightcove players, Media and Player APIs, and the Brightcove Studio and Media module.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 between the Brightcove 3.3.1 release on July 23, 2009 and the Brightcove 3.3.2 release on August 27, 2009.
The Thumbnail Navigation player is a new standard player template that supports multiple playlists, displaying a scrollable tiled list of thumbnails for each of the videos in each playlist. Read more.
A new Transcode Settings page, under Accounts Settings in the Brightcove Studio, enables you to view the encodings, bitrates, and dimensions for the multiple video renditions Brightcove creates for dynamic delivery. Read more.
A new API Management page, under Accounts Settings in the Brightcove Studio, enables users with the Admin role to view, copy, and email Media API tokens issued for their account. In addition, new accounts now automatically receive read and read-with-URL-access Media API tokens. Read more.
Brightcove now supports making Media API calls over HTTPS for greater security.
The referrer report is no longer available in the Brightcove Console.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 between the Brightcove 3.3 release on June 20, 2009 and the Brightcove 3.3.1 release on July 23, 2009.
We have reduced the loaded kilobyte size of our players by approximately 22%. As a consequence, players should load significantly faster now.
Media module users can now crop the thumbnail image to a particular area of the video frame using the image capture tool. Users can also choose between 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios for thumbnail images generated by the image capture tool. This adds to the Media module a feature that was previously available in the Console.
Video stills have also changed. Formerly, all stills were generated at 4:3 ratio. With this release, the still is generated to match the aspect ratio of the original video uploaded, so that the still image fits into the same video playback area as the video, without any ugly black bars or stretching.
The Advertising Module of the Player API includes two new methods, getStayInFullScreen() and setStayInFullScreen(). These are simple methods we added for developers who don't want players to exit full screen mode when using external ads or override ads. This is set to false by default, maintaining the existing default behavior. If set to true, the player won't exit full screen when an external ad comes in. This enables external or override ads which only display an ad in the video window to work correctly.
With the Brightcove 3.3.1 release, the Publishpod is no longer available for download. Users who have already downloaded and installed the Publishpod will be able to continue to use it.
The Publishpod was a tool that was used to upload content to the Brightcove Console, a previous version of the Brightcove service. We have replaced and improved this functionality with browser-based uploads to the Brightcove 3 Studio.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 between the Brightcove 3.2.2 release on May 28, 2009 and the Brightcove 3.3 release on June 20, 2009.
Ad Module: Search by Player ID. In the Advertising module, you can now search for players by ID, in addition to searching by player name.
New UI for setting cue points. The Advertising module now includes a UI for setting cue points for mid-roll ads. Read more.
Support for IAB Digital Video Ad Serving Template (VAST). The VAST standard allows publishers to plug into multiple third-party digital video ad servers and networks without custom development. Brightcove now provides the most comprehensive out-of-the-box support for the emerging VAST standard. Read more.
New Ad APIs: requestAd and setAdPolicy. We have added new methods to our Ad APIs that give you the ability to dynamically request an ad at any time during video playback, regardless of the ad policy set for the player or video. Using our two new APIs, setAdPolicy() and requestAd(), you can to override the ad policy set for a video or player and dynamically generate an ad call to your ad translator any time you want an ad. Previously, if you were developing a custom ad integration, you were dependant on ad cue points or the ad policy defined for the player in the Advertising module in order to trigger an ad request. Read more about the ad policy and ad request APIs.
Custom Metadata for Pro Edition publishers, with self-service. The custom metadata feature, formerly available only to Brightcove Enterprise Edition publishers, is now also available in Brightcove Pro. Publishers can now set up new custom metadata fields using the Brightcove Studio, instead of needing Brightcove to set up the custom metadata fields for them. Custom video fields are a great way to store additional information about your videos that you want to store in your CMS system or that you want to surface within your player. For example, if you wanted to track the Episode Number for a show, you could create a custom field to store this information and update your CMS integration to grab the info from your CMS, store it in your Brightcove video metadata, and then display it to users when they view that video in a player. Read more.
Set a Playlist Image. In the Media module you can now select an existing image, or upload a new thumbnail image, for your playlists. This image can be displayed in players to allow users to browse playlists in players visually.
Media Sharing. You can now preserve all video information, including custom fields, when videos are shared using the Brightcove Enterprise media sharing feature. Read more.
Multiple plug-ins. You can configure a player to load multiple SWF plug-ins in the Publishing module. This enables you to send player event tracking data to more than one analytics solution, for example. You could also configure an Analytics integration and a 3rd party integration SWF directly at the player level without having to alter the player template (BEML) at all.
Multiple domains for domain restriction. Using the Publishing module, you can restrict your player to one or more domains, instead of just one, by entering the URLs the player should be restricted to. This can help you distribute your players more easily to multiple affiliate sites, while ensuring that your player is locked down to only the subset of domains that you specify.
Search for players and templates in the Publishing module. You can now search for players by name or ID, and search for player templates.
Player debugging tool. Brightcove's player debugging tool is now available as a right-click option in a player.
Custom skins for elements of player components. This release introduces custom skins, a new option for styling components of custom player templates. A skin is an image file that you create and host that you can use to change the appearance of some feature of a BEML player component. For example, you can use skins to style the background of the overall player, to change the default image that is used where a thumbnail is not available, or to change the look of the player's buttons. Using custom skins can give you fine-grained control over the appearance of your player templates. Read more.
The VideoDTO object in the Player API has a new property, publishedDate. This is the date the video was most recently made active.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 between the Brightcove 3.2.1 release on April 29, 2009 and the Brightcove 3.2.2 release on May 28, 2009.
We have added two new methods to the Player API for managing ad cue points: clearAdCuePoints deletes all ad cue points for the specified video, while removeAdCuePointsAtTime deletes ad cue points at a specific time for the specified video.
We have added a new option for ad policies in the Advertising module. Publishers based in the EU who use Tremor Media's Acudeo can now select Tremor Media-Acudeo (EU) as the ad policy for a player. Read more.
The image capture tool in the Media module, capturing from an FLV, created video stills that were 240x180. Now, all video stills are created at the correct dimensions of 480x360.
You can now set scheduling for videos using the Media API write methods.
We corrected an issue with the custom metadata feature. Formerly, list values were not displayed in alphabetical order. With this release, strings in a list are always ordered alphabetically, even if you append new values to an existing list.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 between the Brightcove 3.2 release on March 22, 2009 and the Brightcove 3.2.1 release on April 29, 2009.
Brightcove offers a new standard player template named Video Player with Logo. This is a single-video player with a 480x55 pixel branding area above the video display.
The Player API's Social Module includes a new method, setEmbedCode(), that developers can use to modify a player's viral embedding code. You can use the existing getEmbedCode() method to fetch a player's embed code, then, for example, parse the string to swap out the player ID and width and height. Then, using setEmbedCode(), you can pass the modified string back into the player to be used as the embed code surfaced in the player menu.
The itemState property of Videos in the Media API is now a read/write property, so you can now use the Media API to activate or de-activate videos.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 between the Brightcove 3.1.2 release on February 5, 2009 and the Brightcove 3.2 release on March 22, 2009.
Brightcove Studio now supports using Flash Player 10. Brightcove players already supported Flash Player 10.
You can now use the Media module to swap out the video file of a video. This lets you keep a video that you've already created, including its metadata, thumbnail image, etc., but replace the video file with a different H.264 (MP4) or VP6 (FLV) file already uploaded to your account, or upload a new FLV file to use. Read more.
The Media module now offers better visibility into the status of your uploading videos. We have added a 'refresh' button so you can request the updated status for your videos. Once a video is shown as completed processing, it is ready to be played back in your Brightcove 3 player (although all renditions may not be complete at this point).
You can now get the URL of a video from the Quick Publish tool in the Media module. Publishers can now grab the JavaScript, HTML, or direct URL for a video with one click. The Video URL gives you a link to that video playing back in the single video player you choose – great for sending videos to your colleagues to review before posting to your website!
The metadata properties in Brightcove's video objects handle the most common use cases. However, some publishers have business needs for additional metadata properties. The new custom metadata feature, available only to Brightcove Enterprise publishers, lets you create additional string or list type metadata properties. You can set, update, or retrieve these custom properties using any of Brightcove's media management technologies: the Media module, FTP batch provisioning, the Media API, or the Player API. Read more.
When you use Brightcove's FTP batch provisioning system, you can now specify that you want Brightcove to transcode the video file you upload into multiple renditions for dynamic delivery. FTP batch provisioning now offers the same upload and transcoding options as the Media module. Read more.
In Brightcove's FTP batch provisioning system, the type attribute identifies what type of asset is being created. Formerly, the value of type for a video file was FLV_FULL. Since FTP batch provisioning now supports uploading H.264 (MP4) assets as well as VP6 (FLV) assets, use type="VIDEO_FULL" instead for video files. The value type="FLV_FULL" will still work, but is deprecated.
Similarly, we have added a new attribute in the title element, video-full-refid, which should be used rather than the flv-full-refid attribute to refer to video assets by their ref IDs.
You can now integrate your players with any of Brightcove's ad tag translators by selecting from a list of supported ad tag translators in the Advertising module. Choose from integrations with leading ad servers: Adtech, DART Enterprise, OAS, Motif, ADS – or provide the URL to your own custom integration.
Publishers can now traffick video ads from Google AdSense for video to Brightcove 3 players. Read more.
Brightcove Pro and Enterprise publishers can now integrate with Tremor Acudeo, configuring their Tremor Acudeo ad policy in Tremor and serving ads to their Brightcove 3 players. If you have previously added the Acudeo player plugin to a custom BEML player, you need to remove this before using the Advertising module to set your players to use Tremor for the ad policy. Read more.
Custom SWF components can expose attributes that can be made accessible through the dot notation of the BEML bindings. The Module or SWFLoader needs to have a unique id defined in its declaration. This is very valuable for custom integrations that want to expose end-user values.
The new TextRegion component enables you to group text components (like labels, links, etc.) and express as a more unified component in the Publishing module styling mode. This includes new functionality to specify the background and border colors of the region. Read more.
BEML now includes a new VolumeControl component that allows for control of the player's volume outside the visual context of the video display window. The volume control must be contained within a MediaControls component. Read more.
When you create a new template in the Publishing module, we automatically populate the text field with a minimal BEML template. This should make it quicker for template authors to get started. We also auto-format BEML when templates are duplicated, modified, etc.
The icon graphics used by Buttons and ToggleButtons can be scaled using the iconScale attribute.
Lucida Grande and Akzidenz-Grotesk Next fonts are available for custom templates through BEML.
We have replaced a number of methods in the Player API Content Module in order to make the Player APIs more generalized, so that they can better support the creation of new kinds of players. Some methods that returned a VideoDTO or PlaylistDTO have been replaced by methods that return a MediaDTO or MediaCollectionDTO. The methods that were replaced have been deprecated, but will continue to work indefinitely. Read more about the Player API changes. See Brightcove 3.1 API Reference for reference information that includes the deprecated methods.
The current set of "video events" have some inconsistencies in behavior between streaming (FMS) and progressive download (PD) delivery. In addition, the event model was not well understood by the general development community due to lack of detailed documentation and complexity. This release introduces a new set of events (MediaEvents) that are available through the Player API. The behavior for these events is consistent between FMS and PD, making it easier for developers to create components that work against a variety of Brightcove customers. We have also provided detailed documentation about the naming and behavior of the new MediaEvents.
The existing video events are deprecated as of this release; they will still function, so no existing code needs to be modified, but for future development, you should use the new MediaEvents. Read more.
Brightcove players do not have the Player API enabled by default. This provides much faster load times for players that don't need to load the APIs. Before this release, to enable the APIs, you needed to check a box in the Publishing module to enable the APIs for each player that uses them. With this release, developers can dynamically enable the ActionScript APIs (but not JavaScript) in the code of a custom component. Then, when the custom component is embedded in a BEML custom player template, the ActionScript APIs will be automatically enabled for all players that use that template.
Brightcove 3 players offer optional cross-promotion of related, newest and most viewed videos within the information screen. This screen can be displayed as an end-cap when a video completes. Now, you can dynamically and programmatically control what videos are surfaced in these lists. A player can now have custom logic applied through the API to provides more relevant recommendations.
Prior to this release, custom SWF components that were loaded with a SWFLoader BEML element could reference the Flash stage, but could not do so if they were loaded with a Module BEML element. We've made the stage available for non-visual SWF components loaded with a Module BEML element.
Each of the read methods in the Media API has a fields parameter that lets you limit which fields of the objects should be returned. With this release, the read methods that return Videos have a video_fields parameter, while the read methods that return Playlists have a playlist_fields parameter. This enables you to specify different fields for the playlists and the videos that are returned by methods like find_all_playlists. The fields parameter still functions, but is deprecated.
A new Media API method, add_image, enables adding thumbnail images and video stills to your videos. Read more.
A new Media API method, find_modified_videos, returns videos that have been modified during the time span you specify. This method also enables you to find videos that have been deleted, are inactive, or are outside of their scheduled play dates. Read more.
The Media API's Video and Playlist objects now include a new read-only accountID property.
The Video object now contains an array property named renditions. For each dynamic delivery rendition of a video, the renditions property holds the URL (path to the asset), encoding rate, frame height and width, and size. This property is in addition to the existing flvURL property which remains with the same behavior. To access the renditions property, you need to use an API token that is enabled for outputting video URLs.
You can now set geo-filtering properties using the Media API, enabling you to restrict playback of videos to the countries you select. Read more.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 between the Brightcove 3.1.1 release on December 18, 2008 and the Brightcove 3.1.2 release on February 5, 2009.
Brightcove now supports geo-restriction at the video level for over 240 countries in the ISO-3166 standard list for publishers who have purchased the Quova Geo-Filtering Module. Previously, we supported geo-restriction for a limited list of 25 countries. Read more.
A new method in the player API, loadModules(), enables custom player components that you develop to access the Player API. Read more.
If we have identified your Brightcove account as Japan-based, then users of the Brightcove Studio will see date and time scheduling information in Japan Standard Time (JST), rather than Eastern Standard Time.
We now apply smoothing to your uploaded thumbnail and still images when they are displayed in a Brightcove player. This will provide cleaner presentation of images that need to be scaled when they are loaded into a player.
Formerly, a remote asset served by progressive download had to be defined with the exact URL of the remote asset file. Now, you can use a URL that re-directs to the location of the remote file. For example, suppose your remote file's URL is http://video.example.com/MyMovie.flv. Formerly, the value of the remote-url attribute of the remote-asset element for this video would have to have been http://video.example.com/MyMovie.flv. Now, instead, the remote-url attribute can use a URL that re-directs to the location of the video, such as http://host.example.com/servlet.jsp?id=12345.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 between the Brightcove 3.1 release on December 6, 2008 and the Brightcove 3.1.1 release on December 17, 2008.
We have discontinued the Brightcove Network and Brightcove.TV. Publishers using the Brightcove Network have the option to upgrade their accounts to Brightcove Basic. For more information, see:
We have added five new standard player templates that you can access in the Publishing module. These new player templates are described, with working examples, on the Player Templates page. The new templates use a variety of default aspect ratios, sizes, and navigation controls and can easily be customized.
Players loaded via a secure connection (HTTPS) will no longer receive a security warning from Internet Explorer. The Brightcove 3 JavaScript publishing code has been modified to support the "Secure Connection" property in Flash Player. This setting is used by the Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Internet Explorer to prevent security warnings from appearing when loading trusted content into a Flash application (in this case a Brightcove player) in a secure web page. Note: to take advantage of this new change, publishers will need to update their JavaScript publishing code. See Publishing a Brightcove player on an HTTPS page for more information.
The image capture tool in the Media module now works for all progressive download and streaming video assets. It does not work for remote streaming assets.
You can now preview players in the Media module.
A new method in the Player API, setRenditionSelectionCallback, can be used to specify which of the available dynamic delivery renditions to play in the player. For more information, see Selecting Dynamic Delivery Renditions.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 between the Brightcove 3.0.3 release on November 13, 2008 and the Brightcove 3.1 release on December 6, 2008.
BEML, Brightcove's markup language for creating custom player templates, has been enhanced with these new components:
Shortly after the next release, we'll be adding several new standard player templates that you can access in the Publishing module.
In addition to providing ActionScript documentation for our Player APIs, we've packaged all the relevant parts of the API into a SWC. The SWC provides a manifestation of a more formal Player SDK that can be integrated into Flash IDEs. By importing this SWC into their Flash IDEs (such as Adobe Flash or Flex Builder), Flash and Flex developers can easily integrate Brightcove's player API libraries, making custom player development easier. Read more.
Brightcove now supports image capture for both progressive download content and for streaming assets that you encoded to VP6 (FLV) before uploading them to Brightcove. In the near future, we expect to support image capture for all progressive download and streaming content.
You can generate new types of reports in the Brightcove Studio. The reports now available include:
On the Account Settings page in the Brightcove Studio, you can set a custom domain name to use in player URLs.
A new Profile page in the Brightcove Studio lets you review your account information and user profile and edit your user name, login name, and password.
Previously, if you use the Brightcove Enterprise media sharing feature, you needed to explicitly approve each incoming shared video before it is added to your media library. With this release, you now have the option of automatically accepting all incoming shared videos.
Brightcove 3 players can now traffic DoubleClick Rich Media and Video (formerly DoubleClick Motif) ads. Brightcove supports DoubleClick Rich Media and Video ads with these Brightcove player templates: Compact Tabbed 3.0, Tabbed 3.0, Widescreen with Horizontal List 3.0, and Video Player.
Brightcove now provides an ad tag translator for 24/7 Real Media OAS. Brightcove's out of the box ad translator supports trafficking ads in a publisher's Brightcove 3 players from 24/7 Real Media's Open Ad Stream (OAS) ad server.
The Brightcove user documentation at help.brightcove.com no longer requires you to sign in with a Brightcove username and password.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 between the general release of Brightcove 3 in September 2008 and the Brightcove 3.0.3 release on November 13, 2008.
You can make videos and playlists from your Brightcove Media Library publicly available to your audience as RSS feeds available at simple URLs. For more information, see Publishing RSS Feeds.
In the Player API, the Experience Module has a new method, getReady. The getReady method returns true if the player's templateReady event has fired.
In the Media API create_video method, a new optional argument, preserve_source_rendition, lets you upload an H.264 video file and preserve the uploaded source file as one of the renditions created for dynamic delivery. For more information, see Creating Videos for Dynamic Delivery: Creating videos with H.264 source files.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 between our beta release in June 2008 and the general release of Brightcove 3 in September 2008.
In preparation for our move from beta to general availability, the URL of the Brightcove Studio has changed. The new URL is https://studio3.brightcove.com.
The Brightcove Studio includes a new User Accounts screen that you can use to add new users and set their roles and permissions.
The Brightcove Studio includes a new Reports screen that you can use to generate reports about video performance and video bandwidth use.
Favorite playlists. We've changed the way you work with playlists in the Media module. You can now mark the playlists you work with most often as "Favorites." Instead of listing all of your playlists in the navigation pane, the Media module now lists only your favorites. This makes it easier to locate and work with the playlists you actually spend time with. You can of course still access all of your playlists in the Media module datagrid and find them with the search field.
"Most popular" playlists. There are two new types of smart playlists. You can now create smart playlists ordered by the videos' total plays and number of plays in the trailing week.
H.264 support. Brightcove 3 supports delivery of videos in H.264 (MP4) format, as well as VP6 (FLV). When you upload a non-FLV video, you can choose whether to transcode it as H.264 or VP6. You can also choose to keep a high-quality H.264 upload as one of your video's dynamic delivery renditions.
Quick video publishing. The new quick video publishing feature gives you a fast and easy way to publish single videos. Without leaving the Media module, you can select a video, select a single-video player, and get the publishing code you need to publish a player with that video.
Image capture. With the image capture tool in the Media module, you can play back a video and capture a frame to use as a thumbnail or video still image.
Player template management. The Publishing module displays and enables you to manage your player templates, as well as your players. You can also create a duplicate of a custom player template, preserving the original.
Custom player template creation. For Brightcove Pro and Enterprise publishers, the Publishing module now gives access to BEML, an XML-based system for creating and modifying custom player templates.
Analytics SWF. In the Publishing module, you can assign to a player a custom SWF to interact with web analytics services.
Default viral player. You can select a single-video player as the default viral player for your account.
Player language options. In the Publishing module, you can localize the texts in Brightcove players to your choice of English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, or Spanish. The email template used in the "Email to a friend" feature matches the language you choose. In addition, you can create your own custom texts to use other languages or just change the wording in the standard texts.
New Widescreen Player Template. We've added a new standard player template, the Widescreen with Horizontal List 3.0 player template. This template uses a 16:9 aspect ration and accepts a single playlist.
Menu and control options. You have more options in how you configure viewer menus and controls in the video player, including the options presented when a video is paused or completes play. You can display thumbnails and links for related videos, newest videos, or most popular videos.
Tremor Acudeo integration. Brightcove Basic publishers can integrate with the Tremor Acudeo ad network.
Player preview. You can now preview your players in the Advertising module.
Custom player template development with BEML. We have introduced BEML, an XML-based approach to creating and modifying custom player templates. BEML is available to Brightcove Pro and Enterprise customers.
RSS output. You can now choose whether the Media API methods output is in JSON or Media RSS format.
Cue points. Using either the Media API or batch provisioning, you can add cue points to your videos.
Ad server integrations. Brightcove Pro and Enterprise publishers can use new Ad Tag Translators to integrate with DART for Publishers, DART Enterprise, or ADTECH. Additional Ad Tag Translators are in the works; in addition, documentation is available to help you develop your own.
Ad SWF support. The Brightcove Ad APIs enable creation of SWF-format ads for integration with SWF-based ad networks like Google, VideoEgg, and YuMe.
External ads. We've made enhancements to the Brightcove Ad APIs so that you can run external ads that display outside the real estate of the player.
Here's a summary of changes we made to Brightcove 3 in our beta release in June 2008.
In March, Brightcove 3 Beta had three separate UI modules. The June 2008 release of Brightcove 3 Beta unifies the separate UI modules into a single consistent application, which enables you to move smoothly between these modules:
We've changed the names of some of our features:
We've greatly enhanced the functionality of the Media module. Now, not only can you upload videos and organize them into playlists, but you can also use the Media module to easily add playlists to your players, for those players that support playlists. In addition, you can:
The single biggest change from the Brightcove Console to the Media module is the way you upload videos. In the Brightcove Console, we used the concept of the title. A title was a collection of assets (video file, thumbnail, still image, preview) and metadata, and you were required to upload your assets first, and then group them together into a title. With the Media module, we've streamlined this workflow. You now upload a video, which now only requires a video file and a name. You can still add other metadata and images to your video, but the basic upload process is cleaner and faster.
In the Publishing module, the Edit Styles view gives you a WYSIWYG canvas to customize the components of your players. Depending on the components that are available in the player, you can set images and change colors. In addition, you can set video bumpers at the player level.
The Compact Tabbed Navigation 3.0 player template is now slightly larger, to better accommodate standard ad formats. This player was formerly 790 x 529 and is now 798 x 603.
Brightcove players now by default include a Brightcove icon in the player control bar. You can use the Publishing module to remove this icon from your players if you wish.
The Advertising module now enables setting ad request policies for players, not just videos. For your players, you can set ad request frequency, ad insertion points (on load, pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll) and set different key/value pairs for each insertion point. In addition, you can now:
Brightcove 3 Beta provides dynamic delivery. This feature improves viewer experience by enabling you to deliver videos with the resolution and bit rate that best matches the viewer’s connection speed. With this feature, you can upload video files in most popular video formats and Brightcove automatically transcodes them into four separate renditions encoded at different bit rates and sizes. The Brightcove player automatically selects the highest quality rendition that the viewer’s download connection speed can support, taking into account the rendition’s resolution and bit rate.
We've re-designed our user documentation and written a lot more of it. Help & Community is organized into a Publisher Center and a Developer Center. You can access it from the Brightcove 3 Beta application or directly at http://help.brightcove.com .
We've added the getReferrerURL method to the Brightcove Player API (formerly referred to as the Experience API). You can use this method to get the referring page for the page that contains the player.
We've added write methods to the Brightcove Media API (formerly referred to as the Library API). You can now use the create_video, update_video, and delete_video methods to create, modify, or remove videos in your Brightcove account. You can also use the create_playlist, update_playlist, and delete_playlist methods to work with playlists in your Brightcove account.
There's been a minor change in three read methods of the Media API. Previously, in the methods find_related_videos, find_videos_by_user_id and find_videos_by_campaign_id, if you passed null or false for the get_item_count argument, the value returned for the total_count property would be 0. This behavior was inconsistent with the behavior of other related methods. Now, in this circumstance, the value returned for the total_count property is -1. (BC-13332)