What's New? (1.0.1 Release Candidate 2)

The following versions have been issued as "release candidates".

• OVA for AS3 v1.0.1 RC2
• OVA for JW Player 5 v1.0.1 RC2 (required JW5.6 or higher)
• OVA for Flowplayer v1.0.1 RC2

The RC2 release note follows on from the 1.0.1 RC1 release note.

1. Bug Fixes

• Ticket #356 - Reopened ticket to fix bug stopping VAST 2 <AdParameters> being passed into non-linear VPAID ads - parser code error stopped value from being extracted - resolved.
• Upgraded GAFlash to v1.1.0.468 and optimised to reduce SWF size
• Ticket #371 - "addParamsToTrackingURL" option added to Google Analytics config to allow params to be turned off when tracking URL is formed
• Ticket #372 - "useDefaultPaths" option added to allow default paths to be turned off and effectively selectively track specific events by only specifying custom paths for those to be tracked
• Ticket #374 - added Security.allowDomain("*") to OVA for JW SWF to stop security issues with API calls when the JW Player swf is hosted on a different domain to the web page
• Ticket #375 - Added additional code to NetworkResource to ensure that VAST URLs are always clean after parsing (e.g. no newlines, spaces in front of the http etc.)
• Ticket #376 - Fixed issue where Custom Properties on a clip were being dropped by OVA in JWPlaylistItem
• Ticket #378 - OVA for Flowplayer "delayed" startup ad notice repositioning bug fixed - overlay controller was not being reset after "delayed" startup
• Ticket #380 - added a second, safety "SN" cuepoint in OVA for Flowplayer at 1 second to ensure that if the first < 1000 millisecond SN cuepoint doesn't fire (because of a Flowplayer bug), the second one seems to always fire at 1 second
• Set the initial cuepoint offset to 100 milliseconds for OVA for JW5
• Added tracking point offset to SN event because it was not firing as a cuepoint at 0 with OVA for Flowplayer
• Ticket #365 - OVA for JW5 only - buffering icon shown when ad tags and Linear VPAID ads are loading
• Ticket #379 - OVA for Flowplayer - RTMP playlist clips now work - netConnectionURL was not being correctly set if the clip was declared in a Flowplayer playlist
• Moved OVA for Flowplayer release package to use Flowplayer 3.2.8 as the default
• Ticket #373 - OVA for Flowplayer - Modified the modifyTrackingCuepoints() code to differentiate based on whether or not the "original cuepoints" are stored as an array of array of cuepoints, or just an array of individual cuepoints
• Ticket #383 - OVA for Flowplayer 3.2.8 requires HoldingClips with valid stream URLs - the CDN hosted holding clip is now being used
• OVA for JW5 - Added try/catch around showOVABusy() and Ready()
• Ticket #389 - OVA for Flowplayer - "tag" minimal setting now supports 250x300 default companion as per OVA for JW5
• Ticket #382 - Added "ads.vpaid.enableLinearScaling" and "ads.vpaid.enableNonLinearScaling" options to ensure that OVA triggered "scaling" can be forcibly turned off
• Ticket #393 - Added support for VAST2 "nested" AdParameters because the XSD (but not the written spec) permits the AdParameters to be declared inside a <NonLinearAd> block
• Ticket #396 - Fixed OVA for JW5 buffer so that the buffering sign is not sign for non-linear on-demand ad calls and non-linear VPAID loads
• Added VPAIDNonLinearLoading/Loaded, VPAIDLinearLoading/Loaded events
• Added includesLinearAds() and calledOnDemand() methods to AdCallEvent class
• Cleaned up the build process - ant build files created for OVA for JW5
• Conditional compilation options added to OVA for JW5 and OVA for Flowplayer to remove all debug in a "release" build
• Conditional compilation options added to OVA for AS3 ant build to allow a "release" build without debug and a "minimal" build that strips out a number of components.
• Ticket #395 - OVA for JW5 - Replaced gapro example with updated gapro-2 javascript plugin

2. Changes to Google Analytics Support

2.1 Stopping OVA Params Being Appended To Tracking URLs

It is now possible to stop OVA adding a bunch of parameters to tracking URLs by setting the addParamsToTrackingURL config option to false as follows:

...
               "analytics": {
                   "google": {
                      "custom": {
                          "accountId": "UA-10158120-1",
                          "addParamsToTrackingURL": false,
                          "impressions": {
                             "enable": true
                          }
                      }
                   }
               },
...

This option can be seen in action  here.

2.2 Selective Firing of Tracking Events

It is now possible to only fire tracking events for those that have been declared. The useDefaultPaths option must be set to false as follows:

...
            "analytics": {
                "google": {
	                "custom": {
                        "accountId": "UA-10158120-1",
                        "useDefaultPaths": false,
                        "vpaid": {
                            "enable": true,
                            "started": "/ova-example/vpaid/started",
                            "complete": "/ova-example/vpaid/complete"
                        }
                    }
                }
            },
...

The code snippet above results in only VPAID "started" and "complete" events being tracked.

This option can be seen in action  here.

3. Disabling OVA Initiated Scaling of VPAID ads

If a VAST response has "scalable=true" set, then OVA will automatically attempt to scale the VPAID SWF resource to fit the player dimensions.

At times, this forced scaling impacts the way VPAID ads internally scale often resulting in a VPAID ad not rendering correctly.

It is possible to disable OVA auto-scaling via the following options:

...

      "ads": {
           "vpaid": {
               "enableLinearScaling": false,
               "enableNonLinearScaling": false
           },
           .....

These options can be found in action here -  disabling linear scaling,  disabling non-linear scaling.

4. The New Build Process

A new build process has been introduced in 1.0.1 RC2 to support a degree of customised building of the plugin SWFs and OVA for AS3 library SWC to help reduce the overall size of the compiled file.

Accordingly, the OVA for AS3, OVA for Flowplayer and OVA for JW5 build processes have been moved completely to Ant and the old "shell script" build files (e.g. build.sh etc.) have been removed.

The new Ant build files are always located in the build directory of the distribution package as illustrated by the directory structure below:

ova.as3
    build
        build.properties
        build.xml
    src
        ...
ova.jwplayer.5x
    build
        build.properties
        build.xml
    src
        ...
ova.flowplayer
    build
        build.properties
        build.xml 
    src
        ...

4.1 Installing the OVA Source Files

By default, the OVA build process assumes that the source for all OVA products will be placed in the same workspace. For example, if OVA for AS3, OVA for JW5 and OVA for Flowplayer were all to be built, the following directory structure is assumed by the build files:

workspace
    ova.as3  
         build
         lib
         src
         ....
    ova.flowplayer
         build
         lib
         src
         ....
    ova.jwplayer.5x
         build
         lib
         src
         ....

While it is possible to vary the locations of the packages and customise the build files accordingly (specifically the build.properties files in each distribution), the default structure is recommended.

4.2 Building OVA for AS3

To build OVA for AS3, execute:

ant <command>

from the ova.as3/build directory where command can be any one of the following:

• help - lists all available build commands
• build - does the default build (equivalent to build-debug)
• build-debug - builds a debuggable version of the OVA SWC
• build-release - builds a version of the OVA SWC that excludes any debug output
• build-minimal - builds a minimal version of the OVA SWC that excludes a number of components (see below for details)
• build-deploy - builds a debug version of the OVA SWC and deploys it across the installed OVA products (e.g. OVA for JW5, OVA for Flowplayer)

4.2.1 Customising the Build Properties

Being written

4.2.2 Deploying a Build OVA SWC Library

Being written

4.2.3 Producing a Smaller OVA SWC

Being written