What's New? (1.0.1 Final Release Candidate)

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

• OVA for AS3 v1.1 RC1
• OVA for JW Player 5 v1.1 RC1 (required JW5.7 or higher)
• OVA for Flowplayer v1.1 RC1

1. Change Summary

• #442 - Changed the [embed] code to ensure that the code compiles with Flex 4.6 and runs with Flash 9.
• OVA for Flowplayer now builds against Flowplayer 3.2.10 with Flex 4.6
• Modified the build process for OVA for Flowplayer so that it is completely self-contained. The Flowplayer devkit is no longer required to build the source.
• #445 - 'player.showBusyIcon' option added to allow the "ova busy" sign to not be shown
• #446 - play() API added to OVA
• Companions "html5" option renamed to "nativeDisplay": false - default setting is "true" (backward compatibility maintained)
• "nativeDisplay":false option added to "ads" to allow an external library to be used if requested for HTML5 non-linear ad display. Default is "nativeDisplay":true - this option will override companions setting and can be used for companions as well
• VASTController.processCompanionsExternally() renamed to VASTController.processCompanionDisplayExternally()
• #448 - OVA for JW5 - "controls.anchorNonLinearToBottom" option added to allow VPAID non-linear ads to be anchored to the bottom of the display (appearing over the control bar)
• #451 - Fixed defect stopping forced impressions firing for VAST2 wrapped tags with a linear template ad
• #438 - Corrected the logic that was checking if the non-linear VPAID ad was playing or not - this was incorrectly returning false causing VPAID non-linear ads to be reinitialised
• #436 - OVA for Flowplayer - onError not firing for bad stream URLs
• Upgraded Flowplayer package to include 3.2.11 (Flash 10.1 minimum requirement although OVA still builds to a baseline of Flash 9)
• #453 - SkipAd bug fixed where pause/resume automatically displayed the skipAd button regardless of whether or not it was active via the "showAfterSeconds" option
• #452 - OVA for Flowplayer Bitrate Selection plugin now works with OVA ad clips - OVA now sets an empty bitrate array on ad clips to ensure compatibility - Bitrate select plugin "menu" option will not work until a new version of bitrateselect plugin is released
• #444 - Support added for AdTech extension event that tracks Click to Play and Auto start
• #459 - Fixed bug stopping wrapped on-demand linear ad does not play OVA for Flowplayer - the first ad was being taken on the returned template and at times, that ad may actually be a holding companion or an empty ad
• #460 - Flash content now loaded in it's own ApplicationDomain() as per the VPAID spec - was throwing an exception on SpotXChange ads
• #461 - Fixed wrapper issue that meant that a pre-roll wasn't correctly matched if a wrapper had an empty non-linear ad block as well as the linear template
• #458 - Example added for Emediate.
• #457 - Example added for adRise.
• #437 - Support expandable regions that map to the standard and expanded dimensions provided in a VAST response - best for VPAID ads to ensure that the region doesn't cover the full player display.
• #463 - OVA for JW5 only - Fix implemented for V4 control bars to ensure that 0 not shown in the timeline during show stream pause (work-around for logic issue in V4 control bar block() code).
• #464 - onAdCall methods made into Javascript callbacks. onAdCallFailover() event added, hasAds value added to onAdCallComplete() callback and sequence number added to all ad requests passed in onAdCall callbacks
• #434 - preferred display mode preference bug
• #456 - validate conversion of depreciated "close button" options
• #447 - Flowplayer 3.2.10 and delayed startup issue
• #449 - Javascript ad object needs impression/tracking info
• #468 - VPAID ads not fire the "collapse" tracking event when their expanded state changes to collapsed
• USE_EMBEDDED_JAVASCRIPT VASTController constant added to allow experimental embedded Javascript code to be turned on
• #435 - OVA for Flowplayer force mid-roll playback if user skips on control bar (new option "ads.enforeMidRollPlayback" added)
• #469 - VideoAd.toJSObject() is throwing an exception with spotXchange VPAID ad
• #465 - OVA for JW5: player.play() can now be used to start player playback even if the pre-roll is a VPAID ad

2. Open Tickets in Development

• #466 - Add support for VPAID regions to be declared via the "region" option at an ad slot level
• Extend VPAID scaling test cases
• Update support documentation

3. Stopping the "OVA Busy" icon from showing

When OVA (for JW) makes an ad call, the JW Player "buffering" sign is shown. This behaviour can be stopped via the showBusyIcon configuration option as follows:

{
    "player": {
         "showBusyIcon": false
    },
    "ads": {
         ....
}

An example of this option in action can be found  here.

4. Enabling AdTech support for "Click to Play/Autoplay" tracking

Support has been added to OVA 1.1 RC1 Build 4 for the AdTech VAST extensions that cover tracking for "click to play" or "autoplay" actions.

A VAST response that includes these extensions appears as follows:

<Extensions>
       <Extension type="ad_playtype">
                http://adserver.adtech.de/dtrack/3/25.15/3520003/0/0/AdId=7041812;CreativeId=28013;BnId=1;dnPlayType=myplaytype
       </Extension>
</Extensions>

When OVA receives a VAST response with these extensions, the OVA "transformation" process can be used to replace the keyword "myplaytype" with either "CTP" or "AUTO" as per the AdTech requirements.

The value to replace "myplaytype" with has to be specified in the OVA configuration structure using the "transformers" option as follows:

{ 
    "ads": {
         "schedule": [
              {
                  "position": "pre-roll",
                  "server": {
                       "tag": "http://adserver.adtech.de/?advideo/3.0...vidAS=pre_roll;vidRT=VAST_APVSCL;vidRTV=2.0.1",
                       "transformers": [ { "pattern": "myplaytype", "command": "g", "replace": "CTP" } ]
                  }
              }
         ]
    },
    ....

Transformers are a list of regular expressions to be applied across the VAST response once OVA has obtained it from the ad server.

The structure of the "transformers" config option is as follows:

• It must be an array of Objects specifying the patterns to match and values to replace
• Each "transformer" should specify a "pattern", "command" and "replace" attribute - the components of a regular expression to be applied to the VAST response
• OVA takes each "transformer" and applies it to the VAST response to replace values as specified

In the config example above, a single "transformer" is specified - it forms the regex "/myplaytype/CTP/g".

An example of this config option can be seen running  here.

5. getPlugin("ova").play()

The following plugin API has been implemented in OVA for JW5 and OVA for Flowplayer to trigger playback of all pre-roll types (including VPAID pre-rolls).

[player].getPlugin("ova").play()