Mediasite Video Platform 7.6 Release Notes

Implemented more security best practices in Deliver, specifically removing some HTTP headers in the responses.

Improved the performance of the What's Being Watched page in Management Portal.

Improved the Zoom meeting import process to import the meeting video into Mediasite as soon as it is ready. If Zoom's automatic transcript is enabled for the meeting, the transcript will automatically be retrieved once it is available.

Added a more configurable Zoom integration. Based on customer feedback, Mediasite now integrates with Zoom using OAuth. This type of authorization allows the Zoom administrator to specify the scope of permissions Mediasite integration is granted. Integrating Mediasite with Zoom using OAuth is recommended. Existing JWT integrations can be converted to use OAuth.

Improved the performance of the Roles resource in the WebApi.

Improved the bulk catalog conversion to channels by moving the processing to the job farm. The user will be able to navigate away from the page immediately after submitting the list of catalogs to convert.

Reduced the log noise in Deliver by changing the log level of client disconnections to Informational instead of Error.

Improved the live content ingestion process into Deliver to correct for rounding errors due to the Smooth Streaming timescale.

Moved the processing of the Login Audit Export into an asynchronous job that will update progress back to the page while building the file for download.

Improved the delete menu on folder options in Management Portal to make it clear that the folder is being deleted.

Improved the publishing tab in Management Portal to also include information about the feeds the presentation, or any of its shortcuts, is contained in.

Added protection to the Who's Watching Now dialog to avoid degrading overall system performance. As a general rule, the use of this dialog during a live event should be limited.

Added a new Audio Transcription Template for 3Play Media (Rest API). When using the Automatic Speech Recognition service level, a confidence score will be calculated. The score can be used to determine if the results should be displayed as captions. The confidence score can be found in the Caption Editor.

Updated the Canvas oEmbed workflow to no longer include "url" and "endpoint" parameters as they are no longer necessary after a recent Canvas update.

In anticipation of catalogs being deprecated, added the ability to convert custom and publishing catalogs to channels.

Improved the user experience in Mediasite Channels including:

• Added a lock icon to identify presentations that are only visible to the owner.
• Improved the display of comments for channels with registration enabled to show the registered user's name instead of their email address.

Added a Publishing channel type which is available on the presentation publish tab. Presentations can be added and removed from channels using the publishing workflow in Management Portal and My Mediasite. Terms and Conditions can be setup for Publishing channels.

Added optional subfolder navigation to channels linked to a folder. A back button was added as part of the new navigation to help traverse up the folder structure from a presentation.

Improved how the watch list is populated to be more context aware. A hint indicates how the content was selected.

Added the ability to distribute fragmented MP4 files.

Improved scalability for large-scale live broadcasts by supporting conditional requests for live media stream fragments.

Increased the ability to scale by reducing the CPU utilization during live broadcasts.

Improved Deliver logging including:

• Added request summary to live trace logs.
• Synchronzing the header fields across trace and segment logs.
• Prevented extraneous log entries in the trace log.

Added additional Performance Monitor counters to MVP, Deliver, job farm, and Search servers via templates. The counters will to a log file with a capped file size. The Perfmon counters will be enabled by default.

Improved presentation export and import processing to include audio description content if available on presentation.

Added a new Audio Transcription Template for Verbit (Rest API). When using the Automatic Speech Recognition service level, a confidence score will be calculated. The score can be used to determine if the results should be displayed as captions. The confidence score can be found in the Caption Editor.

Updated the optical character recognition library used by Mediasite. This is an initial step in the development of a unified worker.

The OCR worker must be installed on Windows Server 2016 or Windows Server 2019. As of 7.6.0 Windows Server 2012 R2 will not be a supported operating system for the OCR worker. Note, the 7.4.0 version of the OCR worker has been tested with and is compatible with 7.6.0.

Improved the security when logging into Mediasite by only allowing credentials to be sent over an encrypted connection. In the past this was configurable.

Added more diagnostic information to the Authentication Troubleshooting logging related to SAML IdP metadata.

Updated the Blackboard Native LTI integration to use updated endpoints in the Blackboard REST API.

Dramatically simplified quiz result submission to the LMS. Now quiz takers will submit their quiz results to the LMS at the conclusion of their quiz. There will no longer be a need for the grader to find and post the quiz results.

Improved the user experience when Mediasite content is embedded in Canvas, Brightspace, and Moodle (requires the 2020082700 or later version of the Mediasite Content Module for Moodle) to allow full screen playback of content.

Added protection to the What's Being Watched page to avoid degrading overall system performance. As a general rule, the use of this page during a live event should be limited.

Improved Showcase spotlight channel management by displaying the currently selected channel when updating the spotlight channel.

Added protection to the AAC encoding settings to prevent them from be accidentally removed from Mediasite.

Added the ability to configure a default page or route when an unknown application is loaded. This will allow administrators to display a specific content collection or other page when an undefined route is entered.

Improved the paging controls in Management Portal to allow navigation directly to any page in the list of pages. This is similar to the paging controls in My Mediasite.

Improved change detection logic in Management Portal to eliminate extraneous "You will lose any unsaved changes if you navigate away. Continue?" prompts when navigating away from a page when no changes have been made.

Added audits for specific presentation updates including when the media is reset, changes to presentation state or status, content items being added or status updated, and when the current revision is updated.

Improved presentation management to avoid accidentally resetting the media on a live presentation.

Tightened the integration between My Mediasite and Management Portal by including links to the partner application on the presentation summary page. This will help users in Management Portal, for example, who would like to edit quizzes or captions which are available in My Mediasite.

Improved the user experience managing and publishing feeds in Management Portal. Highlights include:

• Support for popular feed tools/platforms.
• Simplified management of encoding settings by adding a system encoding setting for podcasts.
• Added the option to automatically add podcast/vodcast delivery to presentations in the feed.
• Added additional metadata needed for some podcasting platforms.
• Added the option to include sub-folders in the feed.
• Added the ability to review the podcast/vodcast delivery for all the presentations included in the feed.

Enhanced the usefulness of the system message by adding support for marking down the text in the message. The system message displays in My Mediasite and Management Portal.

Added page-specific titles to My Mediasite, this makes the history under the browser back button much more useful.

Added sorting options to selection dialogs in My Mediasite. For example, when selecting a folder to move a presentation to the user can now sort A-Z, Z-A, newest first, or oldest first.

Improved the usability of lists in My Mediasite by duplicating the paging controls at the bottom of the list.

Improved the ability to find presentations in My Mediasite by adding more specific filtering options to the source filter including Mediasite Mosaic (macOS), Mediasite Mosaic (Windows), and External Video.

Improved the user workflows for favoriting a shared folder or channel in My Mediasite. Added an option to remove an item from the favorites list. Added an option to favorite a channel or shared folder on the respective summary page.

Several improvements were made to caption editor found in My Mediasite.

• The caption list will automatically scroll to keep the current caption in view.
• Added the ability to click and drag the timeline cursor to seek within the presentation.
• Improved the usability by displaying the current time near the playback controls.
• Added the ability to zoom the time scale to help with precision editing.

Improved the ability to share a channel in an LMS by showing the LTI sharing link on the channel summary page.

Improved the responsiveness at higher resolutions for My Mediasite and channels. There are three new breakpoints at 1440, 1700, and 1900 pixels wide to utilize the full-screen size.

Improved the presentation sharing user experience by making the buttons that affect security clearer.

Continued to improve compliance with more WCAG success criteria across My Mediasite. Some areas of focus include:

• Non-Text Contrast - States of User Interface Components (1.4.11)
• Color Contrast (regular text) (1.4.3)
• Content on Hover or Focus (1.4.13)
• Name, Role, Value (4.1.2)

Updated the Choose your Capture App page in My Mediasite to make it clear that Mediasite Mosaic is the recommended capture app.

Added the presentation Id to the Content Storage Report, similar to many of the other reports in Mediasite Analytics.

Updated the presentation page in Showcase to show the links that have been added to the presentation.

Continued to improve compliance with more WCAG success criteria across Showcase. Some areas of focus include:

• Keyboard access to all actionable elements (2.1)
• Screenreader call-outs for all actionable elements (2.4)
• Color contrast ratios (1.4.3)

Showcase Custom Themes created prior to 7.6.0 may no longer function properly. Custom themes for the Showcase, in general, are not guaranteed to work properly from version to version, as updated functionality and html markup can change how pages are displayed. Custom Themes should always be revisited after each upgrade to ensure they continue to function properly. In version 7.6.0, the Showcase underwent a large scale architecture change with many fundamental changes to how its content is laid out. As a result, custom themes may need to be re-created. Best practice will be to set all showcases back to the Clean Theme while new themes can be created.

Added read-only diagnostic database views that can be used by on premise customers at the direction of Sonic Foundry Customer Care.

Improved the security auditing functionality to include Registration logins when Enable Login Audits are configured for either successful or failed attempts.

Completed the previously announced deprecation of Recorder Control Center.

Simplified the license check in Mediasite to only require reactivation related to upgrades on a major upgrade, from 7.x to 8.x for example.

Improved the user experience when adding HiHaHo external videos to Mediasite. When a HiHaHo video is added Mediasite will retrieve the title, description, and thumbnail to help create the presentation more quickly.

Improved the user experience when uploading a video in Management Portal to automatically provide feedback as the video is processed while staying on the page.

Updated the names used for some features to be more inclusive, for example Mediasite now uses the term "allow list".

Improved the Security Audit tracking and exporting feature to include the configuration in Management Portal instead of System Manager. Also, added a configurable retention policy, and the ability to exclude job farm audits. Additionally, logins via Registration are now being included in the audits.

Added the ability to share report results using the WebApi using the AuthorizationTickets endpoint. To mimic the Management Portal behavior, set the ticket's Username property to whoever is sharing the report.

Added the ability to manage Publishing channels using the WebApi.