XMPie Video Service Release Notes

1. Added: It is now possible to customize not only video assets (image, sound or video), but also properties (shape, object position, fill color, stroke color, object size, opacity, rotation, etc.). This significantly enhances the designer’s creative abilities, allowing the designer to generate dynamic visualizations like charts, graphs and maps.
2. Added: A new type of tag has been added – Visibility. This tag controls the visibility of the objects to which the tag is assigned. 
3. Added: It is now possible to generate assets, such as image, audio or video files, to be used in the videos, using the assets webhook.
   There are several types of asset webhooks: Simple, Custom, Personalia and Text to Speech.
4. Added: The new analytics webhook enables connectivity with third-party analytic systems.
5. Added: During the CSV upload, XVS now collects the records which have errors and combines them into a new error CSV file. This file can be easily downloaded, fixed, and uploaded back to XVS.
6. Added: Support for Adobe CC-2024.
7. Added: Support for macOS Sonoma (version 14).
8. Enhancement: The upload speed of the CSV file to XVS is now 10 times faster than before.
9. Enhancement: Several security issues have been improved.
10. Deprecated: The tab and semicolon delimiters in CSV files are no longer supported. Use the comma delimiter instead.
11. Fixes: Various bug fixes and improvements.
    

Version 1.9.7 (July 23, 2023)

1.  Added: Viewing progress report. Using this report you can assess the engagement of the viewer, the percentage of the video viewed and which segments get more views. This information is available in a chart in the Analytics tab and also available via the API. Read more

Version 1.9.6 (June 25, 2023)

1. Enhancement: Improved performance of rendering.
2. Bug fixes.

Version 1.9.5 (March 26, 2023)

1. Enhancement: Improved performance of on-demand HLS rendering. Individual on-demand video rendering now takes 30 seconds less on average.
2. API change: There is no longer a need to add the createHLS parameter in the « Create Record and Render » and « Create all Records » APIs. The HLS will be created at all times. There is no need to change the existing code, since this parameter will be ignored.

Version 1.9.4 (February 13, 2023)

1. This is a maintenance release th       at fixes several issues.

Version 1.9.3 (December 5, 2022)

1. Added: Support for Adobe CC-2023.
2. Added: Support for macOS Ventura (version 13) for uMerge Video plugin.

Version 1.9.2 (October 20, 2022)

1. Added: Premium plan customers can choose how to divide the server resources between on-demand rendering to batch rendering. For example, 25% of the resources can be allocated to batch rendering only, 25% to on-demand rendering only, and 50% to both on-demand or batch rendering.
   Dividing server resources is important for cases when big batches are running and you wish on-demand requests to be handled immediately.
2. Fixed: Various bug fixes.

Version 1.9.1 (August 22, 2022)

1. Added: It is now possible to use Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) in your Text-to-Speech request to allow for more customization in your audio assets. Examples include pauses, pronunciation of acronyms, abbreviations, dates, times, whispering, and more.
2. Enhancement: Security improvements.
3. Fixed: Various bug fixes.

Version 1.9 (May 29, 2022)

1. Enhancement: In After Effects, it is no longer required to drag the composition to be rendered to the Render queue.
   The composition should simply be selected in the Deploy dialog box.
2. Fixed: Various bug fixes.

Version 1.8.10 (March 28, 2022)

1. Fixed: Various bug fixes.

Version 1.8.9 (March 7, 2022)

1. Added: A new option has been added to the uMerge Video plugin menu, which enables to remove variable data from a project, resulting in disconnection of the project from uMerge Video.
2. Improved: You can now upload or link a data source while omitting tags that are not used in the project.
3. Fixed: Improved stability for large batches of video rendering.
4. Fixed: Fixed performance degradation over time of large batches.
5. Fixed: Faster filtering in the dashboard.
6. Fixed: Various bug fixes.

Version 1.8.8 (November 15, 2021)

1. Added: The analytics visits chart now shows the number of unique playbacks of both MP4 and HLS records.
2. Added: Support for Adobe CC-2022.
3. Fixed: Various bug fixes.

Version 1.8.7 (October 5, 2021)

1.  Added: New XVS player for HLS videos.
   The new player can either be hosted by XVS, or embedded in your website. Read more
2. Added: XMPie’s XVS player for HLS videos provides various parameters that configure the video display:
   — poster: Specifies an image to be shown while the video is downloading, or until the user hits the play button.
   — autoplay: Specifies that the video will start playing as soon as it is ready.
   — fullscreen, height and width: Set the size of the displayed video.
   — loop: Specifies that the video will start over again every time it is finished.
   — muted: Specifies that the audio output of the video should be muted.
   — controls: Specifies that video controls should be displayed.

Version 1.8.6 (September 12, 2021)

1. Enhancement: The HLS  URL has been changed for GDPR purposes.
2. Fixed: various bugs.

Version 1.8.5 (August 1, 2021)

1. Important!  With the release of this version, older uMerge Video plugins will no longer work.
   In order to continue working on existing and future projects, please download and install version 1.8.5.
2. Added: Support for upload of image sequence footage.
3. Added: It is now possible to upload all assets in the assets folder, or just assets used in the data source.
4. Enhancement: Security improvements.
5. Fixed:  Various bugs.

Version 1.8 (June 6, 2021)

1. Added: New templates have been added for easy embedding of MP4 and HLS personalized videos in webpages.
   If you are creating XMPL HTML pages using XMPie’s XMPL technology, use the MP4 XMPL or HLS XMPL samples.
2. Added: Text-to-Speech technology (TTS).
   This technology enables text to be converted into speech audio imitative of the human voice.
   Using TTS it is now possible to automatically convert dynamic text, composed from the record tag values, into dynamic audio assets, and embed these assets in personalized videos. It is no longer needed to manually record each dynamic audio file.
   This functionality can be carried out in XVS using the new Text-to-Speech webhook.
3. Added: Circle trigger webhook.
   This webhook triggers a Circle touchpoint following completion of the rendering process. For example, sending an email with the video URL to each of the recipients.
4. Enhancement: Improved performance due to efficient rendering of reusable elements.
5. Enhancement: Improved asset security and management.

Version 1.7 (March 14, 2021)

1. Added: HLS adaptive bitrate is now rendered by default, in addition to MP4. No action is required from the user.
2. Added: Optimization of segment rendering . As a result, the user no longer needs to upload a short recipient list prior to rendering the full list.
3. Fixed: Improved stability for large batches of video rendering.
4. Enhancement: Tuning of HLS bitrate video quality.
5. Added: Two webhooks have been added. One before rendering starts and one when rendering fails. These complement the existing render-done-successfully webhook.
6. Enhancement: Copying the URL is possible even during rendering. This allows to embed the URL into the email design while rendering still takes place.
7. Fixed: In some scenarios, rendering count analytics was imprecise.

Version 1.6 (January 17, 2021)

1. Added: Adaptive bitrate streaming to support low reception cellular or wifi networks.
   It is now possible to generate HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) output format. HLS is an HTTP-based adaptive bitrate streaming communications protocol developed by Apple Inc, and it is currently the most popular streaming protocol.
2. Added: An HLS player has been added for viewing videos in HLS format.
3. Added: The API documentation has been enhanced. It is now more detailed and includes examples. See XMPie Video Service API
4. Added: Support for additional Mac operating systems. uMerge plugin now supports MacOS 10.14 – Mojave, Mac OS 10.15 – Catalina, and Mac OS 11 – Big Sur.
5. Fixed: Improved stability of rendering step.

Version 1.5 (November 9, 2020)

1. Added: A new Copy URL function, which enables to quickly copy the personalized video URL to be inserted into an email, HTML page or SMS, has now been added.
2.  Fixed: Improved stability and performance of rendering step.

Version 1.4.1 (October 19, 2020)

1. Fixed: The value of a video tag can now contain line breaks, and can be inserted as paragraph text to the video project.

Version 1.4 (June 29, 2020)

1. Added: GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) solution.
   XVS provides the following means to comply with GDPR regulations:
   • Ability to delete an individual record.
   • Ability to download an individual movie.
   • Ability to limit the period of time during which the project info resides on the XVS service. To do so, send an email to XVSSupport@xmpie.com
   • Ability to download the recipient list. To do so, send an email to XVSSupport@xmpie.com
   • All data is stored on AWS Europe.
2. As part of GDPR support, XVS has been migrated to a new site: dashboard-eu.xmpvs.com
   The old service, located at prod.xmpvs.com, will only support projects created in XVS version 1.3 or below.
   The new service will support projects created in XVS version 1.4 and above.
3. Known issue: After Effects plugin supports only the English version of Adobe Creative Cloud.