These Release Notes contain a summary of changes made for the July 30-31, 2019 release of EchoVideo. For changes made in previous deployments, see the other Release Notes articles located in this Topic group, or contact support@echo360.com.
Special Notice
4-Week Reminder: End of Life for Classroom & Personal Capture
As you probably know by now, EchoVideo Universal Capture is in general availability for both Mac and Windows, and for Personal and Classroom modes. Universal Capture replaces the existing applications Classroom Capture (CCAP) and Personal Capture (PCAP) for a better and easier capture experience. We are seeing excellent adoption rates for Universal Capture, so it is time to plan for the end of support for the legacy applications.
As was reported in the Release Notes for the 2 July 2019 Deployments, we plan to phase out both technical support and functional support in the platform over the following timeline:
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August 30th, 2019: The download links for both CCAP and PCAP will be removed from the platform. This is also the end of support date for these applications in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). While the applications will likely continue to work for the rest of the year, there will be no support available.
Clients in the EMEA region should plan a full transition to Universal Capture before this time. Clients in other regions can continue to use existing CCAP and PCAP installations but will no longer have the ability to download it.
- January 15th, 2020: This date marks both the end of life and the end of support for these applications globally. As of this date, CCAP and PCAP will cease to work with the EchoVideo platform due to enhancements in the capture pipeline that will only work with Universal Capture.
It is of the utmost importance that all EchoVideo clients complete their transition to Universal Capture by this time.
If you have any questions about your transition to Universal Capture, please contact your EchoVideo representative and see our Universal Capture documentation.
New Features
Zoom Integration is now available EVERYWHERE! The original implementation of the EchoVideo integration with Zoom was available only for US-based institutions. As of this release, Zoom integration is now available for all regions, and all institutions who want to implement it. For integration procedure and information, see Integrating with Zoom.
HLS (HTTP live streaming) is here! EchoVideo has now fully transitioned the way we deliver content, moving from using HTML5 to HLS (HTTP live streaming) for both VOD (video on demand) and Live classes.
What does this mean?
A major benefit with using HLS for Live streaming is that it eliminates the need for Flash when viewing live classes. No more enabling Flash for your browser every time you want to view a Live class!
For video on demand (VOD), media will now be downloaded in chunks during playback rather than downloading the entire video at once. This playback method allows for adaptive bitrate playback (ABR) of content, which dynamically switches between the available quality options depending on your connection speed.
You will also see the following interface changes to the media player:
- The default quality playback option is now "Auto" instead of "1080p". As long as Auto remains selected, the playback quality will dynamically adjust (if necessary) depending on your connection speed.
- Updated Live Classroom and controls.
LMS Video Embed feature now allows for uploading a video for embedding! When using the easy EchoVideo Embed button/option to embed a video into an LMS content window, users now have the option to upload a video to EchoVideo and embed it into the LMS as a single, seamless process. This feature is available on the EchoVideo embed integrations for Blackboard, Brightspace (D2L), Canvas, and Moodle (Sakai coming soon).
Enhancements
The Capture Device software has been separated into two branches: one for current devices (Pod/Pro/UC) and one for legacy devices (PCAP/CCAP/SCHD). To accommodate these changes, the Device Software Update entry included in these release notes will have two entries, indicating the different updated version numbers where applicable.
NOTE: The Device Software Update entry is only included when an update is being deployed; the legacy software version is NOT likely to change often, and it will not be included if there are no updates being deployed.
- Device Software Update (Pro/Pod/UC): Version 6.0.664170197
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Legacy Device Software Update (PCAP/CCAP/SCHD): Version 5.5.663912110
The version number of the updated capture device software will be added prior to the AU/ANZ production region deployment.
Fixes
- Resolved an issue where, when using SSO (single-sign-on), users were unable to log out of Universal Capture.
- Resolved an issue where Universal Capture durations were not being calculated correctly.
- Resolved several known issues with IP Camera support. for more information see IP Camera Support.
- Fixed an issue where new Activity/Polling slides would sometimes show up blank in the classroom.