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EchoVideo Q4 2023 Deployment Notes 20-21 December

Amanda Leibovich
  • Updated

Features, Improvement, and Fixes

These Release Notes contain a summary of changes made for the December 20-21 2023 release of EchoVideo. For changes made in previous deployments, see the other Deployment Notes articles located in this Topic group, or support@echo360.com.

This release only applies to our US, CA, and APAC regions.
Our next release is planned for January 24-25, 2024, and will go out to all regions. Our EMEA region will receive these updates at that time.

Deployment Update
Owing to unexpected technical challenges encountered during the preparations for our Q4 EchoVideo release, the deployment of EchoVideo for the U.S. and APAC regions has been rescheduled for December 27th U.S. Thank you for your understanding; please let your Echo360 contact know if you have any questions or concerns.

New Features

Virtual Backgrounds for Browser Capture

Library Virtual Backgrounds selected and shown in Browser Capture

Users can now select from a list of available virtual backgrounds when capturing video using Browser Capture.

See EchoVideo: Recording with Browser Capture for more information.

Audio Normalization for Browser Capture

Audio Normalization shown in Browser Capture

All recordings done with Browser Capture now come with automatic audio normalization.

See EchoVideo: Recording with Browser Capture for more information.

New Accessibility Reports via the Public API

We have added new reporting tools to the public API for Closed Caption usage, Transcription usage, and Copyright usage.

  • mediacopyrightyearly
  • asryearly
  • captionusage
  • captionusageauto
  • captionusagemanual

More information on the public API in each region can be found here: 

EchoVideo: API and SDK Documentation

Universal Capture featuring QuadraVision (Open Beta)

Universal Capture Personal with 4 Channels displayed as described

Record, store, and play content with 4-channels on EchoVideo with your existing Universal Capture software.

Opting into the Open Beta will automatically upgrade all installations of Universal Capture to enable QuadraVision.

See EchoVideo: QuadraVision (Open Beta) for more information.

Playlists from the Easy Embed workflow

A Playlist with multiple pieces of content embedded into the Player in the LMS

Multi-select content within the Easy Embed modal in your LMS and embed it as a Playlist.

See EchoVideo: Creating Playlists in your LMS / VLE Course and EchoVideo: Viewing Playlists in your LMS / VLE Course for more information.

H5P Integration - Ready but not yet available

H5P Integration toggle path shown with toggle off by default

We have built an integration to allow users with H5P accounts to create links and use their EchoVideo content within H5P.

Unfortunately, H5P has not yet done the work on their end needed to complete this integration. If this feature is one you are interested in enabling, please vote on our integration request here: https://h5p.org/node/1456591

Improvements

Branding Updates

Admin Library page with raspberry pink branding as described

The Echo360 raspberry pink brand rollout will allow the current Echo360 brand to be implemented across more areas of the EchoVideo platform and provide consistency across all products of the Echosystem: EchoVideo, EchoPoll, EchoExam, and EchoAuthor. The new brand improves the accessibility of the UI through more appropriate color selection and improved contrast between colors.

Updated Login Workflow

EchoVideo login page with fields for logging in as described

Login pages have been updated to be consistent with our new branding.

See EchoVideo: Logging In for more information.

Updated EchoPlayer (everywhere except LIVE)

Updated Classroom Player as described

The player has been updated at long last to be consistent across all implementations of the player. It will be the player you see when accessing a Classroom, the Details Page, an Embed, the Editors, etc. with the same interface and controls in all areas of EchoVideo. Additionally, some new/improved capabilities for the updated player include:

  • New layout tools for multi-channel content
  • Responsive design down to mobile device sizes
  • Additional filtering tools in the Notes and Discussions

Updated Details Page and Sharing workflow

Updated Publishing tab from the Media Details page as described

The Sharing tab of the Details Page has been renamed "Publishing" to encompass and better define content that has been shared with others and content that has been posted into a Class or Collection. All management of publishing information will now be done from this tab of the Details Page.

The Share modal now only contains quick access to be able to create a new share link, embed, or individual. A new Add To modal for adding content to Classes, Collections, etc. will be coming soon.

Additionally, we now provide the ability to create and manage embed codes separately from media access links.

We have also brought back the creation details to the Details Page which will be visible across all tabs.

See the following for more information:

Updated Easy Embed

Updated Easy Embed panel as described

A new interface and additional options for the Easy Embed are here. The initial load page now displays all the options you have always had, but in a friendlier way with descriptions for users unfamiliar with the process. The search and filter panel of the media picker is now always open for quicker access and we have added the ability to filter by Section and Date Range.

By popular request, users can now enable or disable Discussions (Q&A) for individual embeds.

Consolidated Analytics improvements

Updated LMS Course Analytics page as described

The Analytics page improvements:
The Analytics page within EchoVideo has been overhauled to better display your LMS Courses. We have also added pagination and greatly improved loading times.
Viewing Course analytics:
We have expanded the data download options to always be for all time and to allow you to download data as you always have (all together in one CSV), or specific media data separately in a ZIP file. Beyond this, we have also added an average % viewed metric that will show the average percentage viewed across all learners.
Viewing Individual media analytics:
We now include the option to download the data for an individual piece of media. The new % viewed metric is here as well which will show how much of the media a particular learner has watched.
Full Roster Sync:
We have added an optional toggle to the API settings page of your LMS integration to turn on roster sync. This will pull all of the learners enrolled in your LMS course into the Consolidated Analytics pages automatically and view those who have not yet watched the content.

See the following documentation for more information:

As a friendly reminder, we added additional scopes needed for the REST API integrations that we communicated over the summer. These additional scopes are also required for these new Consolidated Analytics updates. The scopes are defined in the API articles linked above.

Archive by Creation Date

Updated Archive options as described

When setting up your Institution's archival policy you can now choose between Last Viewed or Creation Date as the trigger for automatic archival. When choosing the Creation Date, you can set a time frame that goes back 10 years.

See EchoVideo: Content Policies for Admins for more information.

Alternate Copyrights and Copyright Acknowledgement

Updated Copyright options as described

Your institution can now be configured to support and allow for alternate copyright licenses (e.g., public domain, creative commons) to be applied to individual pieces of media.

We have also introduced a new option for media if a copyright is applied that allows owners and admins to choose whether or not to enforce a Copyright Acknowledgement that will be displayed to viewers every time they open the media.

See EchoVideo: Enabling Alternate Copyright Licenses for more information.

Even More Improvements

  • Administrators can now search by a user's SSO ID on the User tab.
  • New Bulk action from the Captures tab for Admins to bulk add content to a Collection.
  • New Student Role toggle to enable Universal Capture: Classroom logins.
  • New Teaching Assistant Role toggle to enable access and logins to Universal Capture.
  • Customers who use Blackboard / Anthology and have legacy building block content can now migrate that content using the migration tool within Blackboard. For more information, see their release notes here: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/SaaS/Release_Notes#3900.82.0-13

Fixes

  • Resolved an issue where Instructors were not always being displayed immediately when added to a Course / Section by an Admin.
  • Resolved an issue where long Speaker lists were not appearing correctly within the Transcript Editor.
  • Resolved an issue with LTI 1.3 integrations where Admins were not seeing all of their Institution content.
  • Resolved an issue where bulk transcribing content from the Admin Captures tab could fail.
  • Resolved an issue with Closed Caption configurations where the last remaining configuration could not be deleted.
  • Resolved an issue where successfully completed captures could, in rare scenarios, be marked and put into an Error status.
  • Resolved an issue where live views could occasionally be reported as VOD views or not be reported at all in Media analytics.
  • Resolved various accessibility issues with images that did not have necessary alt text.
  • Upgraded our media processor to address several issues:
    • Resolved audio/video sync issues for uploaded media.
    • Resolved audio/video sync issues after editing uploaded media.
    • Resolved an issue with audio & video degradation after uploading high bitrate videos. 
  • Resolved several issues on the User tab:
    • The filter drop-down menus could get cut off depending on the browser and/or screen size.
    • Assigning Schedulers to levels of the Institution Hierarchy from the User tab did not always save correctly.
    • Viewing the Institution Hierarchy when attempting to assign Schedulers or Admins could be overlapping when viewing Organizations with a lot of Departments.
    • The Section drop-down menu when configuring Zoom settings on behalf of a user could get cut off.
    • Designated Administrators could not see or manage user Section enrollments.