Technical innovations of VIMP 6.2

VIMP 6.2 includes several useful functional enhancements, an architectural change in data storage, and an improvement in cookie handling. As always, you can find the complete list of all changes in our changelog.

System requirements

Please note the system requirements. Compared to VIMP 6.1, there are no changes to the system requirements with this release.

SourceGuardian Loader

The SourceGuardian Loader must be installed in at least version 15.0 for all VIMP editions in order to install VIMP 6.2 (no change to the previous version).

Additional media owners

The owner of a medium can define additional users who are also allowed to edit the medium. A co-owner may or may not have inheritance rights. Owners with inheritance rights can become the new main owner if the current owner is deleted.

Optionally, media editing can be locked so that a medium cannot be edited by multiple owners at the same time.

Work In Progress

With this extension, media can optionally be marked as “Work In Progress” in the upload form. Media marked in this way are initially only transcoded into the standard format to save storage space. As soon as any subsequent processing is complete and the status is removed, the remaining formats are transcoded.

Custom media storage locations

If there is a large number of media files in the portal, it may make sense not to store all of them in the standard directory on the server, but to set up additional directories that can also be mounted on different storage devices.

VIMP version 6.2 offers this option! Additional media directories can be created administratively. Media can then be moved manually or based on various conditions (e.g., time period, number of views, not viewed since, status, storage location, publication status, featured tag, or client affiliation).

Background noise transcription

VIMP now also offers the option of detecting background noise and transcribing it descriptively. The new feature builds on VIMP transcription and is available free of charge to all customers who have booked VIMP transcription.

Improvements to the playlists

Playlists can now also be accessed under a unique name. This is now possible in the playlist management when sharing the playlist. From now on, the links available there no longer contain a reference to a specific playlist video.

In addition, a focus mode can now be activated for the playback of playlist videos, which hides all elements surrounding the player so that the full focus is on the playlist video.

Cookie handling

Cookie handling has been completely revised. Session cookies are no longer set for users who are not logged in. The only exception is password-protected media that is accessed by users who are not logged in via the secret link. The following cookie is set for these:

• Name: pam
• Type: technically necessary partition cookie
• Value: encrypted array of MIDs to which password-protected access is granted
• Lifetime: double the runtime of the medium, at least 30 minutes

Naming of downloaded media

When downloading media, the cleaned media title is now used as the file name, not the cryptic media key.

Changes to HLS streaming (as of VIMP 6.2.4)

Due to the new user-defined media storage locations, there is a change in the creation of SMIL files containing playlists for media delivery via Wowza Streaming Engine (optional).

If media delivery via Wowza no longer works after updating to VIMP 6.2, please recreate the SMIL files. In addition, we provide a new task that creates symlinks in the userdata/media directory for the media files:

./vimp framework:media-symlink

or with detailed output:

./vimp framework:media-symlink --verbose

In addition, VIMP 6.2.4 introduced a change that cleans up orphaned tmp files in the media directories.

If there are multiple files in your media directories that start with tmp_, either run the updater with the “--optionals” parameter or perform the following task manually:

./vimp framework:remove-tmp-playlists

SAML cookie (as of VIMP 6.2.4)

If guest cookies are disabled, logging in via SAML may fail due to a missing session cookie. This has been fixed in VIMP 6.2.4. In the case of a SAML login, a new helper cookie containing the session ID is now set: samlIdp

SMTP setting for Office 365 (as of VIMP 6.2.5)

New setting for SMTP sending via an Office 365 server.

API changes

• The API method getMedium now contains the extended view figures, broken down into total, portal, embed, and API.

• The new API method createCategory allows categories and subcategories to be created.

• The API method getMedia now also delivers hidden media to administrators, not just to media owners (as of VIMP 6.2.4).

• The new API method editCategory allows you to edit categories and subcategories (as of VIMP 6.2.4).

• API methods createCategory and editCategory allow you to add/replace category images (as of VIMP 6.2.4).

• The API method getMedium now includes the number of chapter markers (as of VIMP 6.2.5).

• New API methods for managing additional media owners (addMediaAdditionalOwner, editMediaAdditionalOwner, deleteMediaAdditionalOwner, purgMediaAdditionalOwner) (as of VIMP 6.2.5).