Programmable Media release notes: January 03, 2024

New features

Video Chapters Editor

The new Video Chapters Editor is designed to streamline the creation and editing of video chapters with the utmost simplicity. We recognized how chapters are important for accessibility and user experience, easy navigation on mobile, and SEO.

The Video Chapters Editor elevates the video-building experience and offers an intuitive tool for effortlessly generating, modifying, and saving a fresh set of chapters to be accompanied by its playback.

Try it out today directly in your console

Learn more: Video chapters editor

Paced Subtitles

Paced Subtitles can significantly enhance the viewer experience, making your content more engaging and accessible.

You can now have greater control over the pacing of subtitles by adjusting the number of words displayed in each subtitle for a more inclusive and user-friendly experience. This configuration allows for fine-tuning the pacing of subtitles, ensuring optimal readability and comprehension for viewers.

Learn more: Paced subtitles

Auto Crop and Auto Gravity - Content-Aware Image Cropping

Introducing the new Auto Crop (c_auto), specially designed to complement our AI Auto Gravity (g_auto), and together, they offer a new level of automation for cropping images.

This content-aware cropping tool intelligently determines the optimal crop and resize for an image, taking into account its content and the specified dimensions or aspect ratio. By identifying the most prominent and relevant part of the image, it ensures that the essential elements are preserved during resizing.

Let Cloudinary handle the cropping for you, ensuring optimal results every time.

The c_auto_pad cropping mode aims to avoid undesirable or “bad” crops by initially attempting to use the basic auto mode while adding padding only if the algorithm determines that more of the original image should be included in the final result. This proves especially beneficial when the derived image’s aspect ratio is significantly different from the original.

Learn more: Automatic gravity with the auto cropping mode

Assign a dedicated access key to sign all webhooks

In order to have a more consistent way to sign webhook notifications we have introduced the capability to assign a dedicated access key in the webhooks settings:

• The dedicated key is marked in the access keys table
• Only active keys can be assigned to sign webhooks
• The dedicated key cannot be disabled or deleted
• The dedicated key is added to the payload of all the webhook notifications
• The functionality is also available in the Provisioning API

Learn more: Dedicated access keys for webhook notifications

Enhancements

3D Viewer - Improved lighting, shadows & AR support

Our 3D Viewer in our Product Gallery Widget has received a significant upgrade: a new visual enhancement that really amps up the model’s appearance. This upgrade includes significantly improved lighting and new shadow support, resulting in a more eye-catching and realistic experience for customers and viewers checking out products.

In addition, we have integrated support for the AR viewer. On mobile devices, you have an AR button that opens the AR viewer directly. For desktop devices, you can access the AR viewer on the mobile device by scanning a QR code.

Try it out:

Learn more: Product Gallery

3D to 2D Photorealism with Dynamic Shadow Support

Adding a new tier of realism in your 3D to 2D rendered images by seamlessly integrating dynamic shadows. Shadow elevates the visual content with a more lifelike appearance that emphasizes the three-dimensional depth of images.

Introducing a new Light Effect e_light, which casts shadows into your 3D renders. You can fine-tune the shadow intensity to suit your preferences using the shadowintensity parameter.

Learn more: e_light

Selective responses with the 'fields' parameter

You can now control the details that Cloudinary includes in responses to the resource Admin API method calls, by adding the new fields parameter to the method call and specifying exactly which fields Cloudinary must include in the response.

This new functionality has been added to the following methods: Get resources, Get resources by asset folder, Get resources by asset IDs, Get resources by tag, Get resources by context, Get resources in moderation, and Search for resources

New 'config' Admin API endpoint

A new endpoint enables you to get the details on your product environment configuration and current settings, including information on the 'folder_mode' (dynamic or fixed). This new endpoint can be particularly useful for Cloudinary integrations that might need to support both types of product environments.

Learn more: config

Video Player & Studio - f_auto & sp_auto as defaults

We’ve updated the default format for the Video Player to now utilize f_auto. This means that when no sourceTypes are specified, the Video Player will be using the f_auto transformation. It replaces the current default of allowing the browser to choose between webm/vp9, mp4/h265, or mp4/h264.

In addition, sp_auto is now the default for HLS or DASH. e.g. sourceTypes: ['dash']. No need to add any streaming profile transformation.

This change is further backed by Video Player Studio, Where f_auto has been set as the default setting for Progressive, and sp_auto as the default for Adaptive. Additionally, we’ve cleaned up the format section for simplicity, and a more straightforward selection of options.

Learn more: Video Player sourceTypes

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