v12

September 12th 2020

Version 12.0 of VDO.Ninja has been released to production. ✨

The previous production version is located at https://vdo.ninja/v11. If you find any bugs with v12, please report them so I can fix immediately.

🍁 Change Log since v10

In this release I mainly tried to improve the connection reliability of the group rooms, added features to the Director's control room, added new URL parameters, and improved system scalability.

  • The title of browser windows are now dynamic; they update to reflect the video or room you are viewing

  • Alternative languages have been updated with more text and more language options

    • fixed a bug with the translator as well, where undefined appeared at times.

  • Direct linking to Google caching servers has been removed for some VDO.Ninja dependencies

  • &showonly=XXXXX is now an alias of &novideo

  • ICE Candidates are bundled up on transmission and sent p2p if possible

  • Validated that using the Electron Capture app to Screen Share into Zoom produces higher quality results than using VIrtualCam with Zoom

  • Wrote additional guides, including how to do 4K via VDO.Ninja. See the Wiki's Guides Section

  • New TURN servers deployed; Quebec and Germany. 10x capacity of current user usage.

    • New TURN servers now support TCP/443 for increased user-compatibility

    • Fixed some bugs in the TURN servers that were causing hiccups with some connections

    • TURN servers have had their SSL certificates upgrade to premium paid versions - 5 years lic

    • Created a more detailed guide on deploying your own TURN server; see turnserver.md on git

  • Moved the text captioning tool to http://CAPTION.ninja

    • Added language support to Caption.Ninja and removed Google Fonts hosting from site.

  • FAQ and Wiki updated; were out of date before. https://github.com/steveseguin/vdo.ninja/wiki/FAQ

  • Small update to the text on the director's room's help page

  • the Stats debug menu has been updated (CTRL + Left-Click on a video to access)

    • stylized, organization, added detail, etc. (thanks to those who helped here)

  • Added TEXT CHAT to the Director's control room

  • Added a PUSH TO VOICE TALK to the Director's room

    • does not appear as a media source in the OBS Scenes. Just to the guests

    • you can push audio or video; changing the input source via the settings option

  • Added Twilio TURN server support, although only added for private debugging use

  • If a connection error occurs with a weakly-connected room guest, reconnection is more aggressive; this hopefully will combat the rare case of a lost room guest for only some people.

  • Added a fourth link to the Director's room using the &scene=0 parameter.

    • scene = 0 will automatically added any new room guest to this group scene for OBS, as they join the room.

    • conversely, the older scene =1 required videos be manually added via the Add Video to Scene button.

  • Added &hideheader as a URL option. This parameter hides the top header bar, including VDO.Ninja branding. Useful for making videos even larger when viewing them as a guest.

  • Fixed a bug with &novideo and &noaudio where before, when changing camera sources, things reverted back to showing video when it should have remained disabled

  • &novideo and &noaudio now work in the Director's control room

  • StreamID for guest videos are shown in the Director's control room now

  • Improved UI for the video previews in the director's control room

  • The Create Resuable Invite page has been cleaned up a bit -- via jcalado

  • Added a URL flag that disables the local self-preview. &nopreview

  • Added a 'test tone' to the camera selection screen for audio devices

  • The provided speedtest auto skips a few steps in camera selection.

  • &quality=0 works better now; was a bit bugged and didn't always do 1080 in screenshare

  • Screen sharing also works with 60-fps now by default; quite smooth

  • Added the &roombitrate=X parameter:

    • If X == 0, then no video is sent out to other video guests

    • If X > 0, then it sets the max video bitrate allowed to be sent to other room guests

    • Useful if you are on a mobile device or slow computer and want to reduce load

  • Added some advanced audio settings that can be set via URL parameters

    • &maxptime=60 (max packet size of audio in ms)

    • &minptime=10 (min packet size of audio in ms)

    • &vbr (sets audio bitrate to variable, instead of constant, when bitrate specified)

  • This page has been updated; https://vdo.ninja/dual. It lets you screenshare and webcam share at the same time within the same tab, using Iframes, although it isn't user-friendly yet.

  • Updated the &mirror URL flag to have 0, 1, 2, and 3 as options.

    • no mirror parameter in the URL is the default. Local previews are mirrored

    • mirror=0 turns off ALL mirroring, for everything.

    • mirror=1 inverts the default. Local previews are not mirrored, but guests are mirrored.

    • mirror=2 mirrors ALL videos

    • mirror=3 is the same as default, except the entire website is mirrored, including Text (useful for teleprompters?)

  • &mute (or &muted) URL parameter added, which sets the mic of a guest to mute by default

  • Chat support was added to the iFRAME API

  • Chat was improved to support more special characters, without hurting security

  • I also added a &hidemenu parameter, so if used in conjunction with &autostart , you'll bypass the camera selection wizard faster

  • The publisher of a stream can see more details of the connect viewing peer, and vice versa.

    • user-agent, parameter settings, etc

  • Created https://vdo.ninja/support, which shows what your browser / camera supports

    • Focus and Telephoto zoom are supported by VDO.Ninja, if your camera/browser does also

  • Made another alias for &stereo; &proaudio

  • Created a linkedin page for VDO.Ninja.

  • Made some tweaks to the rtc.ninja -- removed branding. It's an alternative domain to VDO.Ninja

  • ... and many numerous other issues and CSS improvements

The electron capture app has also been updated -⚡ v1.0.9

  • Always on top toggle option

  • Audio output auto-loads now

  • URL parameter to set always on top and window title

  • right-click to change page, refresh, open new window, or change window resolution to preset options

  • Window Title increments in value as new windows are made

I'd like to thank everyone for reporting bugs and providing user feedback. For the next release cycle I will be investing more into building out better testing systems and trying to nail down strategies to ensure long-term reliability of the site and its features. I'll also continue to improve the support articles and support tools.

Also, thank you to the sponsors of VDO.Ninja. Contributions do help me afford the TURN servers and other expenses, like SSL certificates and domain names. A list of some of the sponsors are here: https://github.com/sponsors/steveseguin

Thank you. ❤️

Sincerely,

Steve Seguin

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