Updates - Miscellaneous

November 8

• The https://updates.vdo.ninja/ page now stores and hosts the discord images from this updates-channel; discord is dropping its CDN support, so having to host images myself now.

November 6

• Inspired to put Chat GPT to the test, it helped me create this microphone loudness testing tool in a few minutes: https://vdo.ninja/mictest

  • Simple, no bloat and ad-free, which is the main reason I wanted it versus other options I could find.

  • I fear for my job.

September 8

• If you like the vdo.ninja/twitch page (chat and use VDO.Ninja at the same time), I created a version specific for Kick.com now also: https://vdo.ninja/kick. I may consolidate these tools at some point, but for now, hopefully it helps.

July 20

• Published a YouTube video demoing how to connect an iPhone to Ethernet, bypassing Wifi. Connecting all your components via Ethernet will ensure you get optimal quality and latency, without needing special drivers or settings. Dead easy to do and doesn't cost much at all, assuming your router/switch isn't miles away:

July 17

• Created a new tool, by request, that lets you rotate, flip, and mirror any cors-compatible website. It's designed mainly for teleprompters

  https://vdo.ninja/teleprompter

  • There are drop downs to switch between source modes, rotation, transformation

  • It will store the last used settings automatically, and restore automatically on reload. simple

  • Passing discord or chat pop out links will be auto-converted into a cors-friendly embed version of the chat pop out

  • (optionally) it can take &link with a URL value, or &twitch to pass a user name

  • Hide menu button; to show the menu again, just reload the page

  This works great for reading chat out from a teleprompter or even just for VDO.Ninja feeds. VDO.Ninja works great for sending remote teleprompter feeds to something like a Firestick 4K Max, and this teleprompting website should make it easy to flip/invert/mirror the video as needed.

  

May 31

• Made a little auto-hotkey v2 script that lets you toggle your mouse cursor's visibility on and off. Might be useful if a gamer and struggling to hide the mouse cursor when screen sharing with VDO.Ninja. https://github.com/steveseguin/hide-cursor

May 30

• Our Discord NinjaBot has had the AI-smarts improved further, including with the addition of Helpful or Not buttons. @leb can be thanked for this awesomeness.

  -- The Discord bot's source code is on github, if you want to use it within your own Discord server. -- I've been added numerous guides and issue descriptions to the Docs to make our bot, as it is the source of its knowledge. Community contributions welcomed.

May 6

• Fixed the vdo.ninja/speedtest site when loading it on mobile; the CSS was messed up.

May 4

• I updated the Twitch chat + VDO.Ninja web app @ https://vdo.ninja/alpha/twitch -- you can hide the video preview now, which frees up some more space on screen -- tried to make the page harder to accidentally refresh -- made more things black, to help conserve battery power with OLED displays; this includes making the Twitch chat itself darker -- control bar moved to the top of the page, disconnected from the video, so buttons are larger and less in the way -- added a way to clear the saved URL options (recommended you use it to clear any old settings from the older version)

May 3

• Our Discord Bot has been further improved to better filter out spam and not legit messages. (via leb)

April 10

• Managed to get Vingester built for MacOS; https://github.com/steveseguin/vingester/releases/tag/2.8.1 (I already had PC support added) -- this is compiled for x64 Macs; it's not optimized for ARM-based macs (but should still work with them) -- this version should be compatible with VDO.Ninja v22 and newer (audio is captured) -- the official Vingester repo is out of date and doesn't seem to be supported anymore, so just keeping it alive for now

April 8

• The https://updates.vdo.ninja/ page has been updated to show image attachments now. The updates page just mirrors this Discord #updates channel; accessible for non-Discord users. This update was brought to you by @leb, who is also responsible for building out our hardworking Discord bot.

March 30

• created the example page: https://vdo.ninja/examples/rotated.html, which lets you rotate a specific website 90, 270, or 180 degrees. &rotate and URL encoded &link parameters accepted. Works with any website that supports IFrame embedding I think; VDO.Ninja or other. ie: https://vdo.ninja/examples/rotated.html?rotate=270&link=https%3A%2F%2Fvdo.ninja%2Falpha%2Fmixer

March 7

• I updated Vingester to support VDO.Ninja v22 (production and newer) -- It doesn't seem like Vingester is being actively updated anymore, and there were some breaking changes in v22 that prevented audio from being captured. I tried, but couldn't reasonably fix the issue from VDO.Ninja's side, so I've forked the Vingester repo and will maintain it as best I can in the meanwhile. -- You can get the windows-build, with security patches applied and the audio-bug fixed, from here: https://github.com/steveseguin/vingester/releases/tag/2.8.1

March 6

• I still have rtc.ninja up, which is a brand-free version of VDO.Ninja. Based on a user request, I additional just hid some additional buttons on the landing page, such as the "show more" and "create reusable" links, leaving just the basics now.

2022

December 2

• Updated the support for vingester.app's audio destination selector to v22 of VDO.Ninja; it was no longer working with v22.

November 12

• Create a sample of how to apply a custom full-page overlay on top of VDO.Ninja: https://vdo.ninja/alpha/examples/overlay For example, the default (leave field blank option) shows how to apply a logo on top of a guest invite. It isn't clickable, so it won't interfere with the app itself (other than make it harder to see things).

October 1

• I'll be having to start white-listing domains that invite.cam can use, due to abuse of the service by phishing scammers. This won't impact VDO.Ninja users, but it may impact users who have been using it for non-VDO.Ninja related things.

  -- vdo.ninja, rtc.ninja, etc, will all still work as normal. I'll be happy to whitelist other domains for community members who reach out to me that need it. -- Untrusted domains will still work, but I will be prompting visitors to such links to proceed only if they trust the creator of the link. Nothing threatening, but I hope it's enough to discourage abuse. -- I've had to start a blacklist of sites due to reports of phishing abuse that I am accountable for blocking.

September 9

• Fixed an issue with with passwords containing special characters being used at invite.vdo.ninja

August 6

• The Discord bot on our VDO.Ninja server is a custom-made one, with the goal being to have a single bot running everything here. @leb made a large update to the bot this week, which includes Reddit support, added support for !commands within our new Threading system. (the old third-party reddit bot broke, so it's just an extra reason to remove it and do it ourselves) There's other improvements, such as smarter spam detection, images/avatars added to the new updates.vdo.ninja feature, responses are now embedded replies, and dynamic command updates are supported. The code is open source here: https://github.com/steveseguin/discordbot Thanks @leb

July 27

• Improved the messaging at vdo.ninja/convert; warns if file is too large and offers ffmpeg/handbreak alternatives in those cases. (also more input file formats supported)

July 11

• Updated https://vdo.ninja/twitch so that it saves the last entered Twitch ID and VDO.Ninja URL/ID, so you don't need to re-enter each time on load. (fyi, this page is an option for IRL streamers to see post video to VDO.Ninja while also viewing twitch chat)

May 12

• Created a virtual MIDI remote controller app, designed to demonstrate how to use the MIDI transport function of VDO.Ninja via its IFrame API. The notion is, it lets a user create buttons or input sliders on a web page that represent MIDI inputs. You can save/export/import the inputs you create. Pressing a button or moving a slider will broadcast out those values via VDO.Ninja. Of course then, there's also a 'playout link', which if opened will send the inbound MIDI values to your MIDI devices; virtual or real. Using this, you could in theory allow for the remote control of software on your computer that supports MIDI input or remotely control the volume of a Raspberry Pi. Sharing the button layouts with others is as simple as sharing a text file and link. Only the data receiver needs a MIDI device; the sender (remote controller) just needs access to the web-interface. Chat and file transfer support is included, while audio and video is disabled. This is using data only mode. Buttons can currently be set using MIDI byte values or with an input learning function; there's lots of room for improvement of course, so I am considering this a prototype for now. It's on alpha at https://vdo.ninja/alpha/remotemidi

April 19

• Coded up a quick demo of how to combine multiple rooms into one, as a director using the IFRAME API:

  https://vdo.ninja/examples/multi?rooms=room1,room2,room3

February 15

• Did a YT video demoing the web3.vdo.ninja concept; rambled about it for a while https://youtu.be/HXTC458sllM

February 14

• https://invite.cam/ was updated to fully embrace the VDO.Ninja over the older one; old links will still work tho. The GitHub for the site was updated also.

February 13

• Experimented a bit with the notion of making VDO.Ninja even more 'web 3.0', so in this case decentralizing the handshake server. I think I finally have a proof of concept of VDO.Ninja working over the IOTA crypto blockchain. It's not serverless, as you still need a blockchain server to talk to, but it's decentralized, meaning every guest can connect via a different server end points. This allows for abstracted communication of each peer with each other by a common public ledger. Once the handshake is complete, it's all peer to peer, and the blockchain connection can be removed. To try it out, just open this site in two tabs, enter the same room name when prompted, and wait a minute or two: https://vdo.ninja/beta/iota/ If it doesn't work, refresh and wait a couple minutes. You can also use &room=ROOMNAME as a URL parameter to affix the room name to the link. I've identified numerous issues and concerns with using the blockchain as an API, but the most blatant one users will notice is how much slower it takes to connect. Solutions abound though, so I'll keep chipping at the problems over the coming months.