Migration Guide: Upgrading from the Old mi (HTML) Player to the New Player

Introduction

Welcome to the migration guide for transitioning from the old mi (HTML) player to new player. This guide will help you smoothly transition your application to take advantage of the latest features, improved performance, and enhanced security offered by new player

Why migrate to the New player?

The new player offers numerous advantages over the old HTML player, including:

• Advanced Features: Enjoy additional features such as playback speed adjustment, multi-language support, audio descriptions, and customisable player themes.

• Accessibility: Adheres to BITV 2.0 accessibility standards, ensuring an inclusive experience for all users.

• Enhanced Viewer Control: Offers more control over the viewer experience on shared page links, including options to show/hide the title and description, and share from a specific position in the video.

• Mobile Support: Fully supports mobile devices, unlike the HTML player, which is limited to the features of the native iOS/Android player.

• Improved Security and Privacy: Since the new player is loaded within an iframe, the code always runs in a secure sandbox environment.

• Smaller Size: The Player SDK has a smaller download size, leading to faster page loads. It is also more modern and simpler to use.

For a detailed comparison between the current mi player and the new player, check out this page.

Overview of changes

VMPro now offers a switch to toggle between the old and new players in the player generator

Once you switch to the new player, the configuration options for the new player will appear in the player generator

• Configure the Player: Adjust the settings to your preference and click ‘Apply’. Note that the new player configurations differ slightly from the HTML player, so please adjust accordingly

• Automatic redirection: After applying the changes, the old embedding and shared page links videos will automatically be played using the new player and its configurations

• Switching Back: You can use the same toggle to switch back to the HTML player. When you do, the old player configurations will be displayed in the player generator, and embeddings and shared page links will use HTML player to play the videos.

This option will be OFF for all the HTML players and ON for all the new players i.e when ON your videos will be played using new player, when OFF you videos will be played using HTML player.

For players interacting via API

If you are using the Player API to interact with the video (ex: mute the video before playing, handling player events, etc...), you might have to also migrate to the new Player SDK. Check the SDK migration guide for more detailsYour content goes here

Pre-requisites

• You have access to player generator in VMPro

• The new player configurations are enough to support your player requirements

• If you are embedding videos and controlling the html player via API, you have familiarised yourself with the new SDK documentation

  • The SDK is installed in your environment

Note: We recommend trying the switch on a test player duplicated from production before enabling it all the production players

Migration steps

• For simple embeddings (you use embed code as it is, player is not controlled via API)

  • Navigate to Player generator is VMPro and switch to new player using the toggle mentioned in section 1.

  • Save the new player configurations by clicking ‘Apply’ to migrate the shared page links and embed codes to the new player. Click here to know more about the configurations offered by the new player

  • Verify if the new player matches your expectations embeddings

• For advanced embeddings

  • Follow this guide to migrate your embed code

  • Follow steps for simple embeddings to migrate the player

  • Once the SDK is setup and the player has been migration, perform necessary tests to ensure that the player correctly responds to the SDK.

If you find limitations in the new player after the switch or have feedback for any functionality, please raise a ticket with our support team support@movinimage.com.