Kaltura CE V4.0 - Release Notes

This guide is applicable for Kaltura CE version 4.0.0

Release Date

May 26th 2011

General

Kaltura CE V4 is based on the Dragonfly release of the Kaltura online video platform. It provides new features, infrastructure enhancements, and new API services.

Supported/Tested OS

Kaltura CE has been tested on the following operating systems:

• CentOS 5.6 – 64-bit

It is possible to install Kaltura CE on other Linux distributions and on a 32-bit server, however these configurations were not yet tested by Kaltura.

New Features and Functionalities

The following list includes the main new features and infrastructure changes that are available as part of the Kaltura CE V4.0, for more information, please refer to the KMC Quick Start Guide or to the Kaltura CE documentation pages withing kaltura.org

• Users, Roles and Permissions - Support for multi-user and user role management for KMC and Admin Console users. Robust infrastructure for managing and customizing API level permissions.

• Content Distribution Infrastructure and Workflow - The content distribution module enables publishers to automate the distribution of video packages, directly from within the KMC to distribution partners such as YouTube, DailyMotion, Hulu and more. The new infrastructure enables developers to develop and integrate their own "Distribution Connectors" as server plugins and to manage their settings from the admin console. A YouTube API distribution connector is enabled and supported out-of-the-box.

• Mobile Delivery Enhancement - Kaltura has further improved its HTML5 mobile support with the following new features:
  
  • Added ability to grab an HTML5 player embed code directly from the KMC Preview & Embed screen
  • Enable Mobile monetization, including new advertising support on iOS devices (iPhone and iPad) through HTML5 and VAST standard i
• Improved Thumbnail Management – support multiple thumbnails per video, includes cropping tools of existing thumbnails.

• HTTP Streaming – Akamai HD Network - Enabled only when using Akamai for content delivery
  Kaltura now includes HTTP Streaming as a standard feature included out-of-the-box via Kaltura’s integration with the Akamai HD Network.

• UIConf Management Tool in Admin Console - Community Beta Feature
  Kaltura CE now includes a convenient tool, enabling developers to easily manage and apply changes to Flash widgets and components in their setup. This feature is release as a Community Beta feature. Documentation will be provided in the coming weeks.

• Editors Removed from KMC– Video editors were removed from KMC, as part of an overall approach of releasing new alternative tools for video editing, and deprecation of current editors. the KSE and KAE are still included in the Kaltura CE package and will live on as community projects on Kaltura.org.

Features that require additional setup/3rd party licensing/CDN capabilities

• Akamai HD Network& Apple HTTP Streaming - requires content delivery through Akamai
• RTMP delivery – requires CDN/FMS integration
• Adaptive bit-rate – requires CDN/FMS integration (already integrated with Akamai)
• Analytics – for capturing CDN bandwidth usage – CDN logs integration is needed (already integrated with CDN logs of Akamai, limelight, level3)
• Analytics – user geo-distribution analytics – requires ip2location DB license
• Live streaming workflow – requires CDN/FMS integration for live channel provisioning and for live streaming (already integrated with Akamai's live channel provisioning).
• Webcam recording – requires FMS integration – instructions to be provided.
• Access control – geo restriction - requires ip2location DB license for maintainable ip2location DB (current mapping relies on the IP to country database from http://software77.net/geo-ip
• Advertising – requires 3rd party ad-server account
• Content syndication via Tubemogul – requires a tubemogul account
• Transcoding to VP6 format requires On2 transcoder – configuration instructions to be provided

Features that require add-on server components which are not provided for CE integration

• Doc conversion server - required for enabling PPT-Video widget
• Remix download - flattening server

Known issues

• A Kaltura CE Amazon Machine Image (AMI) will be available in the coming weeks.
• The Syndication Distribution Connector(included in admin console) was not certified.
• Registration of new and existing partner from the Drupal Extension failed when connected to a Kaltura CE V4.0 server. A fix will be provided.
• Registration of new and existing partner from the Moodle Extension failed when connected to a Kaltura CE V4.0 server. A fix will be provided.
• The Kaltura Sakai and Joomla Extensions were not tested when connected to a Kaltura CE V4.0 server.
• KS generation errors occurs when the server is not set to the correct time. Server must have correct time when converted to UTC or external applications that generate KS might fail.
• At this point, Kaltura does not provide a complete migration path from older versions of the Kaltura CE the current one.
• The links within the KMC to Kaltura contact pages are pointing to the KMC hosted by Kaltura at www.kaltura.com and not to the local Kaltura CE.