Release Notes for Feature Pack 202109

Thumbnail Support for Videos

Thumbnail Support for videos in now supported in AEM Screens. A content author can define a thumbnail for videos so that the image can be used as a placeholder and properly test content playback and targeting, while the actual video is being finalized by the appropriate team. The image can also be used, in case the playback of the video fails.
See Thumbnail Support for Videos for more details.

Basic Playback Monitoring

AEM Screens now supports basic playback monitoring. The player will now report various playback metrics with each ping (defaults to 30 seconds). Based on the metrics, it provides the ability to detect various edge cases (stuck experience, blank screen, scheduling problem, etc.). This feature allows the team to remotely monitor if a player is properly playing content, improves reactivity to blank screens or broken experiences in the field, and decreases the risk of showing a broken experience to the end user.
See Basic Playback Monitoring for more details.

Updates to Content Assignment Report

Content Assignment Report is now optimized and improved with enhanced user experience. The downloadable report displays improved player related entities such as locations, displays, and device in one spreadsheet tab and the content provider information such as channels and assets in other tab.
See Content Assignment Report for more details.

Adaptive Renditions

Adaptive Renditions allow the devices to automatically select the best rendition for a device based on customer-defined rules.

As an AEM Screens Developer, you can now configure device-specific asset renditions to be downloaded and played automatically without having to create all content variations manually. See Adaptive Renditions: Architectural Overview and Configurations for more details.

Additionally, as an AEM Screens Content Author, you can configure your assets to use Adaptive Renditions and also migrate your devices for large networks to avail this feature, in your AEM Screens channels. See Using Adaptive Renditions in AEM Screens for more details.

Support for V3 Manifests

You can now configure the Dispatcher for Manifest Version v3. For enabling v3 Manifest, you need to :

• Clear any pending offline content jobs in both author and published

  • Navigate to crx/de in author and publish

  • Click on Tools --> Query

  • In the query use /jcr:root/var/eventing/jobs/assgined//element(*,slingevent:Job)[\@event.job.topic='screens/offline_content_update']

  • This will list any offline content jobs that are currently running or pending in the queue

  • Wait until there are no more offline content jobs returned from the query

• Disable ContentSync in /system/console/configMgr/configMgr/com.adobe.cq.screens.offlinecontent.impl.ContentSyncCacheFeatureFlag

• Enable SmartSync in /system/console/configMgr/com.adobe.cq.screens.offlinecontent.impl.OfflineContentServiceImpl

• Update dispatcher

• Update custom component

• See Configuring Dispatcher for Manifest Version v3 for more details.

• If you are using custom components as a part of v3 manifests, see Template for Custom Handlers.

Resolved file caching errors by replacing assets with renditions.

The players now only expose asset renditions, if rendition mapping is present.

Enhanced ping to re-authenticate if response is not valid JSON.

Numeric channel names/roles caused blank screen.

Download optimized renditions via SmartSync.

Transformed the mapping into list of rendition keys.

Removed access to cmd.exe and reg.exe in the windows player.

A player needs to report its last successful playback event.

A player needs to report its playback status.

Player does not re-download Assets when ALL Cache is cleared.

As a Player Admin, you can now choose a player name.

Removing channel assignment from display is not reflected on the player.

If player is reloaded while channel update is being downloaded, the player ignores the update.

Embedded Page Component now respects touch event.

Remote provisioning of Tizen player is now supported.

Target video is not showing

Race condition on broadcasting display data to subsequences.

Channel Preview does not work for Channels containing Videos.

Preview mode showing blank for Split screen channel.

Video thumbnails render blank with enabled adaptive renditions.

Automatically update channel manifest if referenced page is published.

Deleted devices now does not block the Screens replication queue.

Manifest did not contain targeted content nor Sites embedded pages. This has now been fixed.

New core image component are now added to the channel manifest.

Downloading optimized renditions via SmartSync is now supported.

Play optimized rendition for all assets.

Added support for multiple content provider types

Embedded Sequence Playback Strategy was broken and this has now been fixed.

Offline manifest using the request parameter wcmmode for html entry, making it uncacheable.

Empty dynamic embedded sequence sometimes caused blank screen.

Player now report its playback status.

Video was playing in Tiny mode and not played as full screen video on device and the issue is fixed now.