whats new KVS 6.2.0 update

[Tech Support]

Update status

6.2.0 update status is BETA. In Beta status we provide updates on demand only and it is possible that CRITICAL issues are available. Typically we wait for 1 month to have some projects updated and tested, before we provide update to the general public.

Update requirements

• KVS 5.0.0+ (earlier versions should be updated to KVS 5.0.1 first).
• PHP 7.1 - 7.4.

If you haven't yet updated KVS to 5.0.1, then please do, you can find KVS 5.0.1 update information here: KVS 5.0.1 update

Important notes for 6.2.0

• There will be template backward incompatibilities with model gender values after updating to 6.2.0, this post highlights what should be done in default theme.
• Please check important notes for 6.0.1 if you didn't yet update to this version.
• Please check KVS 5.5.0 and vertical screenshots issue in old projects issue if you didn't yet update to this version.
• Please check important notes for 5.4.0 if you didn't yet update to this version.
• Please check important notes for 5.2.0 if you didn't yet update to this version.

 

6.2.0 update procedure (same as usual, nothing special)

Any project starting from 5.0.0 can be updated to 6.2.0 with one only procedure. Depending on your current KVS version, update procedure may contain additional steps for older versions.

You must use KVS update plugin in order to update your project. For update you will need:

• KVS update ZIP archive for your project and its hash code for update plugin (contact support in beta phase to get these).
• FTP connection to your project so that you can upload files.

Update procedure has the following steps:

• Create backup using Project backup plugin. You may skip manual backup if you have automated daily backups enabled and you see the backup archive from today or yesterday in the list of available backups.
• Upload update ZIP into KVS update plugin and specify hash code.
• KVS update plugin will notify you if there are any custom changes in KVS system files, which will be overridden by update (player skins are not checked here, so they will be silently updated if have custom changes).
• KVS update plugin will update database automatically.
• KVS update plugin will ask you to copy files from the archive on top of your project using FTP or filesystem copy. Please make sure you are NOT USING sync functionality in your FTP client, which will delete many files on your server, because obviously update archive contains only part of all files. What you need is just to drag and drop files from update archive on top of your project root folder and confirm their re-writing (excluding _INSTALL folder, it doesn't need to be copied).
• KVS update plugin will verify the updated files and finalize update procedure.
• Use System audit plugin to verify that everything looks good.

 

Whats new in KVS 6.2.0

PHP 8.1 support in beta mode, tectonic changes in conversion engine, ability to merge screenshots of vertical videos into one, all categorization list_xxx and xxx_view blocks switched to nextgen with new features, SphinxSearch support for albums and search queries.

1) We are pleased to announce that PHP 8.1 support is available for beta testing, as we managed to do that without Smarty update. We recommend using PHP 8.1 for new projects, but for now we don't recommend to update PHP on running projects without critical necessity, as there may still be issues with full compliance. Although PHP 8.2 is likely supported as well, we can't yet state that officially. When switching to PHP8 there might be critical issues with your site template customizations and any custom PHP code that you have. At the moment there is a single known issue with KVS default theme, but there might be more; so before doing PHP version switch please check our forum for latest details about PHP8 migration - we will keep updating with any new issues found.

2) We have started preparing conversion engine for the upcoming HLS / adaptive streaming support. In this update we changed the concept of video format groups. Previously, KVS supported only 2 fixed groups of formats named as 'Standard' and 'Premium'. Standard formats were used for public and private videos, and Premium formats were used for premium videos. Such concept didn't allow switching a premium video to public / private type or vice versa. Now KVS will support any number of video format groups, and they will not be directly connected to video type as before (however for the sake of backward compatibility we had to keep the ability of one format group to be auto-selected for premium videos same as before). First of all, this will allow switching any video between public / private / premium type at any time. Secondly, it will be possible to migrate videos from one format group to another. This feature will be required in future when migrating existing projects to HLS video format, so that you won't need to think about how many videos you have and require your storage servers to have x2 disk space, as the migration process will delete old video files for each video as soon as it creates new video files.

3) In conversion engine we optimized video screenshots copying between main and conversion servers, so that all screenshot files are merged together into a single tape archive and copied as a single file. This optimization may dramatically increase video processing speed for projects that use remote conversion servers with high FTP latency.

4) In video screenshot settings you can now enable that vertical screenshots are merged into a single horizontal screenshot by 2, 3 or 4 images in a row.

5) In conversion servers you can now indicate if a server should be fully loaded with tasks before starting using other servers. This option may be useful if you have a more powerful conversion server together with some less powerful. In such a scenario if you don't activate this option, your conversion tasks may be randomly distributed to all servers, resulting in some tasks copied to less powerful servers, while more powerful will remain not fully loaded. Using the new option will result in faster processing, except for cases when you have big task queue waiting for processing and all your conversion resources should be loaded to the full extent.

6) Now possible to separate vertical VS horizontal videos in admin panel and site area, KVS has support for a new flag in video data.

7) External search plugin was extended with support for albums and search queries, they can now be served via SphinxSearch for better search accuracy and performance. Also the plugin will now support error notification in case KVS detects that SphinxSearch is not working. To receive email notifications for this error type you will need to manually enable it in Personal settings. Please refer to our forum post for configuring SphinxSearch, it is linked from the plugin page in admin panel.

8) Synonymizer plugin was enhanced with support for multi-word expressions, previously it only supported single words. Also will now be possible to delete specific words by replacing them with empty text. Please note that Synonymizer plugin is not designed for replacing banned words in the content posted by users, there is another feature for this task located in Website settings. But this plugin can be used to process content from grabbers / import, and also is capable of post-processing existing content at any time using mass edit functionality.

9) KVS nextgen architecture finally comes to all categorization list_xxx and xxx_view blocks, including categories, models, tags and content sources. This brings new features to them: more filters, text search, related lists, and - what has been frequently asked - interconnected queries. Interconnected queries will allow displaying categorization that is used together with other categorization in videos, albums or posts. Example: for a model show all categories or tags that are used together with this model in videos. Or for category show all tags that are used together with this category in videos. These queries are pricey, so such blocks should be well-cached to reduce database load.

10) Another nextgen feature was added primarily to models, but we didn't manage to fully finish it for now. It is the ability to customize lists of pre-defined selector values for such fields as gender, eye color and hair color (and in future coming for user profiles as well). There is no way to customize this via admin panel yet, but possible via database, and if you desperately need this please check with our support for details. This change has resulted however into incompatibility with themes regarding model gender values. KVS default theme had a gender filter in model list that will stop working correctly after the update. And any theme customization connected to model gender will stop displaying values correctly. Unfortunately there is no way to automatically fix it, and if this specific filtering is important for your site, please refer to forum guide about what needs to be changed in theme and in what way.

11) Transliteration logic for directories (the text part of URLs for videos, categories and etc.) was slightly changed. Previously if transliteration was not enabled (rare cases, since transliteration is enabled by default and likely not switched off after) KVS would keep latin characters and numbers in URL, and remove anything else. If the title didn't have any latin characters, which is a common case for Chinese / Arabic / Russian languages, the URL would be generated as a random 32-character string. This behavior changed now: if transliteration is not enabled, KVS will use title as URL, only replacing spaces and special characters with dashes. In order to have this behavior before, one was required to upload specially crafted PHP extension file kvs_translit.php, but this won't be needed anymore. If you want to have URLs in your native language, you can just switch off transliteration in Content settings -> Generated directories
settings.

12) Embed player behavior was enhanced in cases when your embed publishers are trying to hide their referrer (the original domain where they put your embed codes). KVS player will not play videos in this case, but instead will open your video page URL when clicked. Embed player usage stats will continue to count <Empty referrer> usage for such cases, but now these usages won't be able to watch your videos. Such publishers will either have to remove your embed codes from their sites, or stop hiding information about their domains to have embed codes fully working. There is also another issue with sandboxing your embed codes and unfortunately it doesn't have any technical solution. Sandbox mode allows your embed publishers to prevent opening links from inside your embed player, including advertising clicks and links to your site video pages. The advertising itself will be displayed normally, but can't be clicked. This would reduce your advertising stats ratio, and may result in lower rates paid by advertisers. The only solution here would be to monitor domains that are using your embed codes (you can find these stats in Stats -> Embed usage), and check if a site adds sandbox attribute to the <iframe> tag linking your domain. If so, you may want to block this site using Domains black list in Embed player settings, then your embed codes will stop working there.

13) Advertising profiles are now capable of restricting specific advertisers to specific browsers.

14) In mass edit GUI you can now re-create timeline screenshots for a specific set of videos, and force CDN invalidation for the selected set of content.

15) Grabber plugin can now support subdomains for some specific grabbers. This is required for importing localized content from tubes that have their localization done via subdomains. If you see this is not working for specific grabbers, please let us know and we update grabbers for that.

16) In 6.1.0 we disabled ability for users to access their accounts from multiple devices simultaneously, now we added an option in Website settings to enable this ability back if needed.

17) In Memberzone settings it is now possible to specify different default token price for public and private videos. Previously this price could only be set for both of these video types.

18) Exporting feeds will now allow feed users to query only videos that were modified within certain period of days.

19) In admin panel selector control you can now switch off displaying synonyms, or search in synonyms.

20) In Personal settings you can now switch off automatic new tab behavior for internal admin URLs if you want them to be strictly opened in the same tab, unless you manually use Ctrl key to force new tab.

21) Player GUI in admin panel will now allow changing playback speed.

22) In Neuroscore plugin a new option was added to change video directories together with titles in title rewrite tasks.

23) In album_edit block it is now possible to limit the minimum and maximum allowed filesize of the uploaded images.

24) In 6.1.0 we switched off support for JPG timeline screenshots as a fallback for WebP format. After feedback from our clients we decided to return it back - now if in player settings you have WebP format chosen for timeline screenshots and in addition to that your project defines another JPG format for them - KVS player will automatically fallback to JPG for devices that do not support WebP.

25) Bugs that have been fixed:

- [SEVERE] Video file protection would not work if you had some IPs whitelisted in protection settings (since 6.1.0).
- [MEDIUM] Some feedback (typically spam) could not be sent, they resulted into errors displayed to users. This was   good from one side, but could result in missing something important (since 6.1.0).
- [LOW] FTP content uploader plugin would stop working if video filename contained multiple dots (since 6.1.0).
- [LOW] Grabber auto-pilot was not working correctly if set to time-based schedule.
- [LOW] User login logs will now keep the full version of IPv6 addresses, previously they only kept the last part of
  them.
- [LOW] Minor admin panel GUI improvements (thanks to @Mich for pointing that out).

[Mich]

Great work !
 

 [LOW] User login logs will now keep the full version of IPv6 addresses, previously they only kept the last part of
  them.

Finally :)

 

21) Player GUI in admin panel will now allow changing playback speed.

Thanks !

- [MEDIUM] Some feedback (typically spam) could not be sent, they resulted into errors displayed to users. This was
  good from one side, but could result in missing something important (since 6.1.0).

This solve this ? : [SQL-1064]: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MariaDB server version for the right syntax to use near 'ERROR: INSERT INTO ktvs_feedbacks SET user_id='0', subject='', status_id='1',...' at line 1

[Tech Support]

11 hours ago, Mich said:

This solve this ? : [SQL-1064]: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MariaDB server version for the right syntax to use near 'ERROR: INSERT INTO ktvs_feedbacks SET user_id='0', subject='', status_id='1',...' at line 1

Exactly.

[Alex]

On 10/30/2023 at 3:05 PM, Tech Support said:

In this update we changed the concept of video format groups

Wonderfull, but what about albums? I need the same logic for them.

[Tech Support]

14 hours ago, Alex said:

Wonderfull, but what about albums? I need the same logic for them.

I don't understand this, do you mean different groups of formats? I don't think we will ever do this to albums.

[Alex]

4 hours ago, Tech Support said:

do you mean different groups of formats?

Yes, I meant groups of formats. Except for the goals that you yourself have already voiced for groups of formats for videos, it is logical to use groups of formats to filter content on the site, i.e. one group is, for example, videos of its own production. Another group is affiliate videos of other studio's production. So please make it possible to display in one or another section of the site videos only of a certain group of formats, models participating in the video only of a certain group of formats, categories marked only for the video of a certain group of formats, etc.

It would be logical to assume a similar logic for albums. Yes, it's easier with them and we can build filtering based on album type, but nevertheless...

P.S. Do I understand right that thanks to the addition of groups of formats, we can expect in the near future ability to sell individual video and album formats for extra fee?

[Tech Support]

1 hour ago, Alex said:

Yes, I meant groups of formats. Except for the goals that you yourself have already voiced for groups of formats for videos, it is logical to use groups of formats to filter content on the site, i.e. one group is, for example, videos of its own production. Another group is affiliate videos of other studio's production. So please make it possible to display in one or another section of the site videos only of a certain group of formats, models participating in the video only of a certain group of formats, categories marked only for the video of a certain group of formats, etc.

This is absolutely different thing. Format groups are not for filtering on site, it is internal logical structure that defines which video files every video has.

For grouping videos / albums to filter them on site you can use categories, content sources, or channels. They all have ability for filtering and designed for this task.

1 hour ago, Alex said:

P.S. Do I understand right that thanks to the addition of groups of formats, we can expect in the near future ability to sell individual video and album formats for extra fee?

This is already supported with tokens.

[Alex]

34 minutes ago, Tech Support said:

Format groups are not for filtering on site... For grouping videos / albums to filter them on site you can use categories, content sources, or channels

Thank's, but all this (categories, content sources and channels) is already being used for other purposes. Why would I complicate my life and create additional categorization through other forms when I can filter by the existing format groups? And if I can be filtered by format groups in the admin panel - what is the difficulty in implementing the same filtering on the site?

Or maybe I don 't fully understand the final implementation of format groups, which will be clear after the HLS appearance...

42 minutes ago, Tech Support said:

This is already supported with tokens.

Agree that this is not the same as paying for access to certain files through billing!

[Tech Support]

5 hours ago, Alex said:

Thank's, but all this (categories, content sources and channels) is already being used for other purposes.

Categorization can be divided into groups and used for multidimensional categorization. For example:

Niche:

- Category 1

- Category 2

Production:

- Own production

- Studio

etc.

5 hours ago, Alex said:

Agree that this is not the same as paying for access to certain files through billing!

Yes, we have plans to implement this in future.

[Alex]

45 minutes ago, Tech Support said:

Categorization can be divided into groups and used for multidimensional categorization. For example:

Guys, I know all this. You probably didn't understand my thought: I don't want to do EXTRA work if it can be done without. If the content is already categorized according to the parameters I need, why should I do additional categorization? After your description, I understood that format groups work like other groups (for categories, people etc). So what prevents you from ajusting them for filtering everywhere?

[Tech Support]

10 hours ago, Alex said:

Guys, I know all this. You probably didn't understand my thought: I don't want to do EXTRA work if it can be done without. If the content is already categorized according to the parameters I need, why should I do additional categorization? After your description, I understood that format groups work like other groups (for categories, people etc). So what prevents you from ajusting them for filtering everywhere?

Format groups are not designed for this reason, and should not be used to categorize content. We do not want to provide ways to use something wrongly. For example if you want to use this for additional level of categorization, consider a case when you set it by mistake to the wrong value. Then you want to change it, but changing a format group would result into re-conversion of all video files. This is not acceptable by any means. The price you pay for this bad use case would be higher than you pay a developer to add support for additional select option in videos, plus filter in list_videos if you want to add additional level of categorization.

Moreover, our new nextgen architecture will allow in future add such things very easily with only several lines of code in 1 file. We just not yet finish its exposure into videos.

[Alex]

On 11/1/2023 at 8:00 PM, Tech Support said:

On 11/1/2023 at 2:29 PM, Alex said:

Agree that this is not the same as paying for access to certain files through billing!

Yes, we have plans to implement this in future.

Here I would ask you to implement the ability to set a price for downloading/playing certain video formats. For Premium sites this could make possible to play HLS video formats online in the player for subscribtion and download the necessary mp4 video formats for extra money.

[Tech Support]

We will have to think about various scenarios when we come to this point when moving old code to nextgen architecture. Our current plan is to introduce user permissions system, where each permissions can be purchased separately. This can be permissions to add comments, or permissions to upload videos, or permission to download certain video files. This should cover all possible cases, especially if permissions can be conditional (e.g. download file of 1080p format, or upload videos longer than 10 minutes).

Many ideas are planned, but very limited time to implement them :)

[viper]

Is it possible to create a separate URL?

like

www.mysite.com/gay
www.mysite.com/trans

and for separate categories,models, channels, and playlists?

or any future plan?

[Tech Support]

It is technically possible, but very hard to do, so it is impractical.

[hbarnetworks]

On 10/30/2023 at 1:05 PM, Tech Support said:

KVS nextgen architecture finally comes to all categorization list_xxx and xxx_view blocks, including categories, models, tags and content sources. This brings new features to them: more filters, text search, related lists, and - what has been frequently asked - interconnected queries. Interconnected queries will allow displaying categorization that is used together with other categorization in videos, albums or posts. Example: for a model show all categories or tags that are used together with this model in videos. Or for category show all tags that are used together with this category in videos. These queries are pricey, so such blocks should be well-cached to reduce database load.

Just curious does this mean that if I have lets say a satellite. That I can display only the content/tags/categories/models that are related to that specific satellite configuration?

[Tech Support]

5 hours ago, hbarnetworks said:

Just curious does this mean that if I have lets say a satellite. That I can display only the content/tags/categories/models that are related to that specific satellite configuration?

Interesting question. Do you mean your videos on satellites are filtered with advanced filtering and you want this mode to filter tags / categories/ models by video filter as well?

[AsianViralHub]

when will the update roll out of beta?

[Tech Support]

We need to be confident there are no issues with it, currently we are still waiting and slowly updating some big projects.

[Tanjiro]

Is it still in beta phase ? I will wait for official when it's really stable to use

[Tech Support]

Yes, we still continue to receive bugs with PHP8, so for now we want to keep this version in beta phase.

[hbarnetworks]

How is the beta coming along? Also is it possible to run a video migration on a seperate cron? It holds the entire queue.

[Tech Support]

We are doing finalization for the fixes and some new features, should probably release 6.2.1 soon.

It is not possible to run migration in a separate process.

[viper]

4 hours ago, Tech Support said:

We are doing finalization for the fixes and some new features, should probably release 6.2.1 soon.

It is not possible to run migration in a separate process.

please add cut few seconds from each grabber option

[Tech Support]

27 minutes ago, viper said:

please add cut few seconds from each grabber option

Will do, already started.