Nuevo plugin v 11.1.0 & VTT Thumbnails plugin updated

Last few days we spent on testing Nuevo plugin's function changeSource.

The main goal was to check how text tracks are loaded or replaced when changing the source, how some newly loaded source interact with possible video ads.

There was no trouble with changeSource function and possible video ads. Simply the function becomes inactive when ad is playing and changing source is not possible.

But we have found several possible issues with loading new text tracks when source changed, especially on iOS and iPhone device. As many know, HTML5 video allows to use element. Text track in VTT format defines subtitles, captions, descriptions, chapters, or metadata. But not many know that there is no option to remove once loaded track. For that reason, videojs dev recommend only using remote text tracks. Remote text tracks can be created programmatically, and can be removed from a player. Still there can be issues with text tracks when changing video source, especially on iPhone device, which accepts only native text tracks.

Trying to solve all possible issues with text tracks, for chapters text tracks, when track is loaded, we set track's "mode" attribute to showing, before reading individual cues. Once cues extracted, the mode is set back to default hidden state.

For text tracks with possible definition for progress bar thumbs (metadata kind), we decided to rewrite thumbnails plugin and use own VTT file loader and VTT parser. Now it is suggested to load VTT thumbnail file through plugin's src> option. Old methods should work as well.

After changes applied to the nuevo and thumbnails plugin, it seems that changeSource() function is fully functional in every browser and every device, including iPhone and Safari browser. In addition to the media source, the function can replace all possible media attributes including text tracks of different type .

Now, you can review demo and tutorial, showing how media source can be changed programmatically,

Hotkeys plugin was updated. As far when hotkeys used, all other keys were blocked. The only different method was to disable alwaysCaptureHotkeys plugin's options. However, such method was working only when the player was focused. Now the player object does not have to be focused, None of the key is blocked for other use.

As usually, all the skins were slightly improved, mostly for better experience on mobile devices.

The structure of download package has been changed and is more clean in our opinion. Now it includes 2 directories (videoojs7 and videojs8). There are 2 examples subdirectories now, each for specific videojs major version.