We are excited to announce the release of the latest version of our Android SDK, version 4.3.2. While this patch primarily contains bug fixes, I’d like to give you a quick overview of the big ticket items contained in the jump to 4.3.X.
Closed Captions
The Brightcove Android SDK now offers caption support across a range of the most popular Android versions. By providing a custom captions renderer, publishers using the Android SDK can ensure their TTML and WebVTT captions reach their entire audience. Leveraging the WebVTT caption capabilities introduced in Android KitKat (4.4), the Brightcove Android SDK internally chooses the best way to implement captions based on the device capabilities. This means that in 4.4+ devices viewers can use the OS level caption settings, and versions prior to 4.4 can use our custom captions stylizing located in the player itself.
Table 1: Supported captions formats on Android versions supported by Brightcove
If you’re new to the captions game, or would like a refresher, our friends over at Zencoder put together this great doc explaining captions for web video in a little more detail. While it’s a bit dated, it contains some great in-depth background info to get you up to speed.
VMAP Plugin Beta
Version 4.3.0 of the Android SDK shipped with a new plugin that allows publishers to specify VMAP from non-Google ad servers. In the past, we’ve been reliant on our integration with Google IMA to parse this ad standard; however, that route left us vulnerable to bugs on Google’s side as well as restrictions on the look and feel of how ads are displayed.
With our own VMAP Plugin, we regain control of handling any issues that arise and can ensure advertising works as intended. Currently in Beta phase, we’d love to hear from anyone trying it out, bugs or requests, on the developer forums! Official documentation and a sample app are coming soon.
Core SDK
To take advantage of all this and more, grab the latest Android SDK package, version 4.3.2, from our Android developer docs. For more details on the SDK release check out the official release notes!