2.1.10 Shell Update

We have now the Chromium version 57 integrated into our shell. Its a big update and it took some time since integration process has changed a lot. All good and running now and we have also noticed some performance increases to WebGL, but this may be marginal. The good news is that some ThreeJS/Javascript artworks that didn’t work before are working now.

For example, openProcessing.org experiments work great now, giving you access to tens of thousands of p5js artworks → https://www.openprocessing.org/browse/?q=&time=thisMonth&type=hearts#

Unfortunately the audio decoders (mp3, H.264, etc.) are licensed and Chromium is not licensed to distribute the decoders. Some people had spent some efforts to include some decoders themselves → https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/cefsharp/BJLMXl9c204/HMJlp8mZzF0J but with the expiration of the MP3 patent, MP3 codec support is planned to be included by default in Chromium 62 so we’ll be updating to this when its ready. In other words if the sound is not working, this is the reason. This does not affect Vimeo/Youtube players, only javascript based artworks.

For the sake of clarity, this is only for FEED and not related to the artwork submission process where artists would wrap their own versions of Chromium and most probably use webm/ogv/ogg for sound / eg. https://github.com/jocabola/FRAMED-WebGL-ThreeJS-Framework

We also updated and simplified how we deal with YouTube videos when they are added to feed. Instead of having to add the special URL yourself, we do this for you now so all you need to do is pasted the URL of the video when adding to feed. We’ll handle the rest.

Few notes on this:

  • youtube api does not provide proper video with/height information for determining the video orientation.
  • by default, the youtube videos are detected as "landscape" videos and will be played as fullscreen landscape video on Framed
  • to force the video orientation, add the display_rotate=enable or display_rotate=disable parameter
  • youtube videos loop but does not work seamlessly

26/12/2017