AVChat Software Product Blog

Starting with the June build of AVChat we will make a few changes to the way we’ll release builds and issue trial keys for all our products.

Regarding new builds

Currently we generally try to do a build of AVChat every month on the 1st Monday of that month. We do this to make sure if any bugs show up we’re here during the build day and next day to fix them.

Starting with the June build of AVChat we will introduce the notion of beta builds. Beta builds will be available for download from the private client area by clicking the [View All Builds] link. Beta builds will properly be marked as beta and they will be announced in this blog or in the forum. We will generally release a flurry of beta builds during the last week of the month leading up to the final release day (1st Monday of every month).

This process of releasing a few beta builds before a final one will help us provide more stable final builds.

According to this new calendar you can expect a new BETA build of AVChat on 28th of May and a final build on 4th of June.

Regarding trials

Our current trial system has seen some abuse lately so we’re taking the following steps to protect our customers and their purchase:

• The trial period will drop from 30 days to 15 days
• The latest final/beta builds will not be available for download to trial users
• We will not issue trials/trial keys for some top level domains

• we mistakenly used double double quotes in the embed code for HDFVR from the 4 HTML files with which HDFVR is delivered
• corrected documentation in avc_settings.xxx about the hideSaveButton option

That’s it, you can download HDFVR from your private client/trial area.

Hello all, as promised the May build is here and it has some great new features some of which the client requested and some that we thought would come in handy for you. We have also fixed in this version some reported bugs and some unreported ones.

There are a few new key features in this build such as the possibility of  leaving  the last room when a user has joined only one room).This is an important feature because, in the past, when an admin would try to kick an user(from a room, not from the entire chat) that joined only a room it had no effect because the user couldn’t leave that room.

Another  important feature is the persistent block. This feature was requested by many of our clients. Now, when you block an user and reload the chat,  the block will still be there.

Here’s the entire list of what’s new:

• Rotating text messages can be inserted in the text chat every X seconds (period controlled by the new  rotatingMessageTime in avc_settings.xxx). The script responsible with feeding the text messages is set through rotatingMessageUrl (setting in avc_settings.xxx). A count parameter is sent through GET to the script telling the script the number of times the script has been called ( this way you can set different frequency of appearance for different messages ).
• You can now can leave the last room you are in and get back to the Rooms panel.
• We’ve finally added persistent blocking (refreshes don’t kill the blocking list anymore) .
  
• You can now redirect all links posted in the chat to a local link verifying script that checks the link and allows the browser to take the user or not to that link. This is achieved through checkLinkUrl setting in avc_settings.xxx .
• dragEnabled setting added to avc_settings.xxx to control whether or not the items of the interface can be moved around (webcams are always draggable) .
• showOnlineTime setting in avc_settings.xxx to control whether to show or not to show the user the online time period in the upper menu .
  
• You can control weather or not to transform the urls into links in the text area through interpretLinks setting in avc_settings.xxx .
• Custom error messages are thrown if any of the xml’s (such as badwords.xml, etc.) loaded during the “Loading Settings…” phase fails to load .
• You can now disable the echo cancellation filter applied to Speex audio streams in the chat (useEchoCancelation setting added to avc_settings.xxx) .

Here’s what’s fixed:

• fixed the problem where admins couldn’t view the private cams after implementing the new mechanism for private cams
• fixed the consistency problems (duplicates and so on) with the en.xml translation file
• the silence screen now disappears automatically after X seconds
• fixed some errors on Wowza
• the eye icon misalignment  problem
• fixed an error thrown when resizing the interface during the “Loading Setting…” screen
• fixed the  position of the elements from the login screen when being resized vertically

How to get the new build:

The new build is available in your private client/trial areas.

How to upgrade an existing build:

You need to overwrite your existing AVChat files (both client side and server side) and clear your browser cache(this is very important because if you use a cached version on AVChat the application will not run corectly).

Forum thread:

There’s a forum thread regarding this build available here.

Next day update(build 1506):

Build 1506 is now available for download now and it fixes a few issues reported in the forum with build 1505:

• The users list disappearing sometimes when closing a room (Wowza only)
• The time shown in the text chat for each message was not correct when using US type time (like 5:32 pm)
• When denying a private webcam access request the request wasn’t disappearing

Second day update (build 1510)

Due to some critical bugs reported in our forum we’ve came up with a new version that fixes the following:

• the persistent block had no effect (introduced in 1506 build)
• admin could view the private cams even though they were not allowed
• inserting emoticons in the text chat area caused the text  formatting  to break

Hello and hope you had a great Easter. But we didn’t rest to much these days and updated the AVChat3 Integration Kit for Joomla! 1.6-2.5 (build 1486). We brought minor updates and bug fixes to the integration kit, and here there are:

• We’ve updated the AVChat Admin Interface page to tell you when the admin.swf file is missing or the installation of the integration kit was not performed properly.
• Changed the minimum Flash Player version necessary to run our software from 10.0 to 10.3 because of new AVChat requirement introduced in build 1461.
• Improved “room dropping” from “Who’s chatting module” in order to perform the “drop” action correctly.
• Resolved issue with popup dimensions not being taken into account when you set it from the AVChat Admin Interface options page.
• Now the integration detects the browser default language site’s current language and tries to use the appropriate language from the translation folder . In the translation folder you should put the desired language file in the following format (suppose the default browser language is German): de-DE.xml  . If it does not find the requested file, the language file will be defaulted to the language file found in avc_settings.php , under avchat["languagefile"].

Hope this update resolves some of your problems and we will continue to update the Integration Kit until there will be close to perfect.

Download will be available from your private client/trial management area .

Update instructions:  Just like a normal extension of Joomla! .

1. Go to Joomla! administration area -> Extensions -> Extension Manager.
2. Click on Browse from Upload Package File (Under Install tab).
3. Locate the com_avchat3.zip archive from the joomla1.6.x_1.7.x_2.5.x_component folder
4. Click Upload & Install
5. Done
   

For further information or new installation , follow this link: http://avchat.net/support/documentation/joomla#123

Hello all,

This is the first build with the new dedicated team for AVChat (more on that in a future blog post) and we’ve tried to implement some of the requests that you’ve asked for but also fix some of the bugs reported and unreported.

The main new feature in this build is the Silence feature which allows admins to block users from doing anything in a chat room for 30 seconds (period can be changed). Here’s how it looks when you’re silenced:

So, here’s everything that’s new:

• Silence option for admins that offers to an admin the option to silence an user for an amount of time controlled from avc_settings.xxx (silenceDuration). There is also a setting (adminCanSilenceOtherAdmins) to control whether an admin can silence other admins and another setting (adminCanSilenceFromRoom) for the state of the silence button. At this time this option silences an user by using his IP address so any user using the silenced IP will be affected.

• Block Buzz Sounds button added in the toolbar under the text chat area
• Erase All Screens button for admins in the toolbar under the text chat area. This will currently erase the screens of all rooms (weather or not the admin is logged in them) for all users. This feature helps the admin remove unwanted stuff (like spam links or images or videos) from the text chat.
• showNumberOfCamsAndMics setting in avc_settings.xxx that controls whether the number of cams and mics are shown to admins in the users list
• Error messages in the client area are now selectable so that they can be copied and pasted.

Here’s what’s fixed:

• Misalignment of the text errors and login/register buttons when resizing the AVChat area
• Fixed issue with some YouTube links that were not properly formatted
• Fixed issue with link on avc_settings.xxx related error messages not working

That wraps it up for the Easter build. A new build will be released at the beginning of May in which we will implement more feature requests.

How to get the new build:

The new build is available in your private client/trial areas.

How to upgrade an existing build:

You need to overwrite your existing AVChat files (both client side and server side) and clear your browser cache.

Forum thread:

There’s a forum thread regarding this build available here: http://avchathq.com/forum/index.php?/topic/1561-new-avchat3-build-1477-easter-build-available/

Below is a screenshot containing all of AVChat‘s admin panels and functions and explanations for each one. Click the screenshot to enlarge it.

Hello all,

It has been a while since we did a proper AVChat build but now we’re putting together a new team to handle just AVChat.

The 1st product of that team so far is this new build of AVChat which fixes a lot of outstanding issues.

Here’s what’s new:

• Significantly improved security of private cams
• Echo Cancellation is now turned on by default when using Speex audio codec and thus Flash Player 10.3 is now required for AVChat to run. End users will be able to experience higher quality audio to aid conversation flow, without using a headset.
• We added a lineSpacing variable in avc_settings.xxx that controls the line spacing in AVChat
• includeIPSinUserList setting is now better explained and it’s implemented on Wowza (Wowza/conf/avchat30/avchat3.properties) as well

Here’s whats fixed:

• showVideoFpsInfo was missing from the .asp file
• fixed issue on Wowza where it would not create a valid external users list XML file
• fixed issue on Red5 with some ban ranges not functioning
• fixed issue with the duration variable being improperly added to the banURL from avc_setttings.xxx when banURL contained a variable already
• fixed issue with the eye icon not disappearing from viewers in the users list when I was closing my video stream
• fixed issue on Wowza where when a hidden admin was joining a room the “X has joined” message was still shown in the text chat area
• if no comprehensible gender (like “man”) is provided by avc_settings.php, AVChat will now default to “male”

That’s it for now. A new build is in development and we hope to release it by 15th of April (Orthodox Easter).

How to get the new build:

The new build is available in your private client/trial areas.

How to upgrade an existing build:

You need to overwrite your existing AVChat files (both client side and server side) and clear your browser cache.

Forum thread:

There’s a forum thread regarding this build available here: http://avchathq.com/forum/index.php?/topic/1551-new-avchat-build-1461-pre-easter-now-available/

Yesterday Adobe released Flash Player 11.2 but the new Flash Player version seems to have changed something again because our HDFVR product does not finish uploading anymore and it gets stuck as in the screenshot below.

This is something we will look into over the next few days and issue a patch. Hopefully it will be a client side patch (involving replacing the swf) and not a media server patch.

This is the second time the Flash Player team makes a change that breaks app functionality and it’s getting ridiculous. 2 weeks ago they made a small change in Flash Player that caused us 2 weeks of 0% productivity and 100% issuing patches and explaining the issue to customers.

HDFVR Patch for Flash Player 11.2:

With the launching of Flash Player 11.2 we’ve experienced some problems after finishing recordings due to some missing functionality in the new Flash Player (there are some NetStream events that are not sent by this version of Flash Player such as NetStream.Buffer.Empty,NetStream.Record.Stop and NetStream.Unpublish.Success).

We’ve reported the problem to Adobe (here) but in the mean time we’ve compiled a new build that contains a workaround for  this problem.

The new build is 499.

Those who downloaded the build 496 and 498 they can use only the swf files with those form version 499 to resolve this problem.

Today we’re continuing our series of enhancements to the AVChat IM with a new graph that is now available in the AVChat IM Management Area.

This graph will show you how many users you had browsing the website at any given point in the past month.

The shown data goes back to 30 days so you can easily spot:

• trends in daily usage (most dating sites have high activity during the evening/before bed time)
• trends in weekly usage (lower or higher traffic during weekends)
• increases in site activity (maybe caused by a good referral/link or your own advertising campaign)

It also allows you to zoom in to a specific area (of a few hours for example) and better analyze the evolution of online users across that specific period. Here’s how it looks when you zoom in to a day:

You can easily spot the increase during the afternoon and sharp decrease during late night when everybody goes to sleep.

If you already have an AVChat IM account you can login now in your Management Area and see the new graphs in the Statistics tab for each site.

If you don’t have an AVChat IM account yet you can sign up for one or get a 15 day trial here: http://avchat.im/pricing .

In November 2011 Flash Player 11 was  released by Adobe adding the ability to capture video from webcams and encode it with the latest and greatest of video codecs: h.264, the same one used in Blu-ray movies.

Today’s HDFVR build implements that functionality. With the release we make today you will be able to record h.264 video directly from your website members.

However, all is not pink in the land of video recording over the web, there are a few issues:

• When using FMS as a media server the resulting file will be a f4v file (mp4) that plays well when streamed from FMS but to play the video locally or trough progressive download you need to pass the video trough Adobe’s F4v POst Processor Available here. Here is the official explanation: Adobe Flash Media Server version 3.5 and later and Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3 can record content in MPEG-4 (F4V) format using an industry-standard recording technology known as “fragments” or “moof atoms.” Some MPEG-4 compatible tools and players do not support moof atoms, and therefore cannot recognize files recorded by Flash Media Server. The F4V Post Processor tool aggregates the information from all the moof atoms into a single moov atom and outputs a new file. Use the F4V Post Processor tool to prepare F4V files for editing in Adobe Premiere® Pro, delivery over HTTP, or in video players that support H.264 and AAC formats, including Adobe Media Player.
  
  This tool can be used in Windows or Linux.
• When using Wowza or Red5 the resulting file will be a .flv file, not an .f4v (mp4) file.
• In what regards the sound codec you are still limited to Speex or NellyMoser’s ASAO which one does not expect to find in an .mp4 file (there is very limited support in desktop video players for playing back Speex audio).

HDFVR still defaults to the Sorenson Spark video codec, if you want to switch to h.264 just edit the video quality .xml file and set the value of the new <vcodec> tag to h264_r, h264_w or h264_f depending on your media server.

Other changes in this build include:

• a new setting in avc_settings.xxx (showTimer) that controls weather or not the countdown timer is shown
• another new setting in avc_settings.xxx (showSoundBar) that controls weather or not the sound bar is shown in the bottom right of the video recording area
• fixed memory leak issue when using FMS
  

To get the new HDFVR build just download it from your private client area on http://avchathq.com .

To update your HDFVR installation: only the swf file and the video quality .xml files have been changed so just overwrite your old files with the new ones.

Flash Player 11.1 will be needed by your members to run the new video recorder.