JReviews 3.1 Beta released with Local encoding, Rackspace and Digital Ocean storage

[Alejandro]

Hi,

Today I am very excited to announce the release of JReviews 3.1 beta with new storage options, local encoding, and a completely refactored media storage system.

The process for uploading media for users has not changed, but the entire media storage code was re-written with new coding frameworks that make it easier to maintain and reduce media upload related errors going forward. This has also allowed the implementation of new storage options. So in addition to Amazon S3, you can now store media in Rackspace Files and Digital Ocean Spaces.

Not only that, but JReviews now supports local encoding through FFMPEG in addition to the three encoding services previously available. Keep in mind that video and audio encoding can be quite intensive, which is why there are specialized services that allow you to offload these tasks to them. Having said that, I am happy to provide this alternative for users that want to take on this responsibility and are able to manage this themselves. I will not be providing support for FFMPEG installation and fine-tuning.

And, if that weren't enough, you can now encode locally and store in one of the cloud storage services, or encode remotely and store locally.

I've also added Twitch.tv support for video embedding. To get started with this new feature you need to create a Twitch app in their developer site so you can add the Twitch Client ID to the media settings and "check" the Twitch checkbox. The feature supports embedding of both Twitch videos and clips.

If you use a CDN service, please note that the settings have been simplified and there's no longer a separate SSL URL setting. If you were using this setting before, you need to review the CDN settings after updating to make sure that you have the correct values filled out for the CDN URLs under the new Media Settings / CDN Settings tab.

As this is a beta version it's not recommended for production use at this time. Please report any bugs in the Bugs board in the forum.

If your upgrades are active you can get the latest versions via the remote updater in JReviews or download the JReviews package from the client area. To use the remote updater to install the beta, you first need to "check" the Beta checkbox in the remote updates page.

Enjoy!

Alejandro