EFV Hidden categories with automatic watermark and scrolling-text removal; app announcements and featured collections

This update focuses on practicality and convenience. EFVCMS watermark and scrolling-text removal have long been popular, but many users said manually selecting videos and then choosing a removal template each time was inefficient and labor-intensive. We found a better approach: categories can now be hidden, and removal templates can be assigned to those hidden categories. All videos uploaded or imported into the category are then processed automatically. Combined with category-folder import, this works especially well. For the APP, users requested announcements, so we added them. We also strengthened video collections: administrators can create collections, add videos, and recommend collections on the APP homepage. Use them as curated topics to present high-quality content together and improve paid conversion.

Feature updates

EFV transcoding

1. Adjusted bandwidth requirements for adaptive m3u8 resolutions so the selected m3u8 resolution better matches the viewer's bandwidth.
2. Improved the youtube-dl plugin to bypass youtube download throttling, allowing youtube videos to download at the fastest available speed.
3. Watermark and scrolling-text removal templates can be assigned to categories. A template can apply by default to every video in a category, with removal performed automatically during transcoding.
4. Added hidden categories, which are not displayed in the separate CMS, built-in CMS or APP. This pairs well with removal templates. Create a hidden category for a template, create its matching import folder, assign the removal template to that category, and upload videos to the folder. After automatic import, the administration system processes them automatically.
5. Rewrote video import for greater efficiency, handling tens or hundreds of thousands of videos in a single import.

CMS

1. Fixed inappropriate preview messages when accessing category videos restricted to a user's group in the built-in cms.
2. Batch publishing below the video center now works with the publishing system, pushing all m3u8 and related information for a selected number of videos to MacCMS cms or any other system.
3. Improved scheduled publishing to cover all videos without requiring a category or uncategorized-only selection, allowing more flexible retrieval through the api.
4. Added administrator-created video collections. Administrators can create collections, add videos, recommend them on the APP homepage, and search collections.

APP

1. Added recommended collections to the landscape app homepage. The app displays two recommended collections, also called Fengji, are displayed in recommendation order.
2. Added announcements to the landscape app. Multiple announcements rotate on the homepage; tapping one opens its details. markdown syntax is supported, but images are not.
3. Rewrote all image handling in the landscape APP using a higher-level image-loading component. Posters, ads and other images are automatically cached on the phone: after the first download to the cache folder, subsequent loads use the local copy, greatly saving data and speeding up loading. Failed image requests are retried automatically to improve the experience with weak signals. If retries still fail, users can tap the failed image to load it again.