WAN Expansion

SAFARI Montage 2.1 supports a new WAN Manager load-balancing add-on called WAN Expansion. WAN Expansion allows a WAN Manager Parent Server to be clustered with other WAN Expansion Servers. This distributes the load thereby increasing the number of concurrent users that may access the system. Additional expansion servers may be added to the cluster to increase concurrent-user capacity further.

Closed Captioning

SAFARI Montage 2.1 supports closed captioning for videos in the Windows Media Video format. All content packages now contain closed captioning information for the majority of the videos. Closed captioning may be enabled by any user using their personal Preferences page. Videos that contain closed captions are designated in search results by the closed captioning icon . A closed captioning option has been added to the Advanced Search panel that allows users to view only videos that contain closed captioning information.

Streamlined Subject Browser

The subject browser has been redesigned to be more organized, powerful, and easier to use. An “A to Z” index has also been added allowing users to easily find a subject when they know its name but not its location in the hierarchy.

Electronic Whiteboard Support

The on-screen writing features of electronic whiteboards (such as those from Promethean) are not compatible with video running in a true full-screen mode like SAFARI Montage has always provided. To solve this drawback, SAFARI Montage now contains an additional full-screen playback mode that allows full use of any on-screen writing features in electronic whiteboards.

You may enable system-wide whiteboard support using the System Settings page in the Admin section. On WAN Manager systems, you may enable school-wide whiteboard support using the settings page for a particular school. If whiteboard support is not enabled by the Admin, users may enable it for their user account using their Preferences page.

Content Packages

This release supports the following content packages. All packages listed are available in QuickTime and Windows Media formats. There are no new packages supported in this release.

• Core K-8
• Core K-8 American Overseas
• Core K-8 Canadian
• Core 9-12
• Core 9-12 American Overseas
• Core 9-12 Canadian
• Core K-12
• Core K-12 American Overseas
• Schlessinger K-8 Additional
• Reading Rainbow New!
• Video Encyclopedia of the 20th Century New!

School News

Videos designated as “School News” no longer auto-play on the dashboard. Users may play school news voluntarily using the Schools News dashboard panel.

Revised Custom Login Page

The login page has been revised to display your custom logo beneath the username and password bar. Background choices have also been modified to support pure white and pure black logo backgrounds.

SAFARI Montage

The data between expansion servers is synced on a periodic basis. Any data changes that users perform are not saved immediately to other servers. Allow up to five minutes for servers to sync after making changes to data. For example, if you are connected to a server in a WAN Expansion cluster and you make changes to an user-uploaded video, perhaps changing its title, users connected to other servers in the cluster will not see the new title until the sync runs again (up to five minutes later). As a second example, if you make changes to data (a video, a user, a playlist, etc.), then log out and immediately log in, you may be connected to a different server in the cluster, in which case, you will not see the changes you just made. Please wait up to 5 minutes for the servers to sync.