Introducing Wistia's Newest Video Player, Aurora

In 2018, we introduced our Vulcan V2 video player, which was half the size of its previous version and a quarter the size of YouTube’s player. It was light years ahead.

And now we’re back with a new and improved player.

Meet Aurora, the lightest and most robust video player we’ve ever built — and the fastest one on the market!

We didn’t cut any corners (except to make them beautifully round) to deliver this player. It’s just as accessible as the previous version and it’s built on infrastructure that’s more developer-friendly, more compatible with your tech stack, and far easier to control for changes.

Let’s dive into how we built Aurora to work better for you.

Smaller and faster

It was a pretty big deal when we cut our player size in half during our last major update.

We took it even further this time. We slashed it by nearly 70% — from 139 KB to just 43 KB. Yep, we’re all about getting your site or app to load quickly, keeping your bounce rate low, and helping you rank better in search engines.

Modern player API

Much like our transition from Flash to HTML5 a decade ago, this update involved revamping our player’s API to better align with modern web browsers. This change also makes writing and reading custom behavior easier for your player.

This new web component player supports everything you’d expect, from asynchronous promises to event listeners. So now you can work with it armed with only common sense and your innate JavaScript knowledge without having to bury your head in our documentation.

Versioning

We know that making a picture-perfect video takes a lot of work. So when it’s time to embed it on your website, you want to be sure that everything — from annotation links and updated calls to action — works seamlessly.

With versioning, you can feel confident in your player’s functionality. Pin the version of the player you know works exactly the way you want, and safely test upgrades and changes before sending it to production. It’s a smarter way to test and optimize your player without risking its performance.

React & TypeScript support

Great news: Your front-end work just got a whole lot easier now that we’ve rebuilt our React wrapper from the ground up using TypeScript. The wrapper loads quickly and avoids content shifts by default.

And here’s even better news: Versioning is part of the React wrapper, so you can test and make changes at your own pace without worrying about your existing video’s performance.

Coming soon

Like its Roman goddess namesake, the Aurora player marks the dawn of a new day for the Wistia player and the player ecosystem. Check out what we’ve got for you now, and get ready for more from us in the future:

• New player design options
• Even more speed & size improvements under the hood
• Supported CSS customization