Avalon Features for Previous Releases
Release 1 (R1), May 2013
- Secure delivery of video and audio to desktop browsers and iOS (iPad/iPhone) devices
- Implementation as a Hydra application to provide easy search via the Blacklight discovery tool and integration with a Fedora repository
- Support for both Adobe Media Server and the Red5 open source media server for audio and video streaming
- Integration possibilities for a variety of authentication systems, along with permissions management by user- or group-based authorization
- Manual media ingest and description
- Dropbox-based batch import capability
Release 2 (R2), October 2013
- Unit level and Collection level (University Archives and Faculty Collection) support, to enforce access and editing management
- Allowing specifications of section labels in batch (which is not in MODS) as well as access control
- Allowing player change
- Basic monitoring and troubleshooting
- Migration tools to easily shift R1 content to R2
- Custom thumbnail images for videos
Release 3 (R3), May 2014
- Track master files and derivatives in Fedora, and support archiving workflow for masters
- Campus and course-based access control via LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability)
- Permanent URL support (Handle Server and PURL)
- Method of importing previously encoded derivatives
- Dropbox privacy between collections - LOW
- Player embedding for public and restricted content
- Player fixes and improvements
- Streamlined release process
Release 3.1 (R3.1), July 2014
- Automated Group Management - Support integration with external sources of group membership relevant to access permissions
- Thumbnail generation from derivatives so master files can be immediately deleted or moved aside
- Custom permalink specification - enabling reuse of pre-existing PURLs or handles
- Import of previously transcoded files from the Avalon dropbox
- Improved error messages for batch ingest failures
- Improved SEO - public Avalon items show up better in search engines
Release 3.2 (R3.2), December 2014
- Hydra 7 upgrade
- Needed metadata fields added, such as original physical description, language, related links, terms of use (item and batch)
- Easily navigate to dropbox subdirectories
- Browse everything integration
- Bulk publish/unpublish
- Bulk delete
- Bulk collection re-assign
- Bulk actions for access control
Release 3.3 (R3.3), January/February 2015
- Import descriptive metadata from ILS
- Accessibility assessment
- Import multiple quality level derivatives per section
Release 4 (R4), September 2015
Migrate structural metadata from Variations to Avalon
Importing new items with an existing structure file that is created outside of the system
Navigate metadata by structure (jump to point on the timeline)
Create metadata structure (via resource description form and batch; structure can be added at the file level or what is now called a section), this includes segment label, hierarchy, and time offset
Edit metadata structure via resource description form
Create a transcoding API to support use with alternative transcoding engines
Wowza integration
Hydra 8
Navigation of web page elements with screen reader and tab key
Using player controls with keyboard
Add Notes field
Index Notes field
Providing LTI urls for direct access to item or sections when used with a Course Management System
Embed support
Release 5 (R5): June 2016
Support IU MDPI/Large collection management. Support for moving from Variations to Avalon.
- Playlists:
Adding clips of media items to playlists;
Edit, re-order and move playlist items to other playlists
Create public or private playlists
- Content ingest API
- Access control enhancements:
IP based access control
Leases for access control (Start/end dates for user and group access on items)
- Accessibility phase 2
Support for ingesting/delivering captions in VTT and/or SRT files
Section labels able to be searched
- Fedora 4 planning
Release 5.0.1: July 14, 2016 - Bug fix release
· Inconsistencies in Avalon’s media player on some mobile device browsers
· Captions intermittently failed to appear on the media player when enabled
· Users would occasionally encounter error screens when searching
Release 5.1: July 28, 2016 - Feature improvements release
· Added functionality for playlists: markers
o Create and edit specific time points on scrubber
o Visual list (in chronological order) and scrubber points
· Variations import for playlists
· Various bug fixes
o Apostrophes in media objects causing a load failure
o Various smart phone display bugs
o Error handling for users clicking multiple times on upload
Release 6: March 2017
Avalon 6 is the first full release of Avalon running on Fedora 4 and has feature parity with the latest Avalon 5 release.
- Updated to use current releases of Hydra components
- New installation methods, including official images for Docker
- Preview version of Avalon 5.x to Avalon 6 migration tool (full migration tool release coming soon)
Includes Avalon 5 Features
- Playlists:
- Adding clips of media items to playlists
- Edit, re-order and move playlist items to other playlists
- Create public or private playlists
- Playlist Markers:
- Create and edit specific time points on scrubber
- Visual list (in chronological order) and scrubber points
- Content ingest API
- Access control enhancements:
- IP based access control
- Leases for access control (Start/end dates for user and group access on items)
- Accessibility
- Support for ingesting/delivering captions in VTT and/or SRT files
- Section labels able to be searched
- Variations Playlist Import
- Import a Variations playlist file into Avalon
Updates to Hydra and Other Application Components
- Active Fedora 11.0.1
- ActiveTriples 0.11.0
- Active Annotations 0.2.2
- Rails 4.2.7.1
- Fedora 4.7.1
- Solr 6.2.1
- Ruby - tested for 2.2.5 and 2.3.1
Bug Fixes
- Multiple UI fixes: Facet count wrapping, mobile and desktop styling issues
- Continued improvements to playlist performance
- Fixes for role permissions on collections
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