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