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The Avalon team's demo for sprints 115 & 117 are now available for viewing.

115’s demo highlights:

“Second Scrubber”

·      Extra view on track (or segment) level metadata for an item in Avalon.

·      Corresponds in time and length in offset.

·      Key feature for Variations migration.

“Avalon Wipeout”

·      Back-end tool for wiping out data on server side.

·      Not using active Fedora code to delete or destroy, going straight to Fedora and Solr and issuing delete commands directly including destroying all Fedora tombstones and PIDs that are deleted.

·      Goes to source, deletes everything quickly.

117’s demo – Enhancements/Bug Fixes for 5.1.5

·      Initial load is faster, switching between items is faster. (miliseconds)

·      Second scrubber user enhancements for cleaner navigation.

Watch here: 

Demo 115: https://pawpaw.dlib.indiana.edu/media_objects/avalon:9708

Demo 117: https://pawpaw.dlib.indiana.edu/media_objects/avalon:9735

To view all demos, here's our Avalon collection: http://bit.ly/2apvrmd

Please note we will have an upcoming 5.1.5 release coming soon and 6.0 is on the near horizon. 

Our waffle board, #Avalon slack chat on the HydraPartners channel and our renewed commitment to shareable sprint demos are all measures to bring community insight and inspiration to the Avalon code and design.

One of the past projects that led to the development of Avalon is the Variations digital music library system. In fact, the original name of the Avalon project was “Variations on Video.” Variations was originally developed under a partnership between Indiana University and IBM in the mid-1990s and represented one of the first audio streaming services and first digital repositories of music content on the Internet when it went online in 1996. In the early 2000s, a major grant from the National Science Foundation led to a new implementation of Variations that added many tools to support pedagogical and scholarly use of music content and explored relational models for music metadata, and a grant from IMLS in the mid-2000s led to the release of Variations as an open source software system for use by libraries and institutions beyond IU.

Now, as we mark the 20^th anniversary of Variations, the Variations code base is nearing the end of its lifespan, as technological changes make it no longer possible to maintain in its current form. In particular, QuickTime for Java is no longer being supported or developed by Apple, making it difficult or impossible to run the Variations client on modern versions of Windows and Mac OS.

This past summer, Indiana University successfully migrated its 28,000 audio items from Variations to Avalon 5.1. Both systems are being used in parallel during the Fall 2016 semester, and at the end of December, IU’s Variations instance will be decommissioned. IU is currently planning to move its musical scores currently in Variations to a Hydra application based on Princeton University Library’s Plum.

Each institution implementing Variations has made a number of local choices that make it impossible to create a one-size-fits-all recipe for moving from Variations to Avalon, but IU and the Avalon project are happy to share the documentation and tools we have developed, in order to assist institutions that will need to undertake a similar migration.   The following is a quick links directory to getting started:  

MIGRATING AUDIO & METADATA

On a new page on the Avalon wiki, you can find step-by-step details on our migration of audio files and metadata, along with copies of scripts that we developed to help with the process.  At the end of the page, we discuss how we set up access restrictions and other collection and item level permissions.  

IMPORTING PLAYLISTS

Avalon has a built-in Variations Playlist File importer, and you can find more information regarding importing playlists here: https://wiki.dlib.indiana.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=523866277

MIGRATING BOOKMARKS

Variations bookmarks may be exported to JSON and imported into Avalon as playlists, and you can find more information in this gist: https://gist.github.com/mcwhitaker/03cab8a63bf80d431fa915b235522814

If you have additional questions or would like advice on how to handle your specific migration situation, please post to the avalon-discuss-l mailing list for follow up.

One of the major goals of the current phase of Avalon, supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is evolving Avalon to include a hosted software-as-a-service (SaaS) option in order to help grow the Avalon user base.

The Avalon team is excited to announce 3 recent steps made towards cloud-based, hosted solutions:

1)   The Avalon team has successfully completed a number of necessary upgrades towards cloud based services.

Our team has a proof-of-concept implementation Avalon 5.1 running Amazon Web Services (AWS), taking advantage of AWS services such as Amazon Elastic Transcoder and CloudFront Streaming.

As of the upcoming Avalon 6.0 release (currently available in an Alpha test version), Avalon runs on Fedora 4.  This includes new data models, an update to Hydra 10 and Solr and Ruby upgrades.

2)    The Avalon team is partnering with Lyrasis and DuraSpace to explore a SaaS offering of Avalon by Lyrasis that would leverage DuraCloud for preservation storage. 

Our first step is to gauge interest in such a service as well as to identify potential pilot participants. To help us with this assessment, we would appreciate it if you could fill out the following survey:  http://bit.ly/2dLTVrh

3)   Data Curation Experts has announced that they will offer hosted Avalon as a service beginning in January 2017.

This offering includes installation, setup and support of an Avalon instance in AWS for institutions who may not have the infrastructure or staff to spin up their own instance of Avalon or may want to start with Avalon in the cloud and eventually move it in house.

Release 5.1 is a feature improvements release.

Users of Avalon 5.0.1 and previous releases can take advantage of these new features by Upgrading to Avalon 5.1.

For more details on each of these new features, visit: What’s New in Avalon 5 wiki page or our github.    

More information on all available options can be found on the Avalon web site’s download page: http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/download

We welcome your feedback on Avalon 5.1 via the avalon-discuss-l discussion list.   Join the discussion list at http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/connect

The Avalon team's demo for sprint 104 is now available for viewing.

104 focused on:

·     Finishing new playlist features for 5.

·     Fedora 4 model investigations for Avalon 6.0 release.

·     Tool for Variations bookmarks to import into Avalon 5.  

·     Preparation for AWS pilot.

104’s demo highlights:

·     Markers (available ONLY within an Avalon playlist) are time points within an item you can name, and refer to visually on the media player.

·     Variations migrations tool: a configurable button to help Variations users move bookmarks into their instance of Avalon. 

·     First draft of diagram of Avalon in the cloud running on AWS.  

Watch the demo here: 

https://pawpaw.dlib.indiana.edu/media_objects/avalon:9651

To view all demos, here's our Avalon collection: http://bit.ly/2apvrmd

Please note our upcoming point release this week:

5.1 – improved 5.0 feature releases, specifically playlist features. 

Our waffle board, #Avalon slack chat on the HydraPartners channel and our renewed commitment to shareable sprint demos are all measures to bring community insight and inspiration to the Avalon code and design.

Announcing Avalon 5.0.1

Release 5.0.1 is a bug fix release. The following issues were resolved:

•  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

Users of Avalon 4.0 can take advantage of these new features by Upgrading to Avalon 5.0.1.

NOTE: Avalon Release 5.1 will be ready for download by the end of July.

This release will include feature improvements around playlist functionality. 

For more details on each of these new features, visit: What’s New in Avalon 5 wiki page. 

Please feel free to try Avalon 5.0.1 on our public test server http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/try-out-avalon before installation.

·  Installation options include virtual machine image, manual installation, and puppet upgrade. More information on all available options can be found on the Avalon web site’s Download page: http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/download

We welcome your feedback on Avalon 5.0.1 via the avalon-discuss-l discussion list.   Join the discussion list at http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/connect

The Avalon team's demo for sprint 103 is now available.

103 focused on:

·     Packaging bug release 5.0.1

·     Adding new play list features for 5.1, of note is our markers feature

·     Fedora 4 research for Avalon 6.0 release.

103’s demo is our new marker feature:

·     Markers allow users to add descriptions of moments in time to music tracks and videos within a playlist.

·     Key use cases are for finding specific solos or scenes in streaming media. 

·     Markers can be edited and deleted by users. 

Watch here:

https://pawpaw.dlib.indiana.edu/media_objects/avalon:9646

To view all demos, here's our Avalon collection: https://pawpaw.dlib.indiana.edu/catalog?f%5Bcollection_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Avalon+Sprint+Demos&q=&search_field=all_fields

2 upcoming point releases:

5.0.1 – critical bug fixes (this week!)

5.1.0 – improved 5.0 feature releases, specifically playlist features. 

If you would like to check out the waffle board:

https://waffle.io/avalonmediasystem/avalon

Our waffle board, #Avalon slack chat on the HydraPartners channel and our renewed commitment to shareable sprint demos are all measures to bring community insight and inspiration to the Avalon code and design.