Release 7.2

Avalon 7.2

Avalon 7.2 includes support for supplemental files, an improved authentication flow for restricted content, and the ability to merge items, as well as variety of bug fixes and updates for supporting libraries and components.

Features

• Intermediate Page When Accessing Restricted Content
• Support for supplemental files
  • Files of any type can be attached
  • Files can be associated at the item or section level
• Merge multiple items

Updates

• Cron jobs now run through Sidekiq
• Dependency updates
• Structural Metadata Editor can be used when no audio data is present
• Added stereo mixdown to encoding parameters for video
• Added link to Sidekiq dashboard under the "Manage" menu

Bug Fixes

• Fixes for S3 transcoding
• Fix API issues with collection names
• Better aligned elements in the embedded media player
• Fix LTI login when using environment variables

Release 7.1.1

Avalon 7.1.1

Avalon 7.1.1 includes a number of smaller updates and bug fixes.

Updates

• Email and website contact fields added for collections
• Added probe service for IIIF
• IIIF authorization added to manifests
• Dependency upgrades; Rails updated to 5.2.4.2
• Structural metadata editor updates
  • Play/pause using the spacebar
  • Finer precision available for time values
  • Bug fix for parent suggestions when adding a new timespan
  • Fix for save structure flash message remaining indefinitely
  • Disable drag and drop during inline editing

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue with quality selection and volume levels being reset between sections
• Fixed autoplay functionality for Playlists
• Zero-width space characters stripped from form input
• Derivative files are deleted when masterfiles are deleted
• The "Become" feature in user management respects LDAP group membership
• Fixed a bug with the replay feature of batch ingest

Release 7.1.0

Avalon 7.1

Avalon 7.1 includes default styling improvements, a variety of bug fixes, and updates for supporting libraries and components.

Changes

API Updates

• API keys now respect the permissions of the user associated with a key. Manager-level users, for example, can now use the API to get the full range of data for items in collections they manage
• Problematic string escaping in some JSON responses corrected

Styling and Visual Improvements

• Styling improvements and fixes for cards, tables and buttons
• Increased default resolutions for thumbnail and poster images

Other Updates and Bug Fixes

• Resolved issue where collection managers could not delete collections
• Encode settings have been changed to avoid unnecessary frame rate conformance and provide compatibility with legacy streaming servers
• Updated the Structural Metadata Editor in Avalon with fixes and dependency upgrades
• Resolved bugs with email setting for SMTP and AWS
• Playback issues resolved in legacy browsers
• Intercom improvements and fixes
• Remove ImageMagick dependency

Changelog

#3935 - Increase Intercom timeout
#3943 - Show all collections on admin collections index page
#3946 - Fix email sending in AWS environments
#3950 - Remove unnecessary article on homepage
#3955 - Turn on timeliner in development environment
#3954 - Standardize styling for tables
#3956, #3968, #3993 - Updated SME build with new peaks.js and bug fixes
#3972 - Ingest api stores hls_url
#3975 - Performance improvement loading item view page when it has comments
#3969 - Number of UI improvements brought in from MCO
#3979, #4003, #4004, #4005 - Styling changes
#3967, #3990 - Ingest API improvements - MediaObject - add masterfile ids, derivative ids are actual ids instead of track ids now, structure can be inlined with query param; collection items are proper JSON instead of JSON string; Allow manager, editor, and depositors to get full media object json
#3986 - Fix playlist table sorting
#3989, #4001 - Fix player in IE11
#3987 - Intercom push button fixes
#3992, #4035, #4038 - Increase size and quality of thumbnail and poster images
#3809 - Cypress testing
#4000, #4017, #4023 - Dependency security upgrades
#4006 - Use patched hls.js to workaround edge case
#4005, #4008 - Don't show sign in selection buttons if only email/password configured
#4014 - [Regression] Managers can delete collections
#4009 - Link to collection landing and unit collection listing on item view page
#4018 - Fix testing infrastructure
#4013, #4019, #4020 - Improve collection poster upload processing and notifications
#4021 - Intercom push option to remove identifiers when pushing
#4022 - Fix player display on Edge 16
#4025 - ActionMailer respects SMTP configuration
#4029 - Intercom push improvements
#4026 - Don't force derivatives to have 30 frames/sec
#4033 - Clean up old sessions automatically
#4027 - Strip chapter data from derivatives

Release 7.0.0

Avalon 7.0 is a major release with changes relevant to end users, collection managers and system administrators.

Features

Collections Index and Collection Landing Pages

Avalon 7 provides two new ways to explore and display collections: the collections index, a listing that shows each collection accessible to a user sorted alphabetically or by containing Unit, and collections landing pages, which provide a unique page for each collection where users can view a description, thumbnail and a preview of items within. Collection managers can now set thumbnails for collections as well as items.

Transcoding Pipeline

With this release of Avalon, the transition from Matterhorn to a self-managed transcoding process has been completed. Using the latest version of active-encode and the FFmpeg adapter, transcoding tasks are faster, leaner, and more flexible. A new transcoding dashboard also provides administrators a way to manage jobs directly within Avalon. While Matterhorn is no longer supported, full support is available for Amazon's Elastic Transcoder service.

New Homepage Design

Avalon's homepage has been redesigned. In addition to the visual change, Avalon allows for easy configuration of the featured collections now displayed on the homepage. The Avalon 6.x-style homepage can also still be used if desired.

Local User Management

A new authentication configuration is available through Persona. This module allows for administrators to quickly create user credentials without relying on an outside authentication system (LDAP, Shibboleth, etc.).

Updates and Other Changes

Sidekiq

The performant, feature-rich, and better maintained Sidekiq replaces Resque as our default background job engine. This aligns Avalon with most Samvera applications, including Hyrax, which have already made this switch.

MinIO

It is now possible to use a MinIO object store to avoid a shared storage requirement and decouple Avalon, Worker, and Streaming services from each other in alignment with 12 factor best practices.

Avalon API

The Avalon API has been updated to allow for access to resources based on system role. API keys issued to users now gate requests to permissions a user has within the system, rather than providing superuser rights for each issued key.

Bug Fixes

• Multiple styling issues on mobile browsers resolved
• Structural Metadata Editor now properly handles certain timecode formats in existing structure
• Caption files with empty terminating time ranges display properly when enabled

Release 6.5.0

Avalon 6.5 includes IIIF manifest generation, a new editor for structural metadata, and integration with the Timeliner tool for annotation of AV materials, as well as a variety of updates for supporting libraries and components.

Features

Structural Metadata Editor

A visual editor for creating and modifying section structure available on an item's Edit page. The new editor features a waveform visualization and interaction much like audio editing software such as Audacity or Adobe Audition.

IIIF Timeliner

Integration with Timeliner, a reimplementation of the Variations Audio Timeliner annotation tool. Create, edit and share Timelines using media from items within Avalon.

IIIF Presentation 3.0 Manifest Generation

IIIF manifests are now generated by Avalon for all items and can be retrieved from an application endpoint.

Updates and Bug Fixes

• Support for Rails 5.2
• Web upload limit on file size has been increased to 2 GB
• Title attribute is encoded properly in HTML embed code (#2930)
• Type-ahead in username input field no longer overrides values of a very short length (#2896)
• Updating collection information no longer removes staff users (#2994)

Release 6.4.5

Security Updates

• Rails and dependencies updated to resolve severe security vulnerabilities
  • CVE-2019-5419
  • CVE-2019-5418

Release 6.4.4

Updates and Changes

• Embeds are now able to be tracked with Google Analytics
• CAPTCHA configurability added to the comments page
• Minor updates to Avalon Intercom

Bug Fixes

• Resolved issues with file paths that arise in certain system configurations
• Rubyzip dependency updated to avoid security vulnerability

Release 6.4.3

Bug Fixes

• Files ingested from a dropbox are properly handled when the masterfile management strategy is set to 'move' #2903
• Batch ingest emails are sent successfully, even when items are deleted by users before the job completes #2892
• Manifest files are deleted after reading and before any processing has happened to avoid race conditions or other errors #2919

Release 6.4.2

Updates and Changes

• The auto quality level within the media player works when using Wowza software for media streaming
• Fixed a bug that slowed the rendering of item pages

Release 6.4.1

Updates and Changes

• Update to Redis configuration needed to run the Avalon 6.4 stack within Docker
• Minor Playlist UI bug resolved
• Fixes for failing tests