Release 6.4

Avalon 6.4 includes support for adaptive bitrate streaming, the ability to copy content from one Avalon instance to another, and a variety of bug fixes.

Features

• Support for Adaptive Bitrate Streaming
  • Avalon can now be configured to provide an auto quality which will automatically select a stream for the user depending on their available bandwith
• Avalon Intercom
  • Copy items from one instance of Avalon to another

Bug Fixes and Minor Changes

• Stream quality selection is retained when users change the value
• Masterfile management fixed to handle filenames containing spaces
• Titles are visible in the embedded media player
• Values in MODS containing whitespace characters render correctly
• Resolved benign console errors when using the embedded media player

Release 6.3.2

Avalon 6.3.2 contains bug fixes for media player behavior.

Bug Fixes

• The zoom scrubber updates correctly when switching between tracks and sections
• Sections without structure are highlighted when selected, in all cases
• The Description and Related Items fields for playlist items populate correctly
• Default values in the Add to Playlist form update correctly when switching item sections
• Playlists in which the first item is inaccessible to a user display accessible items properly

Release 6.3.1

Avalon 6.3.1 is a minor security release. It includes dependency updates to fix a vulnerability in redis-store.

Release 6.3.0

Avalon 6.3 is a significant update including a new media player, rewritten batch ingest functionality, and support for cloud deployments.

Media Player Upgrade

Avalon's media player has been upgraded to the latest release of MediaElement.js. Highlights of this change include:

• Adobe Flash Player no longer required for media playback
• A loading indicator displays while media content is loaded into the player
• Updated icons within the media player

Playlists

• Tagging: tags can be created and associated with playlists, providing improved organizing, searching and sorting for users with large numbers of playlists
• User preferences for sorting on the playlist index page are saved

Improved Batch Ingest Functionality

• Replay batch ingests: update metadata for newly ingested items by updating spreadsheets
• Ingests with large numbers of items run more successfully
• System emails about batch ingest statuses are improved

AWS Support

• Avalon components have been updated to work with Amazon Web Services
• For more information, see the avalon-aws repository and accompanying documentation

Bug Fixes and Minor Changes

• Playlist items no longer intermittently skip
• Issues with LTI login have been resolved

Release 6.2.0

Features

Feature improvements include enhanced playlist copying, editing, LTI integration, and sharing. In addition, this release includes a preview of the MediaElement 4 player. See the closed issues for a full list of features and enhancements.

Improvements to Playlist Functionality

• Shareable via LTI link
• Shareable via private link
• Improved naming of complex works
• Add all items to playlist link added
• Copy playlist functionality added
• A new visibility option, Share by link, restricts viewing access to a playlist to users who have a unique and obfuscated URL
• Entire playlists can be copied
• Playlist items can be copied from one playlist to another
• Add Section to Playlist
• Add All Sections to Playlist
• Playlist markers can be clicked to navigate to their respective time points

Other Changes

• Tested for compatibility with Fedora 4.7.4

Bug Fixes

• Various bug fixes related to playlists, LTI, and browser support Full List

Release 6.1.0

Features

Avalon 5 to Avalon 6 Migration Tool

Release 6.1 includes a full tool for migration of Avalon 5 repositories to Avalon 6.1.

• Rake tasks are production-ready for data migration
• A full, interactive migration report page is available for checking migration status
• Administrators can view live Fedora data for items under migration

Player API

The Avalon embedded player can be controlled by Javascript on external sites. Available commands to be sent to the player include play, pause, seek to offset, and retrieve offset

Other Changes

• Bibliographic import behavior has changed—upon import of a new identifier, all fields other than "Other Identifiers" will be erased and updated with information from the new record
• Leases can be added without set start and end dates

Bug Fixes

• Avalon's version of Mediainfo has been updated, fixing an issue with thumbnail generation
• Attempting to access a deleted item returns a friendlier error message to users
• Behavior for the embedded player's authentication window have been fixed
• Notes can now be deleted from the Resource Description
• Users can delete items with large sections from the preview page
• Uploading invalid files for media, captions or structural metadata results in an message to the user instead of a 500 error
• Fixed the error received on the import status page for Variations playlists
• Users with Manager status can delete individual sections for items in their collections
• Administrators can delete any item in a collection
• Items with multiple sections can be deleted properly
• LDAP groups with spaces are parsed properly
• Bulk actions are applied to all selected items
• Auto-play works across sections in a media object

Release 6.0.1

• Bug Fix: Comment form no longer displays an error upon submission
• Small text changes for clarity on playlist view

Version 6.0.0

Avalon Media System 6.0

Avalon 6.0 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: add time ranges from media to a shareable list
• Markers: annotate time points in items within a playlist
• Content Ingest API
• Caption/subtitle support
• Access control enhancements
  • Provide access by IP address
  • Leases: give or remove access by date ranges

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

Avalon 5.1.6

New Features

• Toggle for autoplay in Playlists
• Disable autoplay when a user clicks on the scrubber

Fixes

• Fix autoadvance bugs during autoplay
• Fix HLS extract issues
• Fix permissions bug that prevented collection managers from deleting their collections

v5.1.5: Merge pull request #1519 from avalonmediasystem/staging

New Feature

• Introducing the Track Scrubber: more granular scrubbing when playing a media object or playlist item. Clicking the magnifying glass icon on the Avalon media player will open a second scrubber displaying only the current track (segment of structural metadata) or playlist item

Improvements

• Faster loading times for large playlists
• Faster switching items on playlists
• New environment variable method storage: most configuration options can now be specified via the execution environment instead of configuration files. This makes it easier to deploy Avalon using container or cloud systems (like Docker and Amazon Web Services) that use ephemeral local storage

Bug Fixes

• Masterfile duration reports correctly on android devices
• Fedora Noids properly generate share/PURL links
• Playlist auto-advance no longer skips items