Avalon 7.
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1.0
Avalon 7.01.0 is now available for download at the Github releases page.
Release Notes
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
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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
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For any questions or assistance, please email us at: avalon-discuss-l@list.indiana.edu
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Joining a Slack team requires an invitation, but anyone can generate an automatic invite to the Samvera Community slack channel using the following form: Samvera Slack invite
https://wiki.dlib.indiana.edu/display/VarVideo/For+System+Administrators
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