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Avalon Update

Jon Cameron

Indiana University Libraries

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Samvera Virtual Connect 2025

May 6, 2025

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What is Avalon Media System?

  • Streaming audio and video access platform designed for libraries and archives
  • Flexible and granular access control
  • Easy transcoding workflows
  • Supported by grants from the Mellon Foundation and IMLS

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Avalon Community

  • Many other institutions using Avalon
    • https://avalon.samvera.org/features#implementations
    • In-progress implementation: Michigan State University
  • Monthly Roundtable Meeting
    • https://samvera.atlassian.net/wiki/x/KwK0d
  • Public Slack Channel
    • #avalon in Samvera Slack

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Avalon Media System 8.0 – December 2024

Dependency Upgrades

  • Fedora 6 🎉
  • Rails 7.2
  • Ruby 3.3

Features

  • Sharepoint added as a source in Browse Everything
  • Stream MP3 files directly without transcoding
  • Date is no longer a required field in descriptive metadata
  • Subject field now links out to faceted Blacklight catalog view

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Ramp: IIIF Media Component Library

MediaPlayer

Ramp 3.3

  • Progress bar style changes for improved seeking
  • State management has been widely refactored
  • Captions settings for user sessions now saved in the browser
  • Expand/collapse buttons for structural metadata moved from Avalon to a new Ramp component

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Avalon 8 Performance Improvements

  • Solr queries updated to improve response times
  • Performance improvements to item edit pages and HLS streaming manifest generation
  • Load time values tracked during development and testing
  • 8.0.1: Further Solr query changes for item pages
    • 3x speed increase for loading objects with 100 child sections (files)

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Avalon Media System 8.0.1 May 2025

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed timing scope bugs for Add to Playlist and Create Timeline actions
  • Resolved a case where the Share panel would not be enabled on item pages
  • Files retrieved from cloud storage respect masterfile management settings and no longer have redundant download requests
  • Connecting to Sharepoint in Browse Everything no longer requires two authentication attempts
  • User account fields are no longer case sensitive
  • Streaming server configuration in settings file respects both string and token values

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What’s Next

Avalon 8.1 – Summer 2025

    • Ramp 3.4
      • Annotations Component
    • Blacklight 8 + Bootstrap 5
    • Wowza Streaming Engine (Media Server) Upgrade

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Ramp 3.4 - Annotations Component

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Ramp 3.4 - Annotations Component

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What’s Next

Avalon 8.2+

  • Audio Description Support
  • Accessibility Updates and Workflow Support
  • Permissions Model Changes
    • Units as full objects with permissions
    • Inheritance from Unit/Collection for view-only users
  • IIIF Auth 2.0

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Get in Touch with the Avalon Team

  • #avalon channel in Samvera Slack
  • avalon.samvera.org/contact
  • avalon-discuss-l@iu.edu Mailing List
  • demo.avalonmediasystem.org

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Thank You!

avalonmediasystem.org