Dear User,
Here is a list of the latest changes we implemented in Aviary during Sprints 45, 46, & 47. These are available on the site as of April 27, 2020. Complete change log can be found in the Aviary Knowledge Base.
All users, please note that Aviary has updated its Privacy Policy as of April 27, 2020, which can be found here: https://www.aviaryplatform.com/privacy_policy.
New Features
Aviary now offers Playlists. See an initial example from Yale’s Irving S. Gilmore Music Library here: https://yalemusiclib.aviaryplatform.com/p/c2hhcmU1. Organizations can create as many playlists as desired to give their users curated access to audio and video content. Playlists allow organizations to sequence resources (and media files) from across their collections into a single location. Media files can be segmented as well so that organizations can feature specific material if desired. Playlists also have RSS feeds that can be enabled if desired. Note: Currently, only organization users can create Playlists, but Aviary will offer a similar feature for public and registered users in the upcoming months.
For any IBM Watson generated transcript, Aviary organizations can now edit the resulting transcriptions directly in the Aviary platform. Transcript editing allows organization users to update speaker information (if present in the transcript), to edit the text as desired, and to save the new transcripts for use in Aviary. Note: Currently this editing feature only supports IBM Watson generated transcripts, but we will add support for additional transcript formats in the future.
Aviary launched the “Take Flight” initiative that offers 90-day free trials of Aviary to provide remote services for delivering audio and video content during the coronavirus quarantine. Read more about how Aviary can be useful here: https://blog.weareavp.com/take-flight.
All media files stored within Aviary (using the primary Wasabi storage) are now being replicated to secondary AWS Glacier storage as a protection against any massive single failure at the primary storage service. This will result in a small increase in Aviary storage costs, and Aviary will post these storage cost changes shortly and communicate with all existing Aviary users who take advantage of Aviary’s Wasabi storage offering. Note: This will not affect subscription costs, and will not affect users who do not use Aviary’s Wasabi storage offering for media files.
Aviary users can now use Aviary and OHMS together to serve and describe audiovisual content. A new feature in OHMS allows OHMS users to provide Aviary media embed URLs directly into OHMS in order to Index and Sync Transcripts. The resulting OHMS XML files can be provided back to Aviary (using the Bulk OHMS Import process or the Add Transcript/Index process) and Aviary will automatically update the existing Aviary record with the new Index and/or Transcript that was created in OHMS.
Organization administrators can now choose to display audio players for audio content instead of displaying video players with still image thumbnails. This can be configured separately in the general settings of each collection.
Enhancements
When using IBM Watson for automated speech recognition transcription, Aviary organization users can now select from a list of supported languages. Additionally, organization users can enable speaker diarization, improved formatting for numbers and other types of data, and profanity filters.
Organizations who use SAML 2.0 SSO within Aviary can make use of the “memberof” attribute to create Permission Groups in Aviary for their users. For that organization, any authenticated user who is part of one of the selected groups for the Permission Group at the time they authenticate will be able to have access to the collections and/or resources that the permission group offers.
Aviary’s Authentication Configuration page now has improved instructional text to assist organization administrators who are configuring SAML 2.0 SSO services within Aviary.
SEO improvements for Aviary content, including improved meta tags for Aviary pages, dynamic robots.txt files for each Aviary organization, and separate sitemaps for each Aviary organization.
Organization users can now customize the list of reasons available to users in the drop-down list for requesting access to restricted content.
Updated storage cost details on Aviary pricing and payment pages.
Increased visibility for private resources on Aviary site pages and in search results when users are accessing the site from an IP that is included in an IP Permission Group. The new behavior is: as a public or registered user, when I am at an IP address that is part of a permission group, I can see the designated resources in Aviary when I search or browse. This works if resources are private or restricted. This works if collections are private or public. This works if media files are private or public. This works if transcripts, indexes, or captions are private or public. If a user is at an IP address that has been granted access to the content, then the user can view the content like normal - on site pages and in search results.
Added “local media server” option as a value in the bulk import CSV so that organizations can use bulk imports to embed files from local servers, instead of having Aviary store the file locally. Users can use "Local Media Server" as a source in the media CSV for the Bulk Import feature. When doing so, a new Media file is created if the Embed URL is a valid local media server URL. Bulk Import Media.csv is updated with a new column "Duration" that is required when a row uses "Local Media Server" as an embed source. A valid value for duration is HH:MM:SS. If Duration is not present in CSV, the user sees a RED error message in the Preview that tells them that a duration is required and asks them to fix and resubmit the Import package.
“Ignore Title” and “Captions” columns have been added to the Transcript.csv template for bulk imports so that users can more efficiently handle those options for VTT transcripts during bulk imports. These options already exist within the Aviary UI for one-at-a-time VTT transcript uploads.
Fixes
Added “Browse Collection” button to the Collection landing page. This button takes a user to the search page with all resources for a Collection displayed.
Fixed issue related to SSO login options not appearing when public users tried to access locked content directly. Now SSO option should appear on all subdomain login forms if an organization has configured SSO for their users.
Fixed duplication issues when users request access to resources. This was affecting organization administrators who were receiving duplicate access requests from users.
Fixed error causing Aviary transcripts not to move the timeline on Avalon embed players.
Fixed error causing Public Access URL to not work when the organization user selected a duration longer than one day for the validity of the URL.
Fixed issues related to the bulk OHMS XML import process. Relaxed OHMS XSD rules to reduce failure in the import process, and added better handling of server timeout errors when fetching media files from external media servers.
Fixed metadata duplication issue that was causing slow load times for some organization sites.
Fixed issue related to the new media carousel not appearing in embeds of Aviary content. Now, when an organization user uses the embed link from the "embed resource detail page" share option, the embedded view includes the new media carousel.
Fixed two custom CSS issues. The organization custom CSS was being HTML escaped and rendered like that in the app, so certain CSS selectors weren’t working. For example, “div > span” was showing up in the CSS on the page as “div > span” which wasn’t getting parsed by the browser. This is fixed now. Also, the custom CSS textarea element was fixed at 100 pixels wide in the application. This is fixed now, too.
Complete change log can be found in the Aviary Knowledge Base.
Join the conversation!
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