Variations to Avalon Webinar

Welcome! The webinar will begin shortly.

Variations to Avalon Webinar

December 10, 2015

Today’s Presenters• Jon Dunn

– Assistant Dean for Library Technologies, IU Bloomington

• Phil Ponella– Director, Cook Music Library, and Director of Music IT Services,

Jacobs School of Music, IU Bloomington• Tony Tadey

– Lead Multimedia Production Specialist,Jacobs School of Music, IU Bloomington

• Sebastian Bisciglia– Instructional Technologist, Jacobs School of Music,

IU Bloomington

Today’s Agenda

1. Current status of Variations2. Avalon project overview and status3. Demo of Avalon4. Future Avalon releases5. Migration plans

• Open source digital music library system built by IU with NSF, NEH, IMLS support

• Used mainly for streaming audio course reserves

• @IU, current version online since 2005, now with >30,000 digitized albums; in heavy daily use

Variations = Repository + ToolsCollectionMetadata

AccessControl,

Bookmarks

cont

ent

user

inte

rface

user

s

digitized audio scanned scores encoded scores

faculty students librarians

RIP Variations 1996-2016

• Mostly built between 2001-2005• Many old technology dependencies– Java Swing, RMI– QuickTime 7– QuickTime for Java (deprecated since 2009)

• Old user assumptions– Desktop client; not web-based (for the most part)– No support for video

Variations Life Support

• Workarounds for removal of QTJava, difficulty in installing QuickTime in Windows 10, etc.

• Variations will break completely in next Mac OS X release– Removal of support for 32-bit Java

Avalon: Project Objectives

Goal: Create an open source system to enable libraries and archives to provide online access to video and audio collections• Digital audio/video management and delivery system,

focused on needs of libraries and archives• Follow an agile, open source development model• Leverage existing technologies, where feasible• Communicate and market the project broadly to

increase awareness and grow the community of users and developers

Funding History

• IMLS planning grant– July 2010 – June 2011

• IMLS National Leadership Grant– October 2011 – September 2014 September 2015

• Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant– January 2015 – January 2017

Planning Process 2010-2011“Variations on Video”• Inputs

– Functionality survey– Usage scenarios from seven institutions– Meetings with prospective partners/implementers– Faculty interviews/observations

• Conclusions– Broader set of use cases than just music– Focus on fundamentals of discovery, access, access control– Focus on library/archive-managed collections– Focus on integration with other systems

• Metadata, teaching and learning, authentication, authorization, …

Why Avalon?• Existing repository systems don’t work well for time-

based media– DSpace, Fedora, Digital Commons, ContentDM, …– Issues: integration with streaming servers; hard to support

time-based navigation; difficulties in integrating access control

• Existing media systems don’t work well with repositories– Kaltura, Brightcove, Ensemble, ShareStream, …– Issues: focus on short-term access for teaching and learning;

limited metadata and access control capabilities; integration with preservation workflows

Development process

• A single, blended team• Agile Scrum & JIRA• F2F at least 2x/year• Daily video standups, IRC• Pulling in sysadmins,

testers, other experts as needed

IMLS Project Partners and Advisors

Avalon is a Hydra Solution Bundle

Avalon Architecture

Avalon Media System

Archival Storage

Authentic-ation

LMS, websites

ILSHydrant Rails App

All Users

Desktop,Mobile

Browser,Drop box

SearchBrowseView

IngestDescribeManage

Integrations

CollectionManagers

Authoriz-ation

Avalon code – consists of Hydrant Rails App and the Rubyhorn gem. Other pieces are leveraged.

Users

Fedora Solr Matterhorn Media Server

Media Player(mediaelement.js)

Can-Can

Ruby-horn

Hydra Head

Black-light

Omni-Auth

Release History

• 0.1 – July 2012• 0.5 – October 2012• 1.0 – May 2013• 2.0 – October 2013• 3.0 – May 2014• 3.1 – July 2014• 3.2 – January 2015• 3.3 – March 2015• 4.0 – September 2015• 5.0 – Expected February 2016

Avalon 4.0 Demonstration

Avalon 5.0 (Expected 1Q16)

• Updated player• Content ingest API• IP-based access control• Improved structural metadata editor• More accessibility improvements• Planning for Fedora 4• Preparation for SaaS pilot

Future Feature Development• See https://wiki.dlib.indiana.edu/display/VarVideo/Avalon+Release+Road+Map

• Bookmarking, clip making, playlists• Player API• Annotation• Spotlight exhibits integration• Synchronized transcripts• Publishing out to external media sites (e.g. YouTube)• Dynamic adaptive streaming• Additional access control options• Reporting and metrics tools• Internationalization• More flexible metadata• Supplemental materials• PCDM / RDF• Modularization• Integration with external tools, e.g. annotation

What Variations features are missing from Avalon?1. Scores2. Bookmarks, playlists (in roadmap)3. Testing/quizzing4. Access Manager– supported through other means

5. Timeliner

Interested in collaborators to work on pedagogical features as a companion project to Avalon.What features are important to you?

What does Avalon have that Variations does not?

1. Video2. Support for external authorization

1. LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability)2. LDAP, Active Directory

3. Embeddable player4. Standards-based metadata (MODS)5. Simple search/browse interface (Blacklight)6. Batch ingest support7. Hydra/Fedora backend (currently Fedora 3)

IU Migration Plans

• Currently working to copy IU Variations audio data (30,000+ albums) to Avalon– Going back to masters and re-transcoding– Using Avalon batch ingest functionality– Migrating structural metadata from Variations XML– Reingesting descriptive metadata from catalog via Z39.50

• Plan to offer Avalon player as alternative option on Variations access pages starting early in Spring semester

← Listen in Avalon (NEW!)

Migration

• Plan to document IU process and provide access to tools/scripts developed

• Discuss and share institutional approaches on avalon-discuss and variations-discuss lists

Questions?

• Post them to the chat!

• Website: www.avalonmediasystem.org • Email list: avalon-discuss@googlegroups.com