Avalon Media System 8.2 Released

The Avalon Media System team is proud to announce release 8.2!

Avalon 8.2 includes improved object management with a revamped permissions model: Units are now full objects with their own staff and user permissions, and permissions are now inherited instead of per-object, making it easy to add read-only access to large collections for specific users and groups. 8.2 also includes support for Audio Description files, forced captions, and the latest version of the Ramp media component library.

Units and Permission Management

• Units are now full objects where user roles and default access can be set

• The "Manage" dashboard now allows for management of both Units and Collections

• A new user role, Unit Admin, allows for ownership and access at the Unit level

• Users are no longer required to be members of the "Managers" system group to be in a Manager role

• Item permissions can be set on Units, to be inherited by child Collections

• Items now inherit permissions directly from Collection values

• Inherited permissions can be disabled for individual items in the Access Control edit page

Other Features and Changes

• Accessibility criteria enforcement: a new configuration restricts items from being Published unless media files have associated captions or transcripts

• Audio Description text track files can now be added to media files and enable an "AD" button in the media player

• Donor Note field added to descriptive metadata

• Updates to supplemental file naming for downloads on the item page

• Legacy XML structure editor removed and replaced with a JSON-based editor in the Structure Metadata Editor tool

• Improvements to oEmbed responses

• Updates for automated UI tests with Cypress

Ramp 5.1

• Support for Audio Description text tracks

• Support for forced captions

• Playback position is now saved in browser storage

• Build system migrated to Vite

• Added show more/less functionality to transcript cues

• Player controls now display when Ramp encounters errors

• New fallback strategy for source selection

• Markers now sort chronologically on load

• VideoJS now bundled in Ramp and no longer needs to be installed as a peer dependency

• React upgrades: React 19 now required for Ramp

Bug Fixes

• Improved error handling for object type mismatches

• Fixed a bug causing unnecessary m3u8 calls

• Timeliner updated to new build with bug fixes and accessibility fixes

See the Avalon wiki for full upgrade instructions and see GitHub for the full changelog.

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