Variations on Video: The Avalon Media System

Jon Dunn, Indiana UniversityMichael Klein, Northwestern University

Digital Library Federation ForumNovember 4, 2012

DLF 2012 11/4/2012

About Us

• Jon Dunn– Interim Assistant Dean for Library Technologies

and Digital Libraries, Indiana University– Project Director, Avalon

• Michael Klein– Senior Software Developer, Enterprise Systems,

Northwestern University Libraries

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DLF 2012 11/4/2012

Agenda

• Project overview and status• Demo• Release 1 • Technical and metadata architectures• Plans beyond Release 1• How to participate

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DLF 2012 11/4/2012

Project Overview

• Funded in part by a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services

• Original name: Variations on Video

• Planning grant: – August 2010 – July 2011

• Implementation grant: – September 2011 – October 2014

• Partnership between libraries at Indiana University and Northwestern University

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DLF 2012 11/4/2012

Project Partners and Collaborators

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DLF 2012 11/4/2012

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

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DLF 2012 11/4/2012

What needs are we trying to serve?• Libraries and archives (and museums?)• Wide variety of audio/video collections, uses, and

access needs– Licensed educational video collections– Video/audio e-reserves– Archival collections– Open access collections

• Research and teaching & learning use• Long-term management and access• Tie-in with preservation

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Existing Solutions Insufficient• Institutional and digital library repositories

– DSpace, Fedora, Digital Commons, ContentDM• Web video services

– YouTube, Vimeo• Streaming servers

– Flash Media Server, Real Helix, Wowza, Red5• Classroom lecture capture

– Echo360, Mediasite, Opencast Matterhorn• Digital asset management systems

– OpenText, NetXposure• Online video environments

– Kaltura, Brightcove

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Project Progress

• Most of development team hired• Trained on agile development (Scrum)• Community demo releases:– Release 0, July 2012 – Release 0.5, October 2012

• New name• Active participation in Hydra and Matterhorn

communities

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Current Activities

• Northwestern hiring one more developer• Website design• Marketing and communication planning• Release 1 development• Metadata and object modeling

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DLF 2012 11/4/2012

Development Team

Northwestern University• Stu Baker, project director• Steve DiDomenico, scrum master• Stefan Elnabli, metadata/preservation

specialist• Michael Klein, lead developer• Karen Miller, metadata analyst• Julie Rudder, product owner• Claire Stewart, product owner/director• Andrea Zielke, project assistant

Indiana University• Jon Dunn, project director• Chris Colvard, lead developer• Phuong Dinh, developer• Julie Hardesty, metadata analyst• Brianna Marshall, project assistant• Mark Notess, product owner/manager• Nathan Rogers, developer

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Demo

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DLF 2012 11/4/2012

Release 1

• Expected in February 2013• Goal is to support installation and piloting by

partners• Functionality

• File upload, transcoding & descriptive metadata: manual or batch• Batch loading via dropbox and tabular data file• Authentication and authorization – optional integration would require use of

LDAP or some minor programming• Red5 and Adobe Flash media server support• Discovery via Blacklight faceted search & browse • Playback on desktop browsers & mobile devices (iOS & Android)• Basic monitoring & troubleshooting

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DLF 2012 11/4/2012

Release 1 Pilot Support

• Distribution packages• Both source distribution and some form of preconfigured

package, e.g. VM image• Installation & configuration documentation• Email support• Advice on hardware & software requirements by Jan 1• Goal: Small pilots/tests can be run on one server or VM;

larger scale use may require distributing functions across multiple machines

• Content & metadata from pilots can be migrated forward to future versions

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DLF 2012 11/4/2012

R1 Architecture

Avalon Media System

Archival Storage Solution

AuthN

LMS, websites

ILS

Hydrant Rails App

Hydra Head

Black-light

Ruby-horn

Media Player(Matterhorn Engage)

Fedora Solr Matterhorn

Media Server(Red5, Flash)

All

Desktop,Mobile

Browser,Drop box

Search, browse, view media

Ingest (batch or manual): video, audio, metadata

Integrations Users

Collection Manager

Can-Can

Omni-Auth

AuthZ

after R1 Avalon code

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DLF 2012 11/4/2012

Authentication

• OmniAuth• Multi-provider authentication middleware for Rails

applications• Providers are known as “strategies”• Dozens of turnkey “provider strategies” including

Google/Google Apps, Facebook, Twitter• Easily customizable “developer strategies” exist for CAS,

LDAP, Shibboleth, OAuth/OAuth2, OpenID, Kerberos, and many others

• As long as the provider returns an email address, Avalon will identify the user

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Metadata for R1

• Descriptive metadata• MODS

• Structural/content metadata• METS

• Technical metadata• Will be a focus after R1

• Still looking at PBCore, for technical metadata and/or as an export format

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Beyond R1• Releases every three months• Workflow & batch loading improvements• Authorization improvements• Structural metadata for navigation• Playlists and clip making• Easy player embedding• Transcripts• Publishing out to other systems• More optimization for mobile• Focused accessibility work

• We want to know what your priorities are!18

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Help with Requirements

• Survey:– Media server– Authentication methods– Metadata– Media formats– Distribution packages– Importance of VM image

Take the survey:

http://tinyurl.com/AvalonWebinarSurvey19

DLF 2012 11/4/2012

Participation

• Try out release 0.5http://pawpaw.dlib.indiana.edu/

• Try out release 1 in February 2013• See what we’re up to via the project wiki:

http://avalonmediasystem.org/

• Watch bi-weekly demos: https://wiki.dlib.indiana.edu/x/NxKKHg

• Browse user stories, tasks & bugs in Jira:https://bugs.dlib.indiana.edu/browse/VOV

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For more information• http://avalonmediasystem.org/• IRC: chat.freenode.net #projectvov• Avalon e-mail list:

E-mail avalon-l-subscribe@indiana.edu to subscribe

@avalonmediasys

facebook.com/avalonmediasys

• Jon Dunn: jwd@iu.edu • Michael Klein: michael.klein@northwestern.edu

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