Release notes: Ava Aware 1.5 Beta

Last modified: Friday July 24, 2020.

Learn about new features and any issues found in testing for the Ava Aware software 1.5 Beta.

About this release

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The Ava Aware software provides the features for your Ava video security systems.

Table 1 – Software release details

Release labelRelease dateSoftware build number
Ava Aware video management system software
version 1.5
(Released to the Stable Upgrade channel)
February 25, 2020Ava Aware: 200225_05053

Table 2 – Previous software release details

Release labelRelease date Software build number
Ava Aware video management system software
version 1.4.1
(Released to the Beta Upgrade channel)
February 14, 2020Ava Aware: 200213_04911
Ava Aware video management system software
version 1.4
(Released to the Beta Upgrade channel)
January 30, 2020Ava Aware: 200130_04803
Ava Aware video management system software
version 1.3
(Released to the Stable Upgrade channel)
January 14, 2020Ava Aware: 191218_04435
Ava Aware video management system software
version 1.3
(Released to the Beta Upgrade channel)
December 19, 2019Ava Aware: 191218_04435
Ava Aware video management system software
version 1.2
(Released to the Beta Upgrade channel)
December 5, 2019Ava Aware: 191205_04282
Ava Aware video management system software
version 1.1.1
November 15, 2019Ava Aware: 191115_04099
Ava Aware video management system software
version 1.1
November 14, 2019Ava Aware: 191114_04084
Ava Aware video management system software
version 1.0
October 31, 2019Ava Aware: 191030_03905
Ava Aware video management system software
version 1.0 RC1
October 25, 2019Ava Aware: 191024_03824

What's new

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This release includes the Ava Security Ava Aware video management system 1.5 Beta software. In this release, Ava Aware provides the following features.

Table 3 – New features — Aware video management system software release

FeatureDescriptionAdded in
Counting rules

Create rules that trigger on Count areas, to gain intelligence about the physical areas you monitor, and to receive notifications when your pre-defined criteria are met.

See Create rules for Counts

Ava Aware 1.5
Bookmark video clips and edit shared links

Bookmark video that needs further analysis, or that needs to be brought to the attention of your colleagues. You can also edit any links that you have shared with others, and Administrator users can monitor and if needed, delete shared links.

See:
Saved clips tool
Bookmark video clips
Edit Saved Clips

Ava Aware 1.5
Disable inactive channels on encoders or multisource devices

When using an encoder or multisensor device, you might want to disable one or more channels.

See Activate or deactivate channels for encoders or multi-source devices

Ava Aware 1.5
Add Fire alarm pull station icons to Map view

In Map view, the available informational icons have been expanded to include Fire alarm pull stations.

See Link your site maps and add extra information markers

Ava Aware 1.5
Objects in view counting

Building on the basic object counting (available from Ava Aware 1.2), Live object counting counts all the people and vehicle objects in the view of a camera, or in the view of selected groups of cameras.

See: Create live counts of objects in view

Ava Aware 1.4
Line crossing counting

Configure areas with line crossing rules, to count the number of people entering and leaving areas.

See: Create counts of objects that cross a line

Ava Aware 1.4
Download count information as .csv

Download the count information from either your Objects in view counts or Line crossing counts as comma separated variable files.

See: Download historic object count information

Ava Aware 1.4
Carry out quick searches from Video view and Map view

You can now search for objects directly from the Video view or Map view tools.

See: How to: Quick search from Video view,
Quick search from Map view

Ava Aware 1.4
Ava cameras installationTo install Ava cameras, you do not need to preconfigure credentials.Ava Aware 1.4
Configure Advanced Field of View cones in Map view

To improve the accuracy of object placement in Map view, configure Advanced Field of View for your cameras.

See: Set camera fields of view

Ava Aware 1.4
Search for audio detections

Search for audio detections that have been logged by Ava Aware.

See: Search for audio detections from Avigilon Ava cameras

Ava Aware 1.4
Automatic updates for Ava Aware

Configure automatic updates for your Ava Aware video management system.

Ava Aware 1.4
Backup and Restore Ava Aware from vcloud

Backup your Ava Aware configurations to vcloud. When needed, select the appropriate backup to restore to Ava Aware.

Ava Aware 1.4
Select the upgrade channel for each Ava cameras device

Choose whether to upgrade a specific Ava camera from the Stable upgrade channel, or from the Beta upgrade channel.

See: Alta Video Deployment settings

Ava Aware 1.4
Audio support for Ava cameras

The Ava cameras range of devices include audio analytics and detection. This release adds support in Ava Aware for Audio Rules, showing the audio events on Map view.

The microphones are part of the cover of the Ava cameras; if the cover is not correctly fitted, the Ava camera cannot receive or process audio.

See: Create rules for sound detection

Ava Aware 1.3
Improvements to timelines

The visual design and work-flows for the timelines have been updated.

See: View live video or play back recorded video

Ava Aware 1.3
Link to Ava Security docs added to the Ava Aware user interface

You can now link directly from the Ava Aware user interface to the Ava Security docs documentation portal.

You are routed to the correct documentation portal; either the main https://docs.video.ava.uk portal if your Ava Aware is on the stable track, or to https://beta.docs.video.ava.uk if your Ava Aware is on the beta track.

We recommend that you only use the Beta upgrade channel for test systems. All productions systems must be on the Stable upgrade channel.

Ava Aware 1.3
Supportability improvementsTo enable the Support team to better support your Ava Security products, improvements have been made the log files created by Ava Aware, including adding timestamps to the log bundles, and introducing variable packet capture (pcap) capture lengths.Ava Aware 1.3
Updates to the line-crossing algorithm

To improve the accuracy of the line-crossing detection, changes have been made to the algorithm used for these detections.

See: How Alta Video detects line-crossing events
Create rules for line-crossing, and
Search for line-crossing

Ava Aware Beta 1.2
Enhancements to the Video view

This release combines the live and playback features into a single pane.

You can also now choose to view bounding boxes on objects (people, and/or vehicles) detected by the Ava Security analytics, and display a count of people and vehicles.

See: View live video or play back recorded video,
Enable additional information in Video view, and
Enable basic object counting in Video view

Ava Aware Beta 1.2
Option to delete data for a camera

The ability to delete the data from a specific camera, perhaps in response to a privacy compromise or a breach of regulations, has been added into the Ava Aware software.

See Delete recordings from a camera

Ava Aware Beta 1.2
Improvements to the Alarms tool

The way that the Alarms tool handles long lists has been improved. Additionally, you can now use advanced search to more easily find specific alarms.

See:Alarms tool
How to: Review Alarms created by Alta Video

Ava Aware Beta 1.2
Support for webhooks

Ava Aware 1.2 introduces the ability to configure webhooks to enable Ava Aware to sent alerts using the communication or messaging tools of your choice.

See: Create webhooks to send Alta Video notifications

Ava Aware Beta 1.2
Tools to enable a camera to be easily swapped

In the event of a camera failing, Ava Aware now includes options to replace the camera, synchronize the video from the original camera, and to add the new camera on the Video view and Map view.

See: Swap out a broken camera in Alta Video

Ava Aware Beta 1.2
Area masking for analytics

You can now define areas of a view where analytics should not be run.

See: Define areas without analytics

Ava Aware Beta 1.2
Visual indication for upgrade statusWhen upgrading the Ava Aware software, you are now shown a progress indicator so you can monitor the progress of the downloading and installing of the Ava Aware upgrade package.Ava Aware Beta 1.2
Map view now includes a timelineAva Aware now includes a timeline on Map view.Ava Aware Beta 1.2
Improved logging featuresThis release includes improvements to the way information about the health of your Ava Aware video management system and your cameras are collected.Ava Aware Beta 1.2
User permissions

This release introduces fine-grained access permissions, so that you can define roles and decide which permissions are assigned to each role.

Using this feature, you can now define access on a per-site basis.

See: Users tool

Ava Aware 1.1
Assign roles to sites or camera groups

From this release, you can apply a specific role to a group of users for specific sites or camera groups. This enables you, for example, to create an administrator role just for devices within a single office or region.

See: Users tool

Ava Aware 1.1
Improved Ava Aware logging

Error logging has been improved so that more information useful in diagnosing issues is captured in the log files.

See: Download log bundles from your Alta Video deployments

Ava Aware 1.1
Improved NTP settings

You can now configure multiple NTP servers for use by your Ava Security clusters, server groups, and servers.

Ava Aware 1.1
Improvements to Map view

You can now use Map view to track vehicles in the field of view of your cameras.

The choices of icons you want displayed on Map view has also improved.

See: View additional information on your Map view

Ava Aware 1.1
Improved search options

This release includes improvements to the search bar used in the Devices tool, and Video view. These search bars now include a filter option enabling you to search for detailed information, for example, the Manufacturer, or the IP address of a camera.

See: Devices tool

Ava Aware 1.1
Improved user interface feedback for camera stream and analytics

If Ava Aware does not receive suitable video streams from the cameras connected to it, the analytics might be degraded or not available. This release provides better feedback to users in this situation.

See: Alta Video Video stream requirements

Ava Aware 1.1
Video stream rotation

To maintain compatibility with the widest possible number of third-party cameras, Ava Aware can now rotate the video being supplied from the camera, to ensure the correct image orientation when displayed in Video view.

See: Adjust camera video parameters from Alta Video

Ava Aware 1.1
Ava camera support

This Ava Aware release includes features to upgrade the camera software from Ava Aware. You can also use the manual and auto-focus controls in Ava Aware to change the Ava camera focus.

See: Devices tool

Ava Aware 1.0
Clustering of Ava Cloud Connectors

Create clusters of Ava Cloud Connectors that work together to provide multi-site coverage.

Ava Aware 1.0
First time experienceSee important information about the Ava video security systems the first time you log into Ava Aware.

Ava Aware 1.0

Retention period improvementsThe settings to enable you to better configure how your video is stored and retained have been improved.

Ava Aware 1.0

New Firmware available notifications Administrator users are notified when new versions of the Ava Aware firmware are available.

Ava Aware 1.0

Camera credentials improvementsYou can now add notes to each set of camera credentials.

Ava Aware 1.0

Digitally-signed exportsWhen you export video and metadata, the files are digitally-signed (watermarked) so that you can prove they have not been tampered with.

Ava Aware 1.0

Encryption of exported filesWhen you export video or metadata, or send links to recorded video, you can choose to apply AES-256 encryption so that only those authorized can view the recordings.

Ava Aware 1.0

Secure LDAPUse secure LDAP when importing users using your LDAP servers.

Ava Aware 1.0

Resolved issues

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These issues have been resolved:

Table 4 – Resolved issues

ReferenceResolutionResolved in
4020An issue where Automatic SW update did not always update your Ava Cloud Connector has been resolved.Ava Aware 1.5
3784An issue where, if an object of interest was located near the edge of the video pane, you could not select the object to carry out a quick search has been resolved.Ava Aware 1.5
3753An issue where, when configuring line crossing counts, if the line was drawn to the edge of the camera view, the line sometimes disappeared when you attempted to edit the line position has been resolved. Ava Aware 1.5
3286An issue where, when configuring Count areas, adding a second camera resulted in the camera being misaligned has been resolved.Ava Aware 1.5
Ava Security—257 A vulnerability has been resolved in Ava Aware. Ava Aware 1.4.2
Ava Security—254 A vulnerability has been resolved in Ava Aware and Ava Cloud. Ava Aware 1.4.1
3240An issue where deleting cameras from Ava Aware was not reflected in Map viewhas been resolved.Ava Aware 1.4
2662An issue where the Ava Aware user interface repeatedly warned about degraded analytics being detected has been resolved.Ava Aware 1.4
2316An issue where Ava Aware was limited to only maintaining a list of the last 100 alarms and events has now been resolved. The user interface now shows results in a paged layout.Ava Aware 1.3
2818An issue where, when viewing Video view, if you moved to another browser tab and then returned to the Ava Aware tab, all thumbnail views froze, and no video was displayed has now been resolved.Ava Aware 1.1.1
2768An issue where renaming a map in Map view caused all the cameras to appear to be removed from the map until you manually refreshed the browser has been resolved.Ava Aware 1.1.1
2584An issue where Ava Aware intermittently lost connection to the Ava Security remote access vcloud service has been resolved.Ava Aware 1.1
2537An issue where existing Map view thumbnails were displayed in low resolution after upgrading the software from Ava Aware Beta 3 to Ava Aware 1.0 has been resolved.Ava Aware 1.1
2526Issues where temporary stream conditions from some third-party cameras caused Ava Aware to incorrectly report warnings even though analytics were functioning correctly have been resolved. Ava Aware 1.1

2404, 2582

An issue where, if you attempted to export or link less than four camera views, the export or link did not work has been resolved.Ava Aware 1.1
2499An issue where Ava Aware incorrectly calculated time based on UTC rather than local time has been resolved.Ava Aware 1.1
2259An issue where, when playing back video from some higher resolution cameras, the video intermittently stopped, paused, and then start playing again has been improved.Ava Aware 1.1
1320An issue where, after setting a new hostname, a restart was required, but there were no notifications in the user interface, has now been resolved.Ava Aware 1.1
2547An issue where, on upgrading from Ava Aware Beta 2 to Ava Aware 1.0 RC1 without first upgrading to Ava Aware Beta 3, resulted in you being unable to view Devices or to view or search video due to the user permissions being incorrectly updated, has been resolved.Ava Aware 1.0
2500An issue where, when using the Date & Time setting in Rules, the time was incorrectly set has been resolved.Ava Aware 1.0

Known issues

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During testing, we have found the following issues in these releases.

These software versions have been extensively tested on the Microsoft Windows 10 operating system, using the Chrome browser.

Table 5 – Known issues — Ava Aware video management system

ReferenceIssue
4132

Issue: The count summary for vehicles, displayed in the 123 Counts | Line crossing side pane in the Cameras area always displays 0|0|0.

Workaround: Use the count information displayed in the main Line crossing table.

4113Issue: If an object in a camera view is already being tracked when a counting rule becomes active, that object is not included in the rule count.
4104

Issue: After carrying out a factory reset, Ava Aware incorrectly calculates the available storage, and erroneously labels disk space overhead and reserved space as being used by recordings. All recordings from before the factory reset are deleted and cannot be viewed.

4082

Issue: If, whilst in Map view, you open the video thumbnail in the side panel, you can access the External link options, even if you do not have permissions to share video.

3748Issue: On occasion, the Ava Security analytics might briefly detect a single object as multiple objects. If this situation occurs near a line crossing count, the count could trigger on the erroneous multiple objects, leading to an incorrect count being shown.
3708Issue: When carrying out similarity searches, if you have many results and add and remove thumbnails, the user interface can become unresponsive, with spinner icons displayed instead of video.
3646Issue: On somethird-party PTZ cameras, Ava Security Ava Aware does not recognize and calibrate the zoom features.
3467Issue: If you save a video view, but do not make it public at this time, you are unable to later edit the settings to make the view public.
3398

Issue: If you only have one Ava Aware user set up, and you move that user into a new User group that has no permissions, you will be signed out of Ava Aware, and then will be unable to make any changes to users or permissions.

Workaround: Ensure that you always have at least one Administrator user that has full permissions.

2477

Issue: When you have configured several Ava Cloud Connectors as a cluster, any pop-up notifications that should appear for each cluster node are only shown on the master appliance.

Workaround: All alarms and events are correctly listed in the Alarms & Events dialog.

1264, 1881

Issue: In certain testing environments, especially in smaller rooms where low lighting levels, shelving, rack-systems, cables, and other hard edges are in close proximity to the cameras, the Ava Security software might display false vehicle detections.

266Issue: In clustered Ava Cloud Connector installations, you cannot export video from clustered nodes.
General

Issue: If third-party cameras do not support the multiple streams or the GOP profiles required by the Ava Security Ava Aware video management system, these incompatibilities might impact the accuracy of the Ava Security analytics.