Release notes: Alta Video 1.1.1
Last modified: Friday July 24, 2020.
Learn about new features and any issues found in testing for the Alta Video software 1.1.1.
About this release
(back to top)The Alta Video software provides the features for your Alta video security systems.
Release label | Release date | Alta Video software build number |
---|---|---|
Alta Video video management system software version 1.1.1 | November 15, 2019 | 191115_04099 |
Release label | Release date | Alta Video software build number |
---|---|---|
Alta Video video management system software version 1.1 | November 14, 2019 | 191114_04084 |
Alta Video video management system software version 1.0 | October 31, 2019 | 191030_03905 |
Alta Video video management system software version 1.0 RC1 | October 25, 2019 | 191024_03824 |
What's new
(back to top)This release includes the Avigilon Alta Alta Video video management system 1.1 software. In this release, Alta Video provides the following features.
Feature | Description | Added in | |
---|---|---|---|
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 | Alta Video 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 | Alta Video 1.1 | |
Improved Alta Video logging | Error logging has been improved so that more information useful in diagnosing issues is captured in the log files. | Alta Video 1.1 | |
Improved NTP settings | You can now configure multiple NTP servers for use by your Avigilon Alta clusters, server groups, and servers. | Alta Video 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. | Alta Video 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 | Alta Video 1.1 | |
Improved user interface feedback for camera stream and analytics | If Alta Video 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. | Alta Video 1.1 | |
Video stream rotation | To maintain compatibility with the widest possible number of third-party cameras, Alta Video can now rotate the video being supplied from the camera, to ensure the correct image orientation when displayed in Video view. | Alta Video 1.1 | |
Avigilon Ava camera support | This Alta Video release includes features to upgrade the camera software from Alta Video. You can also use the manual and auto-focus controls in Alta Video to change the Avigilon Ava camera focus. See Devices tool | Alta Video 1.0 | |
Clustering of Alta Cloud Connectors | Create clusters of Alta Cloud Connectors that work together to provide multi-site coverage. | Alta Video 1.0 | |
First time experience | See important information about the Alta video security systems the first time you log into Alta Video. | Alta Video 1.0 | |
Retention period improvements | The settings to enable you to better configure how your video is stored and retained have been improved. | Alta Video 1.0 | |
New Firmware available notifications | Administrator users are notified when new versions of the Alta Video firmware are available. | Alta Video 1.0 | |
Camera credentials improvements | You can now add notes to each set of camera credentials. | Alta Video 1.0 | |
Digitally-signed exports | When you export video and metadata, the files are digitally-signed (watermarked) so that you can prove they have not been tampered with. | Alta Video 1.0 | |
Encryption of exported files | When 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. | Alta Video 1.0 | |
Secure LDAP | Use secure LDAP when importing users using your LDAP servers. | Alta Video 1.0 | |
Improved recording controls | You can set the recording quality for important and unimportant occurrences based on specific values for resolution and frame-rate. | Alta Video Beta 3 | |
Enable Remote access to your Alta Video software, to access, manage and view video remotely. Also, Link sharing (introduced in Alta Video Beta 2) can now be accessed remotely via the Alta Cloud. | Alta Video Beta 3 | ||
User interface for panoramic cameras | Use the new user interface options to view panoramic cameras using different methods of dewarping the image seen from the camera. | Alta Video Beta 3 | |
More Video view Playback layout choices | From the Video view Playback layouts, you can now select 1 & 5, 3 x 3, or 4 x 4 layouts. | Alta Video Beta 3 | |
H.265 playback transcoding | Alta Video now provides support for Axis cameras that use High Efficiency Video Coding (H.265) to allow recording using H.265 compression. Alta Video transcodes the stored stream into H.264 for playback from the Alta Video user interface. | Alta Video Beta 2 | |
System level alerts | This release introduces system level alerting, informing users of important system events, such as Alta Video starting up, being shut down and being upgraded. | Alta Video Beta 2 | |
Vivotek protocol support | Native support for Vivotek cameras is now included. | Alta Video Beta 2 | |
More Video view live video layout choices | When viewing live camera feeds in Video view, you can now select from the existing 2 x 2 or 1 & 3 layouts, or use the new 1 & 5, 3 x 3, or 4 x 4 layouts. These new layouts only apply to watching live feeds. To maintain the quality you need for detailed analysis in playback view, choose either the 2 x 2 or 1 + 3 layout. | Alta Video Beta 2 | |
Link sharing | From Video view playback, the Search tool, or Alarms, you can now create and share links to video clips. When the recipient receives the link, they can access the relevant video clip using direct network access to Avigilon Alta Alta Video. | Alta Video Beta 2 | |
Alta Video Appliances tool — Backup and Restore | Back up your Avigilon Alta configurations, and restore them to recover your Avigilon Alta Alta Cloud Connector to a known working state. | Alta Video Beta 1 | |
link local address | If, when you have your Alta Cloud Connector configured to operate in DHCP IP Mode, if DHCP fails, the server now falls back to using the link local address (as specified in RFC 3927). | Alta Video Beta 1 | |
Alta Video Map view | Map view improves the timeline, making it easier to identify when alarms and events occur. | Alta Video Beta 1 | |
Alta Video Devices tool | The Devices tool includes improvements to the user interface for the timeline. Usability improvements have been made to the | Alta Video Beta 1 | |
Anomaly detection | The anomaly detection in Alta Video Beta 1 has been updated to include detections relating to the 'time of day' and 'day of week'. Anomalies now also trigger events in the Alarms tool. | Alta Video Beta 1 | |
Alta Cloud Connectors | The first-time configuration work-flow simplifies setting up your Alta Cloud Connectors. | Alta Video Alpha 3 | |
User interface | This release includes the addition of tooltips to help identify the icons used in the user interface. | Alta Video Alpha 3 | |
Search tool | Search tool | Improvements to the Search tool include a new timeline design, and similarity search for vehicles. | Alta Video Alpha 3 |
Devices tool | Devices tool | Improvements to the | Alta Video Alpha 3 |
Alta Video Settings | Users can now edit their own profile, and change their password. | Alta Video Alpha 3 | |
Anomaly detection | This release now includes background anomaly training. This is training only, anomalies do not trigger alarms or alerts in this release, and there are no configuration options available. | Alta Video Alpha 3 | |
Video view Playback | Video view Playback | Improved exporting of video clips from the Video view Playback. | Alta Video Alpha 2 |
Sites and Map view merged | Sites and Map view merged | From Map view, you can now add floorplans and position camera and other icons. This change makes setting up the Map view more streamlined. | Alta Video Alpha 2 |
Updates to the Search features | The Search tool has been updated with new similarity search features, and with the new export from search features. | Alta Video Alpha 2 | |
Configuration of email server | This release provides the ability to configure Alta Video to communicate with an email server, so that Alta Video can send email notifications. | Alta Video Alpha 2 | |
Rules tool | Rules can now be configured to send email messages as an action. You can now import information from the Search history, to quickly define a new rule. | Alta Video Alpha 2 | |
Devices tool | Devices tool | The Devices tool now automatically detects available camera protocols and uses the appropriate protocol. | Alta Video Alpha 2 |
Dashboard | The Alta Video Dashboard provides a convenient place in the user interface to access all the tools and features of your Avigilon Alta Alta Video software. See Dashboard for more information. | Alta Video Alpha 1 | |
Devices | Add, configure, and manage your cameras from the Devices tool. Create camera groups to help you organize your cameras in meaningful ways (by site, by floor, by wing) that are relevant to the areas you are protecting. Use configuration profiles to apply common settings relating to the video quality, recording strategy and retention policies, and easily apply them to cameras in your installation. Preview each of your cameras, to verify that you have chosen the correct camera when making adjustments. For the proof of concept program, use passive mode to use your existing cameras in parallel between the Avigilon Alta video management system, and your existing VMS, without having to change camera profiles or other parameters. Using existing cameras in passive mode might lead to some reduction in video quality or accuracy of analytics, as the cameras are not optimized for use with the Avigilon Altavideo management system. See Devices tool for more information. | Alta Video Alpha 1 | |
Appliances | TheAlta Cloud Connectors can be configured to connect to one or two networks, and can be configured to use either static addressing, or DHCP. Use the provided tools to set the Alta Cloud Connector hostnames. Set up the certificates that you need to control access to your Avigilon Alta video management system, either using self-signed certificates, or generate certificate signing requests and then upload the signed certificates to your Alta Cloud Connectors. | Alta Video Alpha 1 | |
Video view | The Video view provides the mechanism to monitor your connected cameras. Create and save the layouts and views that best suit your environment and your operators. Preview each camera before dragging it to the Video view to pin it in your chosen location. Use dynamic rotations so that the Avigilon Alta analytics shows the camera views with the most interest, or set up manual rotations to pin several cameras to a single pane, and rotate through them. See Video view for more information. | Alta Video Alpha 1 | |
Playback | From the Video view, use Playback to review the feeds from your cameras. With anomalies and events shown in the timeline, you can easily pin-point the areas of interest. Maximize the pane you are viewing, and use the digital pan and zoom to see the detail you need. Adjust the playback speed and direction to view and find exactly what you are looking for. When you have found the video clip you need, export one or more clips for use as evidence. See Video view for more information. | Alta Video Alpha 1 | |
UsersUsers | Add and remove Users from the Alta Video user interface, and select the roles (either Administrator or Operator) for each user. See Users tool for more information. | Alta Video Alpha 1 | |
Sites | Upload your floor plans and site maps to the Sites tool, so that Alta Video can display the Map view of your site. Add the locations of your cameras, together with their fields of view, to enable Smart Presence in Map view. Also add important details, for example, the locations of fire exits, first aid equipment, and fire extinguishers. Link several site maps so that you can move between one area and another in Map view. From the Alpha 2 release, the Sites features are now found in the Map view tool. | Alta Video Alpha 1 | |
Map view | In Map view, click a camera icon to preview its feed, and see where people are on your site, and track them within the view of a single camera. See Map view for more information. | Alta Video Alpha 1 | |
Rules | Create Rules for people and for vehicles, including rules for appearance, line crossing and loitering. Set areas of interest on your camera views, and define the schedules when each rule is active. (For example, you might configure a rule to only be active outside of your standard working hours for your site.) Choose to be notified when rules are triggered, and have alarms pop up in the user interface when they are triggered. You can also configure your rules so that they have to be acknowledged by your operators in order to dismiss them. See Rules tool for more information. | Alta Video Alpha 1 | |
Search | Create Search for people and for vehicles, including searching for appearance, line crossing and loitering. Select the cameras of interest, and set areas of interest on your camera views and define the times within which you are searching. When you find results that are of interest, use the Similarity search tools to further refine your search. See Search tool for more information. | Alta Video Alpha 1 | |
Alarms | View the list of Alarms that have been triggered either by the Avigilon Alta analytics or by the rules you have created. Choose individual alarms or events to see the details, including video playback in the details sidebar. If configured, you can require that alarms and events are acknowledged by your Operator, ensuring that they are not missed. You can also view and add to the logs and comments for each alarm or event. Maximizing the alarm or event opens the combined video and map view, showing the detail and the location of the event. You can then choose to export evidence from the maximized alarm or event. See Alarms tool for more information. | Alta Video Alpha 1 |
Resolved issues
(back to top)These issues have been resolved:
Reference | Resolution | Resolved in |
---|---|---|
2818 | An issue where, when viewing Video view, if you moved to another browser tab and then returned to the Alta Video tab, all thumbnail views froze, and no video was displayed has now been resolved. | Alta Video 1.1.1 |
2768 | An 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. | Alta Video 1.1.1 |
2584 | An issue where Alta Video intermittently lost connection to the Avigilon Alta remote access | Alta Video 1.1 |
2537 | An issue where existing Map view thumbnails were displayed in low resolution after upgrading the software from Alta Video Beta 3 to Alta Video 1.0 has been resolved. | Alta Video 1.1 |
2526 | Issues where temporary stream conditions from some third-party cameras caused Alta Video to incorrectly report warnings even though analytics were functioning correctly have been resolved. | Alta Video 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. | Alta Video 1.1 |
2499 | An issue where Alta Video incorrectly calculated time based on UTC rather than local time has been resolved. | Alta Video 1.1 |
2259 | An issue where, when playing back video from some higher resolution cameras, the video intermittently stopped, paused, and then start playing again has been improved. | Alta Video 1.1 |
1320 | An issue where, after setting a new hostname, a restart was required, but there were no notifications in the user interface, has now been resolved. | Alta Video 1.1 |
2547 | An issue where, on upgrading from Alta Video Beta 2 to Alta Video 1.0 RC1 without first upgrading to Alta Video 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. | Alta Video 1.0 |
2500 | An issue where, when using the | Alta Video 1.0 |
Known issues
(back to top)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.
Reference | Issue |
---|---|
2662 | Issue: The Alta Video user interface warns when degraded analytics are detected. However, these warnings are currently too sensitive, triggering every time communications from a camera are re-initialized. Usually, this resolves itself once communications are re-established. |
2477 | Issue: When you have configured several Alta 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 |
2316 | Issue: Alta Video is limited to only maintaining a list of the last 100 alarms and events; you cannot see any older results. |
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 Avigilon Alta software might display false vehicle detections. |
266 | Issue: In clustered Alta 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 Avigilon Alta Alta Video video management system, these incompatibilities might impact the accuracy of the Avigilon Alta analytics. |