Release notes: Alta Video 1.5.2 Beta

Last modified: Friday July 24, 2020.

Learn about new features and any issues found in testing for the Alta Video software 1.5.2 Beta.

About this release

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The Alta Video software provides the features for your Alta video security systems.

Table 1 – Software release details

Release labelRelease dateSoftware build number
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.5.2
(Released to the Stable Upgrade channel)
March 17, 2020Alta Video: 200310_05193

Table 2 – Previous software release details

Release labelRelease date Software build number
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.5.2
(Released to the Beta Upgrade channel)
March 11, 2020Alta Video: 200310_05193
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.5.1
(Released to the Beta Upgrade channel)
March 05, 2020Alta Video: 200304_05150
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.5
(Released to the Beta Upgrade channel)
February 25, 2020Alta Video: 200225_05053
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.4.3
(Released to the Stable Upgrade channel)
March 11, 2020Alta Video: 200310_05192
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.4.2
(Released to the Stable Upgrade channel)
February 27, 2020Alta Video: 200221_05017
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.4.1
(Released to the Stable Upgrade channel)
February 20, 2020Alta Video: 200213_04911
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.4.1
(Released to the Beta Upgrade channel)
February 14, 2020Alta Video: 200213_04911
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.4
(Released to the Beta Upgrade channel)
January 30, 2020Alta Video: 200130_04803
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.3
(Released to the Stable Upgrade channel)
January 14, 2020Alta Video: 191218_04435
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.3
(Released to the Beta Upgrade channel)
December 19, 2019Alta Video: 191218_04435
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.2
(Released to the Beta Upgrade channel)
December 5, 2019Alta Video: 191205_04282
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.1.1
November 15, 2019Alta Video: 191115_04099
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.1
November 14, 2019Alta Video: 191114_04084
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.0
October 31, 2019Alta Video: 191030_03905
Alta Video video management system software
version 1.0 RC1
October 25, 2019Alta Video: 191024_03824

What's new

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This release includes the Avigilon Alta Alta Video video management system 1.5.2 Beta software. In this release, Alta Video 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

Alta Video 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

Alta Video 1.5
View estimates of the storage used in your Alta Cloud Connectors, and the storage used by each camera

Monitor the total storage used across your Server groups, and the storage used by each camera.

See:
Monitor the storage used by each camera

Alta Video 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 Enable or disable channels for encoders or multisource devices

Alta Video 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

Alta Video 1.5
Objects in view counting

Building on the basic object counting (available from Alta Video 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

Alta Video 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

Alta Video 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

Alta Video 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

Alta Video 1.4
Avigilon Ava cameras installationTo install Avigilon Ava cameras, you do not need to preconfigure credentials.Alta Video 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

Alta Video 1.4
Search for audio detections

Search for audio detections that have been logged by Alta Video.

See: Search for audio detections from Avigilon Ava cameras

Alta Video 1.4
Automatic updates for Alta Video

Configure automatic updates for your Alta Video video management system.

Alta Video 1.4
Backup and Restore Alta Video from vcloud

Backup your Alta Video configurations to vcloud. When needed, select the appropriate backup to restore to Alta Video.

Alta Video 1.4
Select the upgrade channel for each Avigilon Ava cameras device

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

See: Select the Ava camera upgrade channel

Alta Video 1.4
Audio support for Avigilon Ava cameras

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

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

See: Create rules for sound detection

Alta Video 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

Alta Video 1.3
Link to Avigilon Alta docs added to the Alta Video user interface

You can now link directly from the Alta Video user interface to the Avigilon Alta docs documentation portal.

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

Alta Video 1.3
Supportability improvementsTo enable the Support team to better support your Avigilon Alta products, improvements have been made the log files created by Alta Video, including adding timestamps to the log bundles, and introducing variable packet capture (pcap) capture lengths.Alta Video 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

Alta Video 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 Avigilon Alta 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

Alta Video 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 Alta Video software.

See Delete recordings from a camera

Alta Video 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

Alta Video Beta 1.2
Support for webhooks

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

See: Create webhooks to send Alta Video notifications

Alta Video Beta 1.2
Tools to enable a camera to be easily swapped

In the event of a camera failing, Alta Video 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

Alta Video 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

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

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.

See: Download log bundles from your Alta Video deployments

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.

See: View additional information on your Map view

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.

See: Alta Video Video stream requirements

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.

See: Adjust camera video parameters from Alta Video

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 experienceSee important information about the Alta video security systems the first time you log into Alta Video.

Alta Video 1.0

Retention period improvementsThe 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 improvementsYou can now add notes to each set of camera credentials.

Alta Video 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.

Alta Video 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.

Alta Video 1.0

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

Alta Video 1.0

Resolved issues

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These issues have been resolved:

Table 4 – Resolved issues

ReferenceResolutionResolved in
Avigilon Alta—262 A vulnerability has been resolved in Alta Video. Alta Video 1.5.2
4178An issue where operators with some modified Roles observed a User Interface loop with multiple errors when sharing bookmarks has been resolved.Alta Video 1.5.1
4175An issue where attempting to upgrade Alta Video from version 1.2 to version 1.5 sometimes failed has been resolved.Alta Video 1.5.1
4184An issue where you could not create a shared link, resulting in a spinner and error being displayed, has been resolved.Alta Video 1.5.1
4143An issue where, if you set the Shared link Disable date, and then edited the date you'd set, the system defaulted back to the original date has been resolved.Alta Video 1.5.1
4139An issue where passwords were not correctly converted from ASCII to Unicode, causing passwords with certain characters to fail, has been resolved.Alta Video 1.5.1
4133An issue where the Field of View button in the Map view Information Layers dialog did not toggle the Field of View cones on the maps on and off has been resolved.Alta Video 1.5.1
4132An issue where the count summary for vehicles was incorrectly displayed in the 123 Counts | Line crossing side pane has been resolved.Alta Video 1.5.1
4066, 4082Issues where, irrespective of permissions and roles assigned to a user, all users could see the Export icon has been resolved. Alta Video 1.5.1
3888An issue where Alarms show as ongoing, even after being acknowledged and dismissed, has been resolved.Alta Video 1.5.1
Avigilon Alta—260 A vulnerability has been resolved in Alta Video. Alta Video 1.5.1
4020An issue where Automatic SW update did not always update your Alta Cloud Connector has been resolved.Alta Video 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.Alta Video 1.5
3398An issue where you could move the only Administrator user into an user group with only Operator roles has been resolved.Alta Video 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. Alta Video 1.5
3286An issue where, when configuring Count areas, adding a second camera resulted in the camera being misaligned has been resolved.Alta Video 1.5
Avigilon Alta—257 A vulnerability has been resolved in Alta Video. Alta Video 1.4.2
Avigilon Alta—254 A vulnerability has been resolved in Alta Video and Alta Cloud. Alta Video 1.4.1
3240An issue where deleting cameras from Alta Video was not reflected in Map viewhas been resolved.Alta Video 1.4
2662An issue where the Alta Video user interface repeatedly warned about degraded analytics being detected has been resolved.Alta Video 1.4
2316An issue where Alta Video 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.Alta Video 1.3
2818An 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
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.Alta Video 1.1.1
2736An issue where users could not log in to Alta Video after having their details synchronized using LDAP over TLS (LDAPS) has been resolved.Alta Video 1.1
2584An issue where Alta Video intermittently lost connection to the Avigilon Alta remote access vcloud service has been resolved.Alta Video 1.1
2537An 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
2526Issues 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
2499An issue where Alta Video incorrectly calculated time based on UTC rather than local time has been resolved.Alta Video 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.Alta Video 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.Alta Video 1.1
2547An 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
2500An issue where, when using the Date & Time setting in Rules, the time was incorrectly set has been resolved.Alta Video 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 — Alta Video video management system

ReferenceIssue
4307

Issue: When trying to view too complex a Video view layout on a PC with insufficient hardware specification, a significant delay in live video may be experienced. This situation is exasperated when using cameras that provide fewer than three concurrent video streams, as higher than optimum resolutions and frame rates are then used for the viewing live video.

Workaround: Using PCs with higher hardware specifications (especially with better GPUs) reduces the delay experienced. Also, simplifying the Video view layout, and using a 2nd PC to display some of the Video views will further reduce the delays.

4288

Issue: There is currently an issue where, in some rare circumstances, the communications between the individual Alta Cloud Connectors in a cluster are repeatedly send, causing high bandwidth usage and can impact features that require inter-Alta Video communications. For example, this could cause the viewing of remote video to be unavailable.

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, Alta Video 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 Avigilon Alta 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, Avigilon Alta Alta Video 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.
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 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 Avigilon Alta software might display false vehicle detections.

266Issue: 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.