Release notes: Alta Aware 6.9.5

Last modified: Monday July 01, 2024

Alta Aware documentation is available in German, French, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian-Portuguese, and Japanese.

Learn about new features, fixes and any issues found in testing for the Alta video security solution software.

To receive notifications about new software releases and vulnerability advisories, subscribe at https://www.avigilon.com/security-updates. Alternatively, follow the pop-up notifications from within Alta Aware.

Avigilon Alta User Research

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By joining the Avigilon Alta User Research program, you provide key feedback on the features and design of Alta Aware. To find out more about this program, and to sign up, see https://www.avigilon.com/what-is-avigilon-alta-user-research.

About this release

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Installing this release will upgrade Alta Aware video management systems, and, if needed to maintain feature compatibility, any Alta cameras associated with your deployment.

These software packages have been released to the Stable Upgrade Channel:

Release label Release date Software build number
Alta Aware software version 6.9.5 Monday July 01, 2024 Alta Aware: 6_9_240626_19823
Alta cameras software version 6.9.5 Monday July 01, 2024 Alta cameras:6_9_240627_23975

Normally, updates for Alta Aware and Alta cameras are rolled out to customer deployments over the course of a few days. This means that your deployments might not upgrade on the day the software release is announced.

The full roll out for each release can take between one and two weeks to reach all deployments. However, the updates always follow the configured maintenance period for your deployment. For example, if your deployment is configured to update weekly, overnight on a Tuesday, then your deployment will update on either the first or second Tuesday following the release.

What's new

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In this release, Alta Aware provides the following features:

Feature Description
PTZ improvements We have improved the controls for pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras. You can now switch between the virtual joystick or keyboard controls. You can run the automatic calibration process from the camera settings or manually adjust each parameter to enhance control responsiveness. For more information, see How to: Use PTZ camera controls.
Increased audit log storage and storage limit rules We have increased the number of events that Aware can store in the audit logs. To prevent losing older log entries when the storage is full, you can now create system notification rules for audit log storage limits and download the audit logs before they are overwritten. See How to: Create rules for System issues and How to: View or download Aware audit logs.
Warnings for cameras storing many bookmarked video clips Aware now shows a dialog for any Alta camera using more than half its storage capacity for bookmarked video footage. Clicking on a bookmark from this dialog takes you to the Saved clips tool where you can view and delete any unneeded bookmarked video. For more information, see About: Alta camera bandwidth usage, video quality, and video storage, How to: Bookmark video clips, and How to: Delete saved video clips.
Video view tab preview Hovering over one of your open Video view tabs now shows a preview of the cameras in that view.
Support for Disruptive Technologies Door/Window sensors Alta Aware now supports the Disruptive Technologies Door/Window sensors. See About: Aware integration with Disruptive Technologies sensors.
View information about the amounts of saved clips stored on your cloud cameras As bookmarks are saved to the cloud-native cameras, a warning is triggered, opening a dialog with all the bookmarked clips being shown. Alternatively, you can manually open this dialog, see How to: Review bookmarked clips on cloud-native cameras.
Choose your preferred playback/export location You can now choose whether to playback or export footage from the device, or from the cloud backups. See:How to: Configure Aware deployment settings. and How to: Edit My profile.
High resilience mode for Alta Cloud Connectors Configure your Alta Cloud Connectors as High resilience mode Server groups. See About: Alta Cloud Connector High resilience mode and How to: Configure Alta Cloud Connector High resilience mode
Use HLS to view video streams from Alta Aware You can now use HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) to stream live video, play back recorded video, or view saved clips in compatible video players, or to websites or webApps.
See About: Using HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) from Alta Aware and Example: HLS example code

Updated domains

As we unify Avigilon Alta video and Alta access, alta.avigilon.com will become the main domain used by Avigilon Alta Aware and other Avigilon Alta services. Update your firewall rules to include this domain and its subdomains.

For the complete list of domains used, see:
Reference: Ports required by Avigilon Ava and Avigilon Alta cloud-native cameras
Reference: Ports required by Alta Cloud Connectors
Reference: Ports required by Avigilon Ava cameras connected to Alta Cloud Connectors
Reference: Client connections

Alta Cloud Connector BIOS and iDRAC updates

For customers with Alta Cloud Connector 2000 or Alta Cloud Connector 3000 servers, Dell recommends that if the BIOS and iDRAC firmware versions are lower than BIOS v2.17.1 and iDRAC9 v6.10.30.20, the BIOS and iDRAC firmware is updated.

See https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000215873/update-poweredge-bios-and-idrac-for and https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000134013/dell-poweredge-update-the-firmware-of-single-system-components-remotely-using-the-idrac for further details.

Resolved issues

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This release resolves these issues:

Reference Resolution Resolved in version
AVA-3993 An issue where Video view did not rotate through selected camera feeds has been resolved. 6.9.5
AVA-3753 An issue where H6SL cameras failed to upgrade from Alta Aware 6.2 has been resolved. 6.9.5
AVA-3461 An issue where Avigilon Ava Bullet cameras slowly lost focus each time they upgraded has been resolved. 6.9.5
AVA-3432 An issue where the Anomolies tab in camera settings did not display after turning off Anomaly detection has been resolved. 6.9.5
AVA-3408 An issue where Quad camera imagers might lose focus has been improved. 6.9.5
20034 An issue where you could not delete cameras from a deployment has been resolved. 6.9.5

Software releases might include minor bug fixes that are not listed in the Resolved issues table.

Known issues

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During testing, we have found the following issues in these software packages:

Reference Issue Software
FWBL-16859 Issue: The Alta video engineering team have identified an issue with Alta H6SL and Alta H5A Multisensor that indicates that customers should NOT use the hard reset button on these cameras on our stable and beta channels. Use of the reset button currently causes the SD card to require a reformat. Alta cameras
20358 Issue: Spinners show when trying to play footage from Cloud Backup. Alta Aware
20327 Issue: An export that starts with backed up footage will not include any video that isn't saved to the Cloud Backup. Alta Aware
20311 Issue: HTTP Live Streams frequently freeze and skip. Alta Aware
20301 Issue: The list of deployments assigned to a DMP includes deployments that are disabled. DMP
20259 Issue: A spinner will show when trying to delete a device with a communication error. Alta Aware
19976 Issue: An Unknown files on disk warning appears after a change to a primary Cloud Connector in HA mode. Alta Aware
19185 Issue: Changing camera rotation settings from within Aware might cause the camera to crash. Alta Aware and Alta cameras
19180 Issue: Recorded audio for audio alarms from cameras set to record Sound events & anomalies might be truncated or not play at all. Alta Aware
19179 Issue: Webhooks sent from Aware for Generic sensor updates do not have the required bearer token and fail authentication. Alta Aware
19176 Issue: Line crossing rules might not function as expected in rotated Avigilon Ava cloud-connector cameras after upgrading to Alta Aware 6.5.0. Alta cameras
19136 Issue: Live and playback video streams in the Alta Cloud Connector UI do not play. Alta Aware
19133 Issue: Nedap access control system integrations stop working in Alta Aware shortly after set up. Alta Aware
18625 Issue: After upgrading to Alta Aware 6.4.0, the position of line-crossing rules and areas of interest might appear to be misplaced for non-cloud-native Alta cameras and third-party cameras. The video analytics for these rules are unaffected, and the issue should resolve itself an hour after upgrading. Alta Aware
18412 Issue: Secondary node Cloud Connectors are unable to be backed up. Alta Aware
17994 Issue: When exporting very long video clips, the duration of the exported video might not match the timeframe set. Alta Aware
17993 Issue: Exporting video from cloud backups sometimes fails. Alta Aware
17582 Issue: When attempting to put an Avigilon Ava Flex camera that is connected over WiFi into ONVIF mode, the IP address might change. Avigilon Ava Flex
16626 Issue: After a software update, any line-crossing counts might reset to zero. Alta Aware
16234 Issue: In some environmental situations, Avigilon Ava Bullet cameras might display some flickering and banding. Avigilon Ava cameras
16184 Aware now correctly saves the images used in loitering, line-crossing, and appearance rules. However, for older searches before this issue was resolved, you might need to re-upload the image to use for the loitering, line-crossing, or appearance search. Alta Aware
13925

Issue: If the Flex LED brightness is turned up, and the camera is placed close to a reflective surface, then the camera may oscillate between day and night mode.

Workaround: Either reposition the camera, or reduce the LED brightness.

Avigilon Ava Flex
13738

Issue: When adding third-party cameras to Aware using the Automatic protocol option, Aware might not be able to successfully add the camera.

Workaround: If a third-party camera fails to be added correctly, try again using the Onvif protocol option.

Alta Aware
13171 Issue: If you export the footage from an alarm that includes audio, the clip might stutter when switching between uninteresting and interesting video on some video players. Alta Aware
12274 Issue: If you export a video clip that includes audio recordings, the volume of the audio is very low.  
12255 Issue: You cannot currently associate an Avigilon Ava camera connected to one Cloud Connector with a third-party camera with inbuilt or connected speaker attached to another Cloud Connector, or associate an Avigilon Ava cloud-native camera with a speaker. Alta Aware
11515 Issue: When you edit any of the counts, for example, to add a new camera to an existing counts area, when you save the changes, the counts are briefly set to 0, before displaying the correct counts total. Alta Aware
10410 Issue: When you export video that includes footage that switches from one resolution to another, there is a small gap between the sections of video. Alta Aware
10087 Issue: When you apply a maximum streaming quality to cameras connected to an Ava Cloud Connector, the setting is ignored, and the maximum available resolution is used. Alta Aware

Issue: As the localized text in the Aware user interface is added, there may be instances where some English terms still appear in the translated versions, or where the translated text might not correctly fit or align within the user interface design.

Email AwareBeta@motorolasolutions.com if you can suggest any improvements for the translations.

Alta Aware

Due to changes to the way audio is recorded and replayed:
  • Users of the Alta Aware mobile app for Android version 2.9.0 and earlier will hear the audio recorded from Aware 5.0.3 and later at a higher volume than before.
  • Users of the Alta Aware mobile app for Android version 2.9.1 and later will hear the audio recorded from Aware 4.9.7 and earlier at a lower volume than before.
Alta Aware mobile app for Android
General Issue: If third-party cameras do not support the multiple streams or the GOP profiles required by the Aware video management system, these incompatibilities might impact the accuracy of the Ava analytics. Alta Aware