23.10 Central

Welcome to the release notes for Flussonic Central version 23.10, where we introduce an array of enhancements and improvements for your better experience with our video surveillance management platform. In this release, we focused on tracing requests, merging Central and video analytics, configuration management, large number of streams, DVR playback, and much more. These updates collectively aim to streamline your video surveillance operations, ensuring efficient resource allocation, improved system performance, and enhanced user-friendliness. Let’s dive into the details of these enhancements and explore how they can benefit your video surveillance infrastructure.

• Playback in Admin UI
• Introduce Video analytics support in Central
• Large number of streams
• Streams distributing
• Tracing requests
• Streamer configuration
• Configuration
• DVR
• Migration
• Bugs fixed

Playback in Admin UI

The process of monitoring and verifying stream content became more efficient and user-friendly for administrators managing the system. With the addition of live and DVR stream playback in the Central Admin UI on the Overview tab of the stream profile, customers can easily and quickly access and view streams directly from the administrative interface.

Introduce Video analytics support in Central

To optimize resource utilization, enhance system organization, and ensure seamless operation in an automatic cluster mode, the ‘role’ parameter was introduced in the Central Admin UI streamer list. By assigning roles to streamers, Central effectively allocates tasks and responsibilities to different server nodes within the cluster. Streamers can be designated as analytics nodes running on GPU/CPU servers, while others can take on the role of an identification service node responsible for storing a database of individuals.

In the current update we made it easier to manage and analyze data related to individuals through the enriched functionality of the analytics module that can now use a person photo for various purposes, such as facial recognition, identification, or analysis.

To accurately identify individuals, resulting in improved security measures, streamlined data management, historical tracking capabilities, and customized alerting, the implementation of saving biometric data (‘fingerprints’) of analyzed faces enhances the system ability. This functionality is achieved by securely storing biometric data in the Central face database, empowering users with advanced facial recognition capabilities and a more comprehensive and efficient video surveillance experience.

Large number of streams

Improved accuracy in stream counting provides customers with more precise monitoring and resource allocation, reducing potential confusion and allowing for better management of their streaming infrastructure. Streams that are moved to another streamer in failover mode are not counted twice in the ‘Total’ number, ensuring that the reported stream count accurately reflects the actual number of active streams.

By selecting only the necessary data fields, Central reduces unnecessary network traffic and processing overhead, which can lead to faster response times, reduced resource utilization, and improved overall system responsiveness.

Reduced load on streamers and even greater flexibility in managing resource allocation is now achieved by extending the default polling period for stream statuses to 5 seconds and allowing fine-tuning through the configurable STREAMS_STATS_FETCH_INTERVAL parameter, which helps optimize system performance and resource utilization according to specific needs.

Streams distributing

By enhancing resource utilization, scalability planning, management efficiency, system performance, and cost-effectiveness in the context of large-scale video streaming operations, the implementation of stream distribution logic based on the ‘channel_limit’ parameter in Flussonic Central is a valuable feature. This functionality automatically distributes streams among available streamers, preventing overloading and ensuring efficient resource allocation. Customers can now manage their streaming infrastructure more effectively and ensure a smoother and more optimized streaming experience for their viewers.

Tracing requests

For comprehensive tracing of requests, facilitating efficient issue resolution, resource allocation, and compliance documentation, we added the Traceparent header to requests from Central to Media Server via OpenTelemetry. With this feature our customers are provided with improved debugging, performance optimization, monitoring, and security.

For improved trace clarity and identification of the involved server, the host.name and service.version attributes have been included in the processAttributes span of OpenTelemetry traces. This feature aids in troubleshooting, monitoring, and maintaining the system, improving overall system reliability and performance.

To contribute to a more robust and efficient video surveillance system, ensuring the integrity and security of the network, we added the support for tracing Agent connections in Flussonic Central. This improvement provides customers with enhanced visibility, troubleshooting capabilities, performance optimization, security monitoring, and improved resource allocation within their video surveillance infrastructure.

To enhance trace context, precise troubleshooting, performance optimization, request analysis, and compliance/documentation capabilities for customers in terms of tracing requests, the request parameter information was added to Jaeger HTTP spans in Flussonic Central. This feature empowers users with a deeper understanding of request interactions within their system and facilitates more efficient operations and troubleshooting.

Streamer configuration

With 23.10 users can programmatically update settings, making it more efficient to manage and adapt the streamer behavior to their specific requirements. For automating configuration changes, ensuring consistency, and integrating the streamer component into a larger system or workflow, managing the streamer config was added to API.

To simplify the process of keeping the streamer config and Media Server in sync, we implemented automatic provisioning and applied configuration changes to the Media Server that corresponds to that streamer. This ensures that the Media Server operates according to the desired configuration, facilitating the streamlined management and operation of the streaming infrastructure.

Configuration

Improved decision-making capabilities, automation opportunities, efficient troubleshooting, real-time status monitoring, and enhanced configuration transparency empower users with the implementation of the GET /config method in Flussonic Central. This feature provides customers with the tools to manage their systems effectively, optimize performance, and allocate resources more efficiently.

For enhanced system stability, resilience, service continuity, resource handling efficiency, and the overall user experience, the timeout for config requests from Central to streamers was increased from 5 to 75 seconds. This improvement mitigates denial of service scenarios and ensures uninterrupted video streaming operations for Flussonic Central customers.

Centralized configuration management, efficient resource allocation, customized content retention, streamlined maintenance, and optimized storage usage is possible with provisioning of episodes_expiration as part of config_external from Flussonic Central. This enhancement empowers customers to effectively manage their video streaming infrastructure with greater flexibility and control over content retention settings.

DVR

Customers receive smoother playback and quicker access to archived content, ultimately enhancing their streaming service quality and user satisfaction. This is possible with DVR index cleanup implemented. The system can automatically remove unnecessary index data when there is no associated archive on certain streamers. This optimization reduces the time required to open streams, leading to faster stream access and a more efficient user experience.

Migration

Central starts without encountering database migration errors, minimizing downtime and potential disruptions to their services, and allowing for smoother and more dependable operations.

Bugs fixed

Auth backend: The authentication backend URL is correctly provisioned from Central to streamers, when the UPSTREAM_URL configuration is not explicitly specified. This ensures that the authentication process functions properly, providing a more robust and user-friendly experience for customers.

The bug fix that prevents the reset of the auth backend URL during updates ensures preserved configuration, operational continuity, configuration consistency, and enhanced security for Flussonic Central customers. This enhancement leads to a more dependable and secure authentication process within the system.

API schema: By updating the schema compliance clause to allow ignoring of unknown fields in a payload while correctly processing the known ones, it ensures that the API can handle evolving data structures without causing errors. With this fixed the API handles changes and extensions without breaking existing functionality, thus reducing potential disruptions and development challenges for customers.

Stream previews: By addressing the issue where stream previews were unavailable when an auth backend is provisioned to streamers from Central, it ensures that users can access and view stream previews as expected. This fix allows users to efficiently preview streams, which can be critical for monitoring and decision-making in various applications.

Video analytics: We resolved an issue of video analytics episodes not being properly saved due to identical IDs, guaranteeing that all analytics data is correctly stored in Central database. This enhancement provides customers with more reliable and complete analytics.

Improved Data Filtering: This fix ensures that the select query string parameter functions as expected. As a result, users can accurately filter and retrieve specific data from the streams_list request. This improvement enhances data accuracy, search functionality, and the overall precision of query results, making it easier for users to find and access the information they need within the Flussonic Central system.

Proper Functionality: This fix ensures that the DELETE method for episodes (DELETE /episodes/{episode_id}) works as intended. Users can now successfully delete episodes as needed, promoting proper data management and maintenance within the Flussonic Central system. This improvement eliminates ‘HTTP 405 Method Not Allowed’ response and ensures that users can perform episode deletions without encountering unexpected issues, contributing to a smoother and more reliable user experience.

Configuration: Resolving the HTTP 500 error when requesting GET /config enhances reliability, streamlines troubleshooting, improves the user experience, and saves time for Flussonic Central customers. This contributes to more efficient and user-friendly system management.