Imagen Release History

What’s new?

• We’ve got Apple ProRes Certification…
  We now support Apple’s implementation of ProRes, read more about Apple ProRes >>
• You decide how your Login page looks…  

We’ve added lots of custom options to your Login settings, so you can achieve the look and feel that’s right for your organisation. Watch the video to set this up >>

If you have any questions about how to use any of the new features or optimisations, please contact your Account Manager,

What’s new?

• Save time with batch downloads: Select a record in your Collection > ‘Select all’ > ‘Download’. 
• Better access to your record data: We’ve redesigned the record page with you in mind. If your site is built on the Material theme your record tabs are now aligned to the right of the record, so you can access tabs without scrolling down the page.  
• Use accelerated upload, so you don’t have to wait around: You can now specify accelerated upload to Amazon S3 Storage Service, even better, you can make this available only to the organisations you specify.
• Better search functionality: Do you search for assets using a date/time filter? Your search results will now account for your local web server time, so the date/time field will display in your time zone.
• Keep your collections looking high-res!: For clips added to a Collection, the thumbnail was taken from the nearest video still. Sometimes that video still is of poor quality, and in that case, the Collection can now be configured to use the record thumbnail instead. Navigate to: Admin Panel > Manage Collections > Collection Settings > Tick ‘Use thumbnails for collection clips (where your video stills are poor quality)’.
• Retrieve and use clips with ease: We’ve introduced ProRes Partial File Restore, so you can quickly retrieve and utilise segments of large media files. 

Bugfix:

• The error message “There is no media associated with this record” was generated when uploading some social URLs this has now been fixed.
• The date field for a record was defaulting to ‘today’s’ date when left blank, this has now changed so that the field will stay blank if a date isn’t inputted.

What’s new?

• Annotations: Make your annotations easier to digest. Now you can specify the time-grouping when exporting annotations, for example, 2, 5, or 30-second groupings.
• Metadata: You can now enable IPTC metadata to map from your original record to your renditions. This means any rendition downloads will have the original record IPTC metadata. The fields you want to embed can be specified when setting up the workflow.
• Metadata: Upload content more efficiently – your Media Object Name will now default to the Original File Name, so there’s no more unnecessary typing out of file names (unless you want the title file name to be different).

Bugfix:

• Integration: The Adobe Premiere Pro extension was not appearing, this has now been fixed and works as designed.

What’s new?

• Google Analytics: We’ve added a GA4 option in the admin panel so you can connect and log information with your GA4 account.
• Delete: You can set your recycle bin to ‘keep forever’.
• Cloud storage: If you’re working with AWS or Wasabi, you can now use direct upload. Get in contact with your Account Manager to set this up.
• Analytics: You can now search by month in the media viewer widget.
• Password policy: We have increased the password minimum length to 12 characters, by increasing the search space the risk of attackers being successful is reduced.
• Security: We’ve updated to the latest Apache Version 2.4.53 to provide a secure, efficient and extensible server that provides HTTP services in sync with the current HTTP standards.
• Integrations: We’re currently working on integrating with Elasticsearch and Panopoly, if these integrations are of interest please get in contact with your Account Manager.

Fixes:

• Thumbnail: Some images were turning up blank when using a workflow to create a thumbnail image from a PDF, this has now been fixed.
• Thumbnail: Some ‘Collection’ thumbnails were not populating, this is now fixed.

What’s new?

Sharing a link with an anonymous user? Previously they had to download files individually, now they can batch download everything in that project – much easier!

What’s new?

• Restore records: Accidentally deleted something? Now you can restore media records, phew!
• Access controls: Instead of creating a lengthy blacklist you can now quickly add countries that can register to your site to a whitelist, simple. 
• Analytics: Your events log will now display media type where possible.
• Banners: Prioritise banners so users see them in the order you want them to.

Fixes:

• Batch download: Allow batch download using AFD even if downloading from records with a backslash or forward slash in the title.

What’s new?

With Imagen Pro, you can now you can see how uploaded media has been used across its lifetime all the way through to deletion. Helping you keep track of your assets.

Learn more>>

What’s new?

Get access to your content via Adobe Premiere Pro so you can easily discover, preview and download assets to your sequences.

Learn more>>

What’s new?

Premiere Pro integration: Our integration with Adobe’s video editing software is now live, find out more here >>

Improved translations: Better translations for Hausa, Serbian and Chinese

Fixes:

Annotations: Export button not visible if no annotations are available.

What’s new?

Language: Introduced Indonesian translations.

Annotations: Export your uploaded video’s annotation. Making it easier to find highlights and create subtitles.

Metric panel additions: number of users left on plan, number of projects, number of records in workspace and whether they’re videos, images, documents or audio.

What’s new?

Order on behalf of another: Set sunset dates for assets you order on behalf of another user.

Usage statistics: Usage statistics now include volume and numbers of assets that have been transcoded or used AI enrichment.

Banner message: You can now provide translations for banner text.

You can now choose the thumbnail image for your project.

What’s new?

Subtitle improvements:

Please get in contact with your Account Manager to take advantage of the subtitle improvements as you will need updates to your workflow editor.

New ‘Set Subtitles’ widget enables SRT files to be imported to the appropriate asset.

Closed captions: Ingest the appropriate file and attach to the relevant record.

Banner message: Added ability to use multiple language characters in a banner message.

What’s new?

Batch download of assets now performant for thousands of records.

What’s new?

Social post thumbnail images: Specify custom thumbnail images for your social posts. [Via API only. Need to request for this to be configured, contact your Account Manager.]

Download analytics: Event log now specifies if a download event is a single download or batch download.

Verification email: System admins can now resend verification emails to users.

Order on behalf of another: Full media in a collection can now be ordered on the behalf of another. (Previously clip only).

Inline replies: Inline replies added for comments widget, making it easier to collaborate.

Section 508 compliance: Improvement made to better the access to the platform for people with disabilities.

Fixes:

‘Save & Add Another’ button now redirects to add another media item once the prior upload is completed.

Removed subscription tier options if the user does not have a subscription licence.

What’s new?

Batch download enabled for up to 100 assets.

Introduced project notification emails, now when you add somebody to a project they receive an email notification, you can even include a personal message.

What’s new?

Basket question logic: When displaying questions to users so as they can progress to the correct asset pricing in basket, you can now reorder the questions so they show based on previous answers.

Download analytics: Now when a user batch downloads from a search query this appears as one event instead of multiple.

Speaking the lingo: : The language picker now shows the native language for each option. Making it easier for your users to find their native tongue.

Clone user groups: Now you can clone a group’s permissions without cloning the users, simple.

Payment options: Users can enter coupon and discount codes when buying media.

Purchasing clips: When a user selects an asset to add to their basket and purchase, they will now see the in/out time points of the content they’re purchasing.

Fixes:

Filters now order by most popular first.

Player now resizes when pressing the player button.

What’s new?

Workspace owners can rename their workspace.

Batch edit your file tags within a project.

What’s new?

Multi-select filters: Add more than one selection to a specific category filter to increase the number of search results and find the correct asset faster.
Learn more >>

Role based banners/notifications: Tailor your site-wide banners to appropriate user groups.
Learn more >>

Relational metadata fields: Create parent/child metadata fields. So, if field#1 is selected, then ‘field2 will appear, you can even determine a value for field#2 dependent on what has been chosen in #field1.
Learn more >>

Open access links: Our open access links use to be for external stakeholders, now they work for logged in users too.

Verification email: When a site admin adds a user, they now receive a verification email requiring the user to verify their account before their user status becomes ‘valid’.

Look and feel: New dynamic widget consisting of half text and half image.

For organisations using Aspera: We’ve added support added for Public/Private Keypair authentication.

What’s new?

Workspace owners can rename their workspace.

Batch edit your file tags within a project.

Batch Download

Users hoping to save time downloading multiple files can now multi-select items from a Project View page or from the Search Results page to download all files at once.  First, make your file selection by clicking on the individual record tiles, and then, click the “Download selected” icon in the blue horizontal activity bar along the top of the screen.  You may also ‘select all’ items from the blue activity bar after selecting at least one record on the page.

Leave a Project

When a user is no longer working on or interested in a Project, s/he may now choose to remove Project membership and ‘leave a Project’.  From the Project View, click on your initials along the top right-hand side of the page, and then, click the trashcan icon to leave the Project.

Minor Bug Fixes

Release of our new product, Imagen Go
A smart, AI powered media platform that helps people to connect with the content they need to stay productive. Imagen Go reduces the complexity of managing digital assets and makes it easy to share, store and collaborate on creative projects.

Read press release

Distribution Workflows
Automatically convert files and deliver to predefined target destinations.

Review and Approval
Introduce business process workflows to manage the availability of media assets. Download Fact Sheet.

AI Services for Images
Analyse images and generate searchable metadata tags with our smart AI Services.

XML Importer
Bulk import metadata records and associated media content with our XML import wizard.

Open Access Clips
Send clients or colleagues a link to clips using a convenient open access URL.

Doc to PDF Conversion
Automatically convert MS Word and Excel files into PDFs so they can be viewed easily in any web browser.

Find out more about our August 2020 release.

Artificial Intelligence Services

Our AI powered workflows generate a wide range of descriptive tags that enable fast and accurate searching across large video libraries using simple keywords.

Creating descriptive metadata can be repetitive and time-intensive and usually involves significant human effort. Artificial Intelligence can automatically analyse large volumes of media assets and generate time-based tags based on the contents of the file.  

Services include face, logo and object recognition, scene and sentiment detection, object tracking, language translation, content moderation and more.

Find out more about our AI Services.

Language Packs

Language Packs are additional modules which can be added to your Imagen platfrom to give you low level language localisation across all major components of the user interface – such as clipping tools, account pages, record page options and dialogue boxes.

For right to left reading languages such as Arabic, Imagen dynamically flips the user interface horizontally.

Current Language Packs include French, German, Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, Welsh and American English.

Find out more about Language Packs and our multi-language interface.

Mailchimp Integration
Add Imagen users to Mailchimp for bulk email marketing, newsletter blasts, client updates and more.

Bulk Downloads
Convenient one-click downloading of complete media sets from a single Imagen record.

Video Concatenation
Join multiple files together to create a single long-form video sequence. without complex editing software.

Find out more about this release

Shopping basket and customisable media rights
Introduction of flexible rights management tools and e-commerce ‘shopping basket’.

New Look Admin Interface
Updated to reflect new branding, but refactored to streamline media management and common user admin tasks.

Image Editing Tools
Crop, rotate and resize images prior to download

Video Thumbnails
Rollover thumbnails in any set of search results to see a quick preview of the video.

New Filters
Narrow search results by colour or duration.

Support for extra document formats
Imagen can now store .7z and .rar formats.

Find out more about this release

Imagen Accelerated File Delivery v2
Ultra-fast, Ultra-flexible File Transfers – Free for all Imagen users and their clients. Download or send professional file formats to a range of devices and users – such as customers, colleagues or edit suites with just one click. Manage your content distribution from any connected device.

Imagen Previews
Watch first 30-second preview of video & audio. Preview mode is a permission setting that can be applied to your content using standard Imagen access controls. Users can request to see complete version

Archive Social Media Posts
Imagen stores the URL for each post and renders the content when accessed. Supported social media platforms include Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, Tumblr, SoundCloud, and Vimeo.

Store Adobe PSD/AI/FLA/EPS Files
Adobe authoring files can now also be stored, retrieved and accessed – that means you can now manage Photoshop or Illustrator marketing assets or related artwork for film and TV shows.

Ad hoc Payments
Imagen now enables you to raise requests for payment for additional services such as digitising or film research and manage the transaction through your media portal.

Dynamic Forms
Easily set up forms on your Imagen platform to allow end-users to contact administrators or sales teams. Build enquiry forms and embed them anywhere in your Imagen platform using the intuitive Form Editor widget. Choose from free text fields, drop downs, custom buttons and much more.

MRSS
Media RSS (MRSS) extends the capability of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds by including links to multimedia files (audio, video, image). MRSS clients and third party tools can check the feed at regular intervals to find out what’s new in Imagen. Downloads can be triggered via information in the feed, and can be handled by Imagen’s AFD Client.

Email Account Verification
If users want to change the email address on their account, Imagen will send a verification email test to check they own it.

Account Locking
Too many failed log ins or repeated use of the forgotten password feature will result in a locked Imagen account.

reCAPTCHA
reCAPTCHA helps protect your Imagen platform from spam and abuse. A “CAPTCHA” is a turing test to tell human and bots apart.

Extended Partial File Restore
Imagen extends the current list of Partial File Restore supported file formats to now include MXF XDCAM HD422. Partial file Restore edits your file without any lengthy transcoding overhead.

Recycle Bin for Original files
Prevent accidental file deletion by setting the number of days you wish to keep source media files available after deletion – to allow for file recovery if needed.

Performance Monitoring
Your Imagen system is monitored 24/7 by our support team. We’ve added even more metrics to give us additional insights into the performance of your platform.

EXIF Data Extraction
Imagen can now extract Exchangeable Image File (EXIF) data during ingest and save as searchable metadata within a standard Imagen record.

Dynamic Mapping
For images or other media objects with associated GPS data, Imagen can now automatically generate maps showing the location of where the picture (or any other media object) was taken, produced or recorded. Lat-Long info can be entered separately for any media object stored in the Imagen database and Imagen will dynamically generate a map.

Editable Zones
Zones are editable areas within your web page that you can customise at will. Drag and drop new rich media elements into an editable zone to provide more information or contextual information for your end-users.

Embed Social Media
Draw attention to any social media post by embedding the code in a custom zone.

Updated User Analytics
Imagen’s powerful User Analytics Dashboards now include customisable date ranges for added insight into performance metrics and system usage.

Star Ratings
Apply a star rating to any piece of media. Once applied star ratings can be used as a filter by end-users to find popular (and unpopular!) content in your library.

Reorder Media Objects
Sequence multiple related media objects stored within one database record in a logical order. Administrators (or users with sufficient privileges) can change the order of media objects to suit.

New themes
Choose from new web templates that reflect your brand.

CDN support
Deliver your video to a global audience with easy CDN integration for scalable live streaming or enhanced file delivery.

Advanced page editing tools
Design, edit and update Imagen web pages. Customise page layouts, add menus and interactive features with point and click editing tools.

New stock themes
New set of responsive themes are easy to load and customise. Select the theme that reflects your brand and use in-page editing tools to add logos, background images, favicons and more.

Real-time notifications
Updated notification service for real time feedback on job processing, clip editing, collection management and file delivery.

Video pre-rolls
Add stings and idents to your video. Create any number of pre- roll workflows to add branded intros to your video content.

Object Tracking
Track faces, objects and brands with new onscreen video annotations. Highlight objects with a range of marquee shapes, set time line points and watch the trackers follow your target object as the video plays.

Improved SEO
New improved SEO features. Automated generation of XML site maps keep search engines up to date on the availability of your publicly accessible content.

Watch and capture live streams
Watch live and capture streams from an RTMP URL. Once the live stream has ended, the finished file is added to your Imagen video library where it can be accessed and repurposed anytime in the future.

• Watch live.
• Play, pause, time shifting, seeking, fast forward rewind back to the start of the event.
• For pre-planned events, when viewing the records, see a countdown to start of event.
• Clip and add to a collection, before the event finishes.
• Clip and order as download, before the event finishes.
• Clip and social publish to Twitter and YouTube, before the event finishes.
• Create new segment records, from the live stream, before the event finishes.
• Edit and create annotations and “live log” using the Imagen Media Logger.

Social media publishing
Imagen now makes it easy to publish content direct to social media. Select a clip using the timeline navigation tool. Choose a workflow to post the media to one or more social media platforms. Multiple records can be selected from the hitlist and batch published to social media in one action.  Your social media publishing workflows can also burn in watermarks and logos. At the point of posting, a dialogue box allows comments to be added by the user. Alternatively default text can be set as part of the social media workflow configuration – e.g. ‘Here’s our video of the day. See more great clips at… ’.

Saved Searches and Notifications
Users are notified when new content is added to Imagen based on criteria set in saved searches. Subscribers can choose to be notified daily or at the moment new content fitting their criteria is added to the platform. Users are also updated on the availability of new content if the access settings change for a specific record.

Multiple saved searches can be created by a user and individually controlled to set frequency of update. Notification emails sent to subscribers can be branded and customised by the system administrator.

Site owners/Administrators can create notifications for users to receive a saved search based on their criteria. End-users can unsubscribe from notifications at any time.

More Search enhancements

• Multi-select toolbar and UX improvements.
• Grid styles improved.
• Search templates simplified so results look better by default without extra customisation.
• Submit workflow jobs directly from search results, including as batch operations. E.g. find all cat videos and submit to a workflow which uploads them all to YouTube.
• Records with multiple mediaObjects now portrayed better in search results.
• Site owner can now provide template to display custom message when search returns zero results.
• Search Filter terms are shown in the main search bar and can be removed from there too.
• OpenSearch RSS feeds available for any search.
• Quick access to previously saved searches from any search box on the site.
• Video length now shown on thumbnail for time-based media.
• Jobs enhancements:
  • Improved jobs management UI in the ImagenWeb control panel. Replaces the need for using Workflow editor to view jobs queues.
  • When ingesting media via ImagenWeb, job progress is now shown directly on the record page.
  • Retry failed jobs from the record page.
  • Users can batch order clip downloads of every clip they have in a collection. Ordering on behalf of another user works too.
• Share/embed changes
  • Records views can now create special access URLs for sharing access to records with un-registered users.
  • URLs can have sunrise and sunset dates, and forbid downloading if it has been configured for unregistered users.
  • URLs can be revoked.
  • Admins can control which records are sharable in this way by putting the special “Anonymous” role in the ACL.
• Thumbnails
  • Video, and audio, and documents can now have a custom thumbnail set.  There are by separate file upload and allows thumbnail and reference images to be “cover image” style and do nor require that image to exist anywhere in the media.

Batch Upload
Streamline your ingest process and bulk import entire media collections in just a few clicks. Automatically generate unique metadata for each record with intelligent tagging based on a standard template.

Batch Metadata Edits
Add, delete or append video metadata – to one, some or all your database records in a few clicks. 

Import Timed Text files
Import a wide variety of timed text files for improved search and navigation of long form video.  Adobe Prelude (.csv), EVS IPDirector logs (.xml), ImagenClient annotations (.xml), SubRip (.srt), TTML (.xml), and WebVTT (.vtt).

Imagen Spatial Annotations
Highlight specific areas in your images such as faces or objects. The tags added to images will be searchable.

Credits based payments
Imagen Credits enables customers the ability to self-serve, pay in credits based on duration and download high-resolution files.

Partial File Restore
Create high-resolution clips directly from the master file without the time-consuming overhead of re-indexing or transcoding. Users create the in and out edit points for partial file restore using Imagen’s browser-based clipping feature. Fully integrated with Imagen’s Accelerated file delivery.

Multi-language support
New Multi-language support automatically detects local language settings and delivers a rich, personalized experience across all devices.

Multi-channel audio mixing,
Choose your stereo mix from the tracks available on ingest and suppress unwanted channels containing un-cleared music or inappropriate content.

Media Player Improvements

• New customisable player for video and audio in desktop browsers, with a range of new features.
• Toggle between showing elapsed time (YouTube style) and professional timecode
• The volume setting is remembered per user and device.
  The volume setting is remembered per user and device.
• Thumbnails when hovering over the seek-bar for browsing and quick seeking.
• Support for multi stream audio, with stream selection within the player, which is perfect for multi-lingual content.
• When playing audio media, we now show a waveform in the player.
• Keyboard shortcuts for fast-forward (x2 and x4 with audio, and x8 and x16 without audio), slow motion (x0.5, x0.25 and x0.125) and ‘rewind’.

Annotations

• Time-based and spatial metadata. 
• ‘fuzz’ parts of the image or video when renditions are created based on selection.
• Add 1400+ emojis to video timeline using short text codes.  For example ‘:goal:’
• Add chapter annotations to break up long form audio and video files.
• Add ‘participant’ annotations to the timeline (such as a player on a team)

Interactive timeline

• Greater control when seeking through long form video content. Zoom in and review key moments in detail and create frame accurate clips at speed.

Media Logging

• The Media Logger tool generates consistent time-based metadata which can be used to index long form video. Once applied end-users are able to search for specific moments within long form content, such as a goal within a game of football.
• During playback, administrators or logging teams can click or tap away on a grid of customisable keywords, emojis, chapters, phrases and participants to generate rich, searchable metadata which will be displayed and synchronised alongside the video as annotations.

Collections improvements

• Several improvements to the user interface for user-generated collections. 
• When someone shares a collection with you they also appear on a new card within your account page.
• When adding an item to a collection you can also distinguish between collections that you made and collections that you have been invited to collaborate on.

Additional media list/grid

• A new list view shows alternative media for multiple objects within a single database record.

Enquiry form

• Add a configurable form to enquire about rights or price for example.

Themes

• All themes reworked to ensure they are visually consistent and responsive 
• New dark version of “Explore” and “Material” theme.

Remote Monitoring Dashboard – Prometheus

• Realtime monitoring and alerts on all client systems.
• ImagenWeb system status report
• Platform level health check which gives an overview of key services.

Subscription VOD
Set up your own customisable video-on-demand platform. Imagen is ready to take secure payment via credit card using any common currency. Subscribers can see billing history and even cancel their account at any time.

User Intelligence
Gain insight into your viewership and video performance through advanced analytics. Simple to customise dashboards give you up to the minute information on engagement rates helping you curate your media more effectively.

Automated Transcriptions
Generate searchable annotations from audio tracks to improve engagement and discoverability.

API and Workflow Extensions
Create third party apps or connect to external services through Imagen’s fully documented API.

OneDrive and Dropbox support
Securely connect with your OneDrive or Dropbox account for hassle-free ingest directly into Imagen without the need to re-upload or monitor progress in your browser.

Administration

• Management interfaces now exclusively served over HTTPS (TLS).
• All main services have their own certificate store, viewable within the management interfaces.

REST API

• Imagen API can now be accessed by external developers
• API interfaces secured by TLS.
• Access to the API protected by keys, so only approved applications can use it.
• Signatures are required for API calls not made on behalf of a user (like with Amazon Web Services API)
• OAuth2.0 authorisation – industry standard security protocol
• External developer orientated documentation http://deverlopers.cambridgeimaging.com
• “Webhook” notifications to declare events in Imagen

ImagenWeb

• Imagen Widgets can now render optional container elements in CSS styles according to your themes preference.
• External developers can self-register their Imagen API applications from within Imagen.
• Administrator can see and manage all applications registered to use their Imagen system.
• Graphical date and time picker added.
• Sunrise and sunset date options available on Universal URLs, WAYFless URLs and embed codes.
• Embed media via an iFrame.
• Segmentation feature added – Content owners can clip up long form material after ingest, to aid curation and discovery.
• Tooltip added to clips list context menu.
• Set and modify the base timecode and timecode mode of video/audio
• Users can see and manage the Imagen API apps that they have approved to access their account.
• Site administrators can now decide the order of search filter values.
• Send HTML formatted emails based on customer theme.
• Editable clip captions.

Speed improvements

• StorageService is now faster at storing files from and to local or UNC locations.
• StorageService checksum calculations are quicker, leading to lower CPU usage.

BlackPearl

• Owners can add Spectra BlackPearl devices and credentials to a StorageService.
• StorageService can read and write, to and from, a Spectra BlackPearl data tape library.