Release Notes (v0.3-alpha)

Release Notes (v0.3)

What’s New in This Release:

Title	High-level description
Consolidated VA Serving source code to primary repository	VA Serving was originally released as a component embedded into the Intel Ad-Insertion Demo before being released independently. Intel® Smart-Cities and Ad-Insertion both had local copies of VA Serving which were being managed independently with their own set of bug fixes and feature enhancements. With VA Serving 0.3 we have consolidated to a “one Source” Media Analytics Pipeline Serving library.
Improved Docker files, Build and Run Scripts	Complete refactor of build stages to cleanly separate: Analytics Base VA Serving core Models & Pipelines Only stage 2 and stage 3 are now maintained in VA Serving – Analytics base is reused directly from Intel® OpenVINO™ Toolkit - DL Streamer v1.0 and FFmpeg Video Analytics v0.5 repositories.
Container runs as non-root user	Dockerfile creates a non-root privilege user for increased security.
Removed dead code and auto-generated files	We initially generated the skeleton for VA Serving using openapi. This led to many files being generated that were not actually used (though we use the specification with a library to define the APIs).
VA Serving Core Library	VA Serving now provides a library interface allowing developers to embed pipeline serving capabilities directly into their applications. This allows applications complete freedom in how they receive and process incoming requests and removes the need to use REST APIs. VA Serving still maintains and supports the service layer that uses the VA Serving Core Library underneath.
Model Caching between pipeline instances	DL Streamer elements which are given a specific ID (which indicates that they share inference requests between multiple pipelines) are now cached between pipeline invocations to avoid unnecessary start up and shut down costs.
FFmpeg v0.5 Parameter Support + Segment Recording	Complete refactor of FFmpeg parameter handling to bring closer in line to the modularity of GStreamer. Parameters can now be specified on specific ‘filters’ as opposed to only simple text substitution. Along with this change we now support recording segments with FFMpeg using normalized timestamps in line with GStreamer segment recording capabilities.
Code brought into Pep 8 Compliance	All files and naming were updated to be Pep8 compliant to provide a better base for development.
Removed static methods where possible	Following singleton pattern to improve design and provide a better base for development.

Known Issues

N/A

If you encounter defects in functionality, please submit as a GitHub issue.