If you’ve arrived at this page it is likely that we’ve processed one of your videos and are using this page to explain the transition from our Flash media streaming service to Panopto Unison.
Current process
If you’ve ever asked iSolutions to create a streaming video file in the past the process went like this:
- We ask you to upload a fully edited video file to dropoff.soton.ac.uk
- We re-process your video using Sorenson Squeeze to make a high and low quality .mp4 file
- We add this to our Flash server
- We give you some code to paste into Blackboard (or other website)
There were some limitations with this service. Firstly the video file had to be perfectly edited before handing it to iSolutions, the video file could only be embedded into webpages, it was difficult to share the videos with other colleagues and the two security options were “Everyone in the University” and “Everyone on the Internet”. The other major disadvantage was that none of these videos would work on a mobile device.
Improvements
With Panopto you will have course folders to add videos into (so only your class can see them) or discipline folders so that you can share videos with your colleagues. Videos can be edited in the web based editor at any point after uploading and can still be made available to all University users and the public. The Panopto webpages that you can link to will display the video on a desktop, mobile and tablet as well as having the video embeddable in another web page.
As well as all these features, the process of adding a video will be as easy as dragging and dropping a file onto your web browser. You’ll no longer need to raise a ticket to stream a video.
Understanding the transition
If you’re reading this you hopefully understand the above is where we wish to be, but help pages are not currently written and our team are not as practised in dealing with this system.
We’ve asked you to send us the file so that we can upload it. We’ve also asked you where the video should go in relation to your Blackboard courses.
Panopto folders
Panopto video files go into folders. These folders contain the default permissions for the videos. By adding your video to the BIOL folder, your video can be viewed by all Biology courses that are activated in Panopto. A student on BIOL1001-12345-14-15 or BIOL1002-23456-14-15 will both be able to see a video in this folder.
Adding the video to a BIOL1001 folder would allow the student on BIOL1001-12345-14-15 but not BIOL1002-23456-14-15 to see the video.
If you would like your video to be public, we still need to put the video into a Panopto folder. For you to edit and share the video this folder needs to be linked to a Blackboard course where you are an instructor. If your video is not academic in nature we can create a blank Blackboard course with only you enrolled onto the course. This will allow you to have your own folder and set your own permissions on your videos. By default only you can see the videos placed into these arbitrary course folders, but you can easily share the videos with students, staff, external email addresses, everyone at the University or publicly.
It is also important to remember that copyrighted material is still not allowed to be uploaded without express permission from the copyright holder. We will be adding this, and information on how you should be naming your videos, onto the new Panopto Unison FAQ pages soon.