Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Announcing Kaltura My Media update

Posted by Andy Freed

We’ve been using Kaltura to host streaming media for over 5 years and have been very happy with the platform. We haven’t been the happiest with the upload tool, but that’s about to change. On Wednesday, March 8th, we’ll be updating the Kaltura integration so that you (instructors) will see a “My Media” link on the navbar in D2L Brightspace.

My Media will allow you to see all the videos you’ve uploaded in the past in a single place. You’ll still add videos to your pages, announcements, and discussions using the Insert Stuff tool, but now it will be much easier to add and create new media. To add media, just click the Add New button and select your media type.

Media Upload

This first option allows you to upload your own video or audio files from your computer (or device). When you select the media, it will start uploading and allow you to add a title, description, and tags for the media. We already have an extensive set of tags based on PCC’s subject areas (e.g. aviation science), but you’re welcome to add any that seem useful. A good description will help you find the video later.

Webcam recordings

The old webcam recorder was flaky. Sometimes it would work, and sometimes you’d finish recording your weekly update and *poof* it would stop responding. The new recorder works much better. You have the same options for titling and describing your video here as well.

CaptureSpace Lite

Lastly, you can download and install the CaptureSpace Lite application to your computer and do screen captures, webcam captures, or both, then do some simple editing before uploading to the Kaltura server. I’m really excited about this functionality because it allows you to capture from almost any computer without having a license for Camtasia. We’ll still recommend Camtasia for the hardcore screen capturing folks or if you need better editing tools, callouts, the ability to add captions, etc. Here’s a very quick demo.

Insert the media

When you want to add your media in to your course, just launch the Insert Stuff option from the HTML editor and select My Media and search for your media.

We hope you’ll find the new interface far easier to use. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us for assistance creating media for your course, but this will help those of you who already are creating content.