slightly open laptop emitting colorful light

a cloud with a play button and three zoom icons coming off of the bottom

Hosting Zoom Recordings on Platforms

We now have quite a collection of video tools that can host Zoom video content. These all involve a few steps but are pretty easy to accomplish. Which one you use may depend on a few factors: which tool you prefer, how you want to manage captions, and what you want to do with the video.

Review the Rules and Recommendations

Remember: If you plan to share recordings from live Zoom sessions, you probably want to start by reviewing what is okay to share and what you should not share to stay in compliance with various policies and laws. Start by reviewing (and saving a copy of) the Distance Learning Committee (DLC)’s recommendations on sharing recordings of live class sessions so you can avoid any regulatory concerns.

Video Sharing Option 1: 3C Media
(now called TechConnect Cloud)

3C Media Solutions (also now being called TechConnect Cloud) has been with us the longest as a solution for video file storage for streaming and embedding. This tool is provided through TechConnect, the same unit at the state level that supports our institutional Zoom account. It does not offer video editing but is more like a youtube.com tool that is specifically for the community colleges. Any faculty member or employee of a community college can have a free account with a CCC-associated email.


Learn more about Zoom and 3C Media basics on the TechConnect website or in the Mt. SAC Canvas Faculty Center Tools & Apps page.

3C MEDIA HOW-TO ADD ZOOM VIDEOS

Download your Zoom video (mp4) file and your caption (VTT) file. Upload the video file to 3C Media. Once the video is uploaded, there is an option to add captions under “Edit Media” where you can upload a caption file. Captions can also be requested here. 

a video entry in 3C Media shows options underneath that include uploading a caption file or requesting captions.

USING VIDEOS FROM 3C MEDIA

Once uploaded, the videos show up in your 3C Media library. You can share a link or use the embed code to embed videos from 3C Media within or outside of Canvas. 3C Media is integrated into Canvas, so any videos added here are available automatically from the 3C Media tool within Canvas. The 3C Media tool in Canvas can be found in the Rich Content Editor under the “plug” icon or in hidden menu navigation items (Course menu Settings > Navigation is the center tab on the Settings page. Look in hidden items and drag or enable to make available. Don’t forget to save before navigating away!).

PROS & CONS

The benefits of 3C Media include that you can now stream embedded videos easily into one or many courses using the integrated Canvas tool. As a CCC-only tool, it is pretty secure and this tool has been around for many years. Though there are no guarantees, it doesn’t depend on local funding and is used for Chancellor’s Office video sharing, so it seems the most likely candidate to be dependable. From 3C Media, you can create and share sets of videos as “channels” and organize videos in folders. Because it is a part of CCC architecture, it is directly connected to grant money so you can request free captioning for specific types of instructional videos, and perhaps they will continue to figure out the best ways to streamline functionality between Zoom and 3C Media as the tools that are managed by this unit.

There are some downsides, depending on what you hope to accomplish. First, this is hosting only. There is no video editing tools in 3C Media, only hosting. You would need to download it and work with it in a different program to edit it. Although you can upload or request captions in this tool, there is no way to edit captions within the tool–again, you’d have to do that in a separate tool prior to uploading. Finally, this tool does not track users so it provides no information on who watched the video.

Links: 3C Media

Video Sharing Option 2: Canvas Studio

HOW TO ADD ZOOM RECORDINGS TO CANVAS STUDIO

Start by downloading the Zoom video files to your local drive. Open Canvas and then open Canvas Studio (global navigation bar in Canvas). Drag and drop or upload the video (mp4) file into the Canvas Studio tool. You can upload the captioning file too. Here’s a 2-min video on how to do it.

Here are Zoom to Canvas Studio instructions with screenshots from another college that also demonstrates this well.

USING VIDEOS IN CANVAS STUDIO

When videos are in Canvas Studio, you can share them as you would any video in Canvas Studio. This tool will allow you to embed videos within Canvas pages or to get a public link and share or embed the video outside of Canvas. Canvas Studio can be accessed from the Rich Content Editor (under the plug icon) from the navigation, or in assignment “external tools.”  It is possible to add quiz questions (multiple choice or multiple answer) in Canvas Studio videos or to allow students to add comments to specific times in the video.

PROS & CONS

The benefit of Canvas Studio is that now your videos are in Canvas, which is very secure without taking up any of your limited course space. The benefit of this option over 3C Media is that it allows you to do extra things: you can see how students interacted with the video (insights) including whether they watched it and how much they watched, and you can add interactive content.

The downside of Canvas Studio is that you still cannot edit the captions or the video itself when it is an uploaded file. You only have those tool options when you create the video directly in Canvas Studio (perhaps a good reason to switch to Studio over Zoom if you are just making videos, not sharing live session recordings).

Link to more information on Canvas Studio

Video Sharing Option 3: Screencast-O-Matic

Screencast-O-Matic (SCM, for short), is also a tool available through our Mt. SAC Team Premier account. It has some unique additional options that you might like. First, to establish your free Mt. SAC associated SCM account, see the instructions on the Canvas Faculty Center Tools & apps page for Screencast-o-matic). This is available to faculty and employees but not students.

If you are new to SCM, it is important to know that this video tool has 2 separate parts. One part is the free downloadable SCM program, which is the tool used to record and edit videos, add and edit captions or subtitles, add any music or annotations you want to add, and finalize the video. Once these tasks are done,  the video can be “published,” or saved, to multiple locations, including your local drive, Google Drive, or the Screencast-o-matic Cloud, which is part two of the tool. Once you save the video to SCM Cloud (or to Google Drive or your local hard drive) it is outside of the video editing tool. To edit it, you must go back into the program where that can be done. The SCM Cloud tool is storage that is integrated into Canvas. By putting videos in the Cloud, you can use them anywhere in Canvas or share them out by link or multiple embed options to any other web location. You can also create and share channels, which are a set of videos that you place in a playlist together.

SCREENCAST-O-MATIC HOW-TO

The special reason to consider Screencast-O-Matic is that it syncs to Zoom directly if you set up the connection. The connection point is in the Screencast-O-Matic video editing program part of the tool. It is easy to set up and once you do, Zoom videos load into Screencast-O-Matic so you can edit them or share them to the Cloud and easily embed them anywhere in Canvas. This is the only option that makes it easy for you to edit the Zoom recordings or captions and offers integration in Canvas.

After you sync, you can see Zoom recordings in your SCM editor. Now these videos can be edited or shared to the Cloud from here. You can import or sync as more Zoom sessions are recorded.

To add captions and make any captioning edits, click CC in the lower right corner and upload your caption file or add captions through another choice such as by running speech-to-text. You may need to adapt the captions file format. Here’s a tool that converts the video transcript tool (VTT) to the standard SRT format for upload.

Then Upload to Screencast-o-matic Cloud to make it available from SCM in Canvas.

Use SCM’s editing tools, including the caption tools to trim the video, cut out parts that show students, upload the caption file, and edit the captions before publishing into SCM cloud, making it easy to share anywhere in Canvas.

USING SCREENCAST-O-MATIC TO SHARE VIDEOS

After you’ve added videos and captions in the SCM program and uploaded them to the SCM Cloud, you can access the videos in Canvas using the Screencast-O-Matic tool. This can be found under the “plug” in the Rich Content Editor, under External tools in Assignments, or in the Course menu hidden navigation items (Settings > Navigation).

PROS and CONS

The upsides of Screencast-O-Matic include the ability to edit, trim, annotate, and make other adjustments to the video. You can also edit the captions, and you have options for how to share (by link or embed) through the integrated SCM tool. Another nice feature is that if you decide you want to edit the video or captions further, you can return to your copy of the video in the SCM editing tool, make additional changes, and then re-upload it to SCM Cloud. So long as the file has the same file name, you can opt to “overwrite” the original file. The advantage is no editing or broken links within courses. The video will be updated but all links or embeds stay intact.

The downsides of SCM are currently that you won’t get the same level of tracking of the videos use or have the option to add interactivity from within SCM.  You can see (from within SCM Cloud) how many people have watched the video but not who watched the video or how much each person watched. Another possible inconvenience is the need to transfer the captioning file type from a VTT to an SRT so that Screencast-O-Matic can read it. Also you may find that it is better to either add the caption file before you do major edits or to run speech-to-text captions after  you have completed all editing rather than try to get the captions from the file to match up to an edited video (or edit them to do so). This causes a lot of challenges to caption editing. Some people find this captioning tool to be a challenge to edit within or find that the speech-to-text isn’t particularly accurate for their voice or the voices/sound quality of their videos.

Links for Screencast-O-Matic Info

Planning Your Zoom Workflow

Now that you know the options available to you, consider if you want to continue with your current process or adjust your choices! Whatever process you choose, remember that Zoom isn’t a video storage tool, and make sure you consider how long you want to keep your videos. Also, the truth is, you can mix and match any of these to get the functionality you want. You could sync them to Screencast-O-Matic, but decide to store them in 3C Media or Canvas Studio if you want. There’s nothing that forces you to follow one pathway, though there are often efficiencies if you do use the same workflows: the update options in Screencast-O-Matic, for instance, or just… being able to reliably find your videos without having to search through multiple directories later.

Hopefully it makes sense that if you want to keep some or all of your Zoom recordings for the long term, it would be a good idea to make a habit of moving them from Zoom to one of these more stable, long-term storage locations. Delete Zoom recordings that were made in error or that you do not have any need to retain, and make sure you remove any “just for the semester videos” at a safe interval following the end of the term to free up space in the account and avoid losing anything due to automatic deletion policies. It reminds me of the old closing time line, “you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” Zoom videos don’t get to stay in Zoom indefinitely, though you will be given notice by IT when the determine the policy for removal. The CCC TechCenter is already asking every college to set one to control storage costs.

 
The FCLT would love to hear which of these options seem the most valuable to you. Do you have another way you process Zoom recordings? Perhaps you have some questions about these options that I didn’t get to here. If you do, please leave a comment below! Of course we are always happy to hear what else you’d like us to blog about, too! 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *