Reuse podcasts between courses/years

Sometimes you may wish to provide students access to a podcast from another year or another course which you teach.

Only students who were enrolled on a particular year of a course will be able to view the podcasts on the Video Portal directly – so you cannot simply provide a link, rather you will need to either embed the podcast into the current Blackboard course, or re-upload the podcast into the current course area on the Video Portal.

Both of these processes are outlined below.

Re-uploading an older podcast for the current year

To do this, follow the steps below:

  1. Log into the Video Portal and locate the podcast you would like to re-use.
  2. To the bottom right of the podcast video, click on the Options button and choose ‘Download Video’ – the file should save as an MP4 file.
    Note:
    – some browsers may open the video in a new browser tab, rather than download it when the button is pressed. In this case, you should be able to right-click on the video that is shown and click “Save as” to download the MP4 file.
    – downloading videos in the Safari browser on a mac might lead to an “unknown” file being downloaded. In order to make the downloaded file a valid video file, you should add “‘.mp4” to the end of the filename (confirm that you wish to change the file extension) and the video will now play as expected.
  3. It is also advised to download the subtitles for this video by clicking on the Options button and choosing ‘Download Subtitles’.
  4. Go to the My Videos page of the Video Portal and upload your podcasts directly into the relevant course area by completing the form on the page. If you downloaded the subtitle file, untick the ‘Generate subtitles’ option from this page, click the Advanced Options button and add the relevant subtitle file via the subtitle file section.
  5. If you wish to edit the file before it is made available, you can click the Advanced Options button and tick the ‘Edit before publishing’ tickbox.
  6. Press Submit to upload the video.
  7. Once the video has been processed, you will receive an email confirming the link to the video (or the editor if you chose to edit).

The video below takes you through the above steps.

If you experience any problems or need further support, please contact Podcast Support.

Embedding a previous podcast into Blackboard

The steps involved to embed a video are:

  1. Find the embed code for the video by clicking the options button under the video on the Video Portal and choosing ‘video info’. Copy the code from the box that appears.
  2. The default embed size is medium, but you can change this from the dropdown box above the embed code area.
  3. Go to the page in Blackboard where you want the videos to appear, and click on the Source Code button in the toolbar (< >) and paste the copied code into the box that appears, as highlighted in the image below.
Blackboard HTML editor source code button
  1. Press Save in the source code window, and you will see the video appear in the page. Press Submit in the main window to save all the changes.

More detail can be found on the embedding a video FAQ page.

If you experience any problems or need further support, please contact Podcast Support.
(Please note if you are not already logged into the support system, you will be directed to the homepage. Once logged in – please click this link again and you will be redirected to the correct form).