University Staff can upload audio/video files to a Faculty/School or course area on the Podcast Video Portal. Students are able to upload to a specific area of the Portal, details are found in the student FAQs.
Videos uploaded to specific courses will appear alongside any podcasts which are already recorded by the lecture capture system, meaning students can access all of the video resources for that course in one place.
Recommendations for uploading
The Video Portal supports a number of different video formats, including MP4, AVI, MOV and M4V. Audio files must be in the MP3 format.
Although file sizes of up to 5GB are technically supported by the system, we recommend keeping file sizes as small as possible. One way to achieve this is to use the following recommended settings where possible (note these will vary depending upon the software used):
- Produce videos at a resolution of 720p – most software will allow you to pick a ‘Quality’ option, and we recommend 720p as this is the Video Portal default.
- Use MP4 as the format whenever possible
- Keep bitrates low – the higher the bitrate of the video, the larger the file, and this increases the chances of the upload failing. A video of presentation slides and a talking head, for example, should not have a bitrate higher than 1.2Mbps, and in most cases, lower will suffice.
- If you have a file which fails to upload, you could try encoding it again using free software called Handbrake (available on Windows, Mac and Linux). Once installed, videos should be encoded using the general 720p preset which can be found in Preset > General > 720p30. By default, videos are saved as .m4v (which is compatible with the Video Portal upload) or they can be renamed to .mp4.
How to upload
Follow the instructions below to upload recordings
- Visit the Upload page of the Video Portal – https://video.manchester.ac.uk/my/videos and login using your university username and password.
- Choose the file you want to upload by selecting the Choose file button. The system supports the most commonly found video formats, including: MP4, AVI, MOV, WMV, M4V, up to 5GB in size.
- Enter the title, description and choose the area to upload the video to. Please note that all the courses you teach will be listed individually in this list, even if you teach some of them as a combined course. In this case you will only need to upload the video to one of the courses that are combined and it should become available to all students who are enrolled on any of the combined course codes.
- Select who the video should be visible to – if you chose a course in the previous step, this will automatically be set to ‘selected course only’.
- If you wish to edit the video before it is published, click the “Advanced Options” button and tick the “edit before publishing” box. This will mean you receive an email when the video is ready for editing.
- Note the “generate subtitles” option is selected by default which means that subtitles will automatically be generated for your video after it has been processed. The subtitles may not become available at the same time as the video, as they can require additional processing time. If you do not wish to have subtitles generated, you can deselect this option (you can also upload your own subtitle file from the advanced options area).
- Once you have completed these steps, select Submit to upload the video.
After the system has finished processing the video – you will receive an email informing you it is available to view.
The video tutorial below takes you through the steps for uploading a video to the portal.
See this support article for written instructions (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).
If you need any help, you should raise a support ticket.