Take a look at the FAQs below to see if they help with your issue, otherwise contact us via the Support Centre for any further help.
To view podcasts for the courses you are enrolled on, you simply need to visit the Podcast Video Portal and login. Here you will see a list of all of your courses which have podcasts available for them.
If you do not see a course or podcast you expect, this could be for a number of reasons. In some cases, lecturer choose to hold podcasts for editing before they are published – which means you will only be able to see the podcast once the lecturer publishes it. Some lecturers may also choose to opt-out of lecture recordings, which means podcasts may not be made.
If podcasts are not held for editing/review – they will automatically publish once they have finished processing. This can be relatively quick in most cases, but sometimes there can be a delay, and they can take up to 24 hours to publish.
If after 24 hours, a podcast you expect to see still isn’t available, contact the Support Centre for help.
If you are enrolled on a course but cannot see it in the list of podcasts on the Video Portal, these are the most likely reasons:
- The lecturer has opted-out of having recordings made so they are unavailable to view
- The lectures take place in a location which is not podcast-enabled
If you have recently changed courses this should update automatically (and fairly quickly), but log out and back into the Video Portal to reset your enrolments. If you still have issues, you should raise a support ticket.
Once you log in to the University’s Central Authentication Service (CAS) there is a timeout period of 4 hours – so if you have been logged into CAS for longer than this time (across all browser tabs), you will find that podcasts might longer play. To remedy this – you shuld logout and back in (via the button to the top right of the Video Portal) and videos should play correctly.
In some cases it is useful to force-refresh the browser (by pressing CTRL+F5 for example) as this will force the browser to download the podcast again and play it back. It is also useful to try playing it in a different browser and if issues persist, we suggest downloading the podcast to your device by clicking the Options button and choosing download video.
If you still have issues, you should raise a support ticket.
If you notice a problem with one of the podcasts (such as black video or no audio) this could be for a number of reasons, such as technical failure or a microphone being muted. We do monitor the system as best we can to try and prevent such issues, but sometimes they do occur, and unfortunately it is not possible to retrospectively fix them.
You can download podcasts to watch on your own device by pressing the Options button under the video and choosing Download. Videos will be saved as MP4 files.
Note that you can only download videos on a desktop/laptop device as the download button will not be visible on a mobile device.
Downloaded recordings are for your own personal use only – you are not permitted to share the recordings with anyone else, post them online or distribute them in any way. Students found to be in infringement of this may be subject to disciplinary proceedings.
If you expect to be able to see a podcast but it is not available, this could be for one of the following reasons:
- the lecturer has held the recording for editing before it is published
- the lecture was opted-out of being recorded
- there was a technical failure which prevented the podcast from being published
If an expected recording is missing, you should raise a support ticket.
As part of our ongoing commitment to support students with disabilities, a special adaptation has been made to the lecture capture service.
If you are a student registered with the DASS Office and they have specified that you need recorded lectures as part of your support plan, you will have access to all your lectures in equipped rooms, even if the lecture has been opted-out of the recording process.
In order to see even opted-out podcasts, you do not need to take any extra steps; simply visit the Video Portal, and all podcasts will appear for you as usual.
For further information and advice relating to podcasts as a form of disability support, please contact the DASS Office.
Subtitles are created for lecture recordings automatically, but if you find a video does not have subtitles, you can try requesting them. You must be logged into the Video Portal in order to do this. Simply click on the Options button beneath the video window, select the Request Subtitles option and follow the steps.
Please note, it will take a short while for subtitles to become available for a video due and you will not receive a notification – the subtitle icon will simply appear on the player controls when they are ready.
You can view subtitles for any media on the Video Portal by clicking the subtitles icon on the player control bar.
Students can upload audio or video files to the Video Portal and share the link to the published video (depending on the visibility setting) or embed it into Blackboard to share it with others.
Upload videos
Log into the My Videos tab of the Video Portal.
The following video formats are supported: MP4, AVI, MOV, WMV and M4V – up to 5GB in size. When producing videos, it is recommended to keep settings aimed at 720p – which is what the Video Portal will encode to, and this should help keep file-sizes reasonable also.
For audio files – the file MUST be saved as an MP3 file (i.e. with a .mp3 file extension). If an audio file is saved with a video extension, such as .mp4 for example, it will fail to process correctly.
Add a title and description if desired, and select who the video should be visible to (options are Public, only you, or all staff and students).
Ensure that you select the correct visibility option before uploading. If the upload is for assignment purposes, it is usually advised to set it to Private (only me) and then share the direct link to the video once processed (explained in the next FAQ section below).
Under the Advanced Options button,you can select the date and time for the video upload: note that videos are shown in descending date order in the video portal, so the date you use will determine where the video will appear in the list (i.e. older videos appear below more recent ones). For quality there are 3 options available for uploads.The Default option is what we would suggest as it will encode videos at a 720p resolution, but you can select High Quality for 1080p.
If you wish to include a subtitle file it must be in the .vtt format. A custom thumbnail is automatically taken from the video at the 15 second interval but if you wish to use your own image, you can upload a JPEG or PNG file.
Press submit to upload the video. You will receive an email when the video has been processed and published.
Seeing courses instead of student videos area to upload to
Important note – if you are a Postgraduate student, you may see courses in your list of areas to upload instead of “student videos” but it is not recommended that you select a course, as videos added to a course area are visible to all staff/students on the course. Instead, choose a Faculty or School area and set the video to private (“only me”).
Embedding videos in Blackboard
If you want to share your uploaded video with students in your Blackboard course, you need to copy the embed code for your video – which can be found by going to Options > Video Info. This code needs to be copied and pasted into Blackboard (for example in a Discussion Board) and the video will then be visible there.
You can find further instructions on embedding in this support document.
Manage uploaded videos
You can edit or delete an uploaded video by visiting the My Videos tab and clicking the ‘Manage my videos’ button. You will see a list of the videos you have uploaded – you can press delete to remove a video, or edit it to change things like the title, description, or visibility, for example.
If you have any issues, create a support ticket for help.
If a podcast contains inappropriate content, you have the option to have it removed immediately. You must be logged in to the Video Portal to do this.
Note that removing a podcast will not delete it; it will simply remove it from the Video Portal so that it can no longer be viewed.
To remove a video, click on the Options button beneath the video and click Remove video. In the box that opens, you need to provide a reason for the remove request, choose whether to report anonymously, and agree by checking the box.
Please note that all removal requests can be reviewed by system administrators.