New mediastream features for 2019/20

Our colleagues in Central Media Services have applied the latest software version to our video streaming site, mediastream. This post covers some of the new features ready to use for 2019/20.

Changes to the Personal Category

Categories in mediastream allow you to control who can see your video. Previously, the Personal category allowed users to keep a video private, whilst also being able to share the video if they tweaked the options. This was a little confusing, and also resulted in extra administrative workload when it came to sharing sensitive videos.

Now you will see two personal categories.

• Personal (private) – videos in this category are private to the individual, and are not shared.
• Personal (public) – videos in this category are public, but do not appear on the mediastream website. Users must know the URL to see the video.

Many of you will use the Personal (public) category for sharing assessment recordings (such as presentations, practical assessments etc) and this now means you can share the video URL you receive via email, without having to click into mediastream to share the video.

Deeper integration with studentcentral

The integration with studentcentral has now been improved, meaning users can start a screen recording (using medialecture software) from within a studentcentral module or course area. The advantage of this is that once the recording in complete, the video is added to course or module area ready for students to view. Previously, you would have recorded the video, then gone to studentcentral to add the video. Now its all in one!

We have some basic instructions here: How to use medialecture within studentcentral

Editing Content

When you upload a new video to mediastream it’s now possible to make small edits to the file, such as trimming the length of the file. To do this:

• Upload your file to mediastream i(either directly or through studentcentral).
• Once complete, go to the mediastream website and login.
• Click your name (top right of the screen) and go to the My Content area (1)
• Click the pencil icon next to the video you wish to edit (2)
• You’ll now see some editing icons displayed (3) (you can trim the ends of the video, or chop a segment out)