Frequently asked questions

If you are uploading a recording over your home broadband, you may experience longer wait times for your uploads to complete.  Home internet connections usually have a high download bandwidth but a low upload bandwidth, however there are some things to bear in mind which may help with getting your recordings uploaded:

• Preferably use a wired connection and not Wi-Fi

• Make sure your laptop is connected to a power source as upload can take a long time

• Don’t turn off computer while uploading – keep computer on to allow for background upload

• Don’t disconnect computer from internet (Wi-Fi or wired)

• Try uploading your presentatiuon when there are less people using the internet, such as in the evening

• If you choose to upload multiple recordings at the same time, they will do so in parallel, which means that your upload bandwith will be shared between them.  If you are facing low upload speeds it is best to upload one recording at a time.

• As a guide, at a top upload speed of 1.5 Mbps a 30-minute 1080p video could take 3 hours to upload.

If your video has been ‘uploading’ for more than 12 hours and is not complete, you should cancel the upload and try again. To cancel an upload, click the ‘x’ icon next to the upload % and the Upload button will appear again.  See the advice above on improving upload speeds and click 'Upload'.

You can reduce the quality of future recordings in order to lower their file size. You can do this by clicking 'Manage' on the Kaltura Capture application, clicking on the settings icon (shaped like a cog) on the left hand side, and select 720p or 480p for your desktop and webcam recordings.  This will reduce the quality of the recording but will have a big impact on the size of the recorded files.  Screen recordings may require higher quality depending on the presentation material, so you should carry out a quick test recording and preview in advance of recording your presentation.

Keep recordings as short as possible, if you have a long lecture, try to split it into two or three parts.

You can use the Kaltura Capture's Manage page to see whether or not your upload has completed, and if it has, a link to your content will be shown.  You can follow these steps to check if your content has uploaded:

1. Open the Kaltura Capture pplication

2. Click on the 'Manage' option on the tool

3. Check if your recordings were uploaded. If they were then:

   • The Upload button will have disappeared, and

   • Your recording will have a link to the uploaded video.

4. If the 'Upload' button is available and you want to upload the video, follow the advice in the Q&A above on uploading content, and click on Upload.

5. If the upload is in progress, keep the application open. The upload process will restart/resume the failed upload.

• Operating system: Windows 7 -10 (64 bit) and above/macOS 10.12-10.15
• RAM: 4GB
• Storage: 1GB min available
• Processor: Minimum of Intel i5 or AMD A10 (min 4 cores)
• Screen resolution: Minimal supported screen resolution is 1024 X 768 (100% scale)

Your Kaltura Capture recordings are stored in a system folder on your computer as video files.  Unless an alternative location is specified during installation, these files are stored here on a PC: %localappdata%\Kaltura\ 

And here on a Mac: ~/Library/Preferences/Kaltura/

There’s guidance on how to find these files on your computer available here: Retrieving files from Kaltura Capture

All recordings made with Kaltura Capture are stored on your computer, even after they have been uploaded to Media Hopper Create.  This is so that you can keep an offline backup of your recordings, and upload them again to the service if desired.  If you have uploaded your recordings, and have already created an offline backup in a second location or do not require to access your recording files again in the future, you can delete your recordings from Kaltura Capture.  

• To delete an individual recording from Kaltura Caputre, click Manage from the main interface, then click Delete to the right of the information for the recording to be deleted.
• To delete all recoridng files  from your computer which you have already uploaded to Media Hopper Create, click Manage from the main interface, then 'Delete All Uploaded Files' at the top of your recordings list.

Please note: If you choose to delete the recording files from your computer, they cannot be recovered.  If you delete your recordings from Media Hopper Create, and do not have an offline backup (for example having the recording saved in Kaltura Capture), it also cannot be recovered.

As part of the move to Ultra Based Navigation on Learn, and to ensure Ultra courses have access to all the relevant tools, a couple of additional options for adding Media Hopper Create content will appear for original (non-Ultra) courses:

• Build Content’ menu: Media Hopper Create Embed (Ultra)
• Tools’ menu: Media Hopper Create Gallery (Ultra)
• Add Tool Link options within the rich text editor: Media Hopper Create Embed (Ultra)

While these options will work with non-Ultra courses, they will display the content differently to how they do now, therefore to keep a consistent experience for all users, we recommend that everyone adding Media Hopper Create content to an original course should continue to use the pre-existing options which do not have the suffix '(Ultra)'.

All content will have a copyright statement saying who it belongs to, and a usage rights statement that says what you are allowed to do with it, based on the Creative Commons schema. This allows users to assert copyright ownership over a piece of content, but still make it available for colleagues to share and modify.

This is likely because the source file for has been removed from the video entry in line with the service's Retention Policy.  This happens after an entry has been on the service for 6 months and the 'retain source file' option hadn't been selected on the metadata edit or upload pages before the source file was removed.

More information on the Retention Policy, how it is implemented, and how it can impact the online editing tools can be found here: https://edin.ac/3fuyoS5 There's a link on that page to this guide which explains how to re-enable editing by replacing the source file: https://edin.ac/3EYXphq

When searching for a user only a limited amount of results are returned, and if the user you are trying to find shares a name or part of their username with others, they may not be shown.  If you search for their UUN (university username) in double quotes, they should be the only result returned - i.e. "jbloggs" instead of just jbloggs.

The Creative Commons category is automatically moderated so that it contains only content which a) has a Creative Commons licence and b) has been published to a second channel which is also 'Public'.  This is to ensure that only public-facing Creative Commons content is shown, and anything which doesn't meet these criteria is removed when the automated moderation process runs overnight.  To avoid your content being removed from the Creative Commons category, you can add it to an existing public channel for your content, or create a new one.  This guide has more information on creating and using a Channel: Working with Channels and Playlists

You can upload subtitles and transcripts for any piece of media in Media Hopper Create - this guide has instructions on how to upload pre-existing subitltes to your media conent (for example captions downloaded from a Teams or Zoom recording): Using an existing subtitle file with content on Media Hopper Create

There is also automated captioning available, which can be requested through the Media Hopper Create interface for any content which you are the owner of, or are listed as a co-editor on.  There is more information avaiable here: Requesting subtitles for your content

You can download your captions from Media Hopper Create in the widely used 'SRT' format.  This can then be used on a wide variety of other online video platforms, such as social media.  You can find the 'SRT' captions file for content you own or can edit by going to the Edit screen for your content (accessed from the 'Actions' menu on the playback screen), navigating to the Captions tab, and clicking the 'Download' icon.

In May of 2020 we moved to a new subtitles editing interface.  To edit subtitles requested before this date, click Actions under the video player and choose Edit from the dropdown menu.  Navigate to the Captions tab, and click Edit Captions.  All new automated subtitle requests can be edited by clicking Actions under the video player and choosing Caption & Enrich, then Edit next to your subtitle.

There isn't a default policy at present, however there is existing legislation in this space that we are already mindful of (Equality Act 2010 and before it, SENDA). You should consider the audience for your media and be prepared to make reasonable adjustments where required. Remember that if you have created a script for yourself as part of creating a piece of media, you can very quickly reuse this as  a transcript.

The options available when adding a user to a channel are:

• Manager - Can make changes to the channel itself, such as change the name, description, thumbnail, visibility, and add/remove all content
• Contributor - Can add content to a channel and view any content added, however they cannot make changes to the channel metadata
• Moderator - If the moderation option is turned on in the channel settings, they can approve or reject content added by Contributors before they are visible to other channel members
• Member - Can only view content added to a channel (for moderated channels this is only approved content), and cannot add their own
• Subscriber - This is the same as a Member

More information on creating and administrating a Channel can be found here: Working with Channels and Playlists

No - there aren't. You can clip and trim a whole video, but you can't modify just the sound.  More information on editing your whole video is avaiable here:  Editing media using the online video editing tools

It is possible to stream videos from YouTube using the sharing URL.  More information is avaialble on our Help & Support page here: Media Hopper Create

Yes. You can add multiple people to be the administrators of a channel, and you can also decide if they can make content immediately available, or whether there should be a moderation step involved. Using moderation might be appropriate for a student showcase, or a student special interest group for example.

You can associate files with a specific piece of media in Media Hopper Create as additional associated resources. You can also leave comments on a video as it plays, and you could include a URL reference could be included. The comment will include a timestamp reference to the point in the video.

Yes, all students will have an account automatically. Students can do much the same things as staff, but will have restrictions on making content visible to the world and need to go through a moderation step. Postgraduate Research students have the same sorts of rights as staff however, reflecting the different nature of their work. 

No. Box of Broadcasts is a separate service and no integration is available.

APIs for the service are available and more information is available on the Kaltura website.

Kaltura API - Kaltura website

API access will be accessed ona case by case basis, if you require this, please get in touch.

The University has a centrally-supported lecture recording service, called Media Hopper Replay.  Further information information is available below.

Media Hopper Reply service - University of Edinburgh website 

Analysis is currently underway to see if we can streamline the integration between Media Hopper Replay and Media Hopper Create as a repository for storing content.

It is possible to share a piece of media, or a channel containing many pieces of media, publically, only with any logged-in user, or just with named users.  This is set by what options are used for the Channel.

Yes - video quizes are available from the "Add New" option.  Further guidance on quizes can be found here:  Creating an in-video quiz and viewing the results

Media Hopper Create will accept an enormous range of media file types for upload. There are some recommendations to ensure you get the best quality output however - these are available here on the Kaltura website.

Supported source video formats and specifications - Kaltura website

Media Hopper Create is hosted by Kaltura Inc. at their data centres in the U.S.A. and our contract with them includes specific and appropriate safe guards, with respect to the Data Protection Act, that do not rely on Safe Harbor. We continue to take advice from the University Records Management office in respect of recent legal changes in this area.

Any content that you have been granted co-editor or co-publisher rights over, is visible from the "My Media" page.  You will now see a button called 'Filters', and this can be clicked on to reveal media you can publish and media you can edit.  See screenshot below: