Canvas Studio content ➡️ Kaltura Mediaspace storage

[tricon]

We use a combination of Canvas Studio and Kaltura Mediaspace at our institution; we would like to combine the two!

Regardless of source*, media flows to our Kaltura Mediaspace for long-term storage (and professional captioning as requested). As an example, recorded class sessions delivered over Zoom are automatically transferred to our Kaltura Mediaspace repository as Kaltura offers automatic storage integrations for Zoom, WebEx, Microsoft (Skype/Lync/Teams), etc. Faculty that create media on their own (through SnagIt, Personal Capture, etc.) typically upload their media to our Kaltura Mediaspace before sharing with students.

However, the Canvas Studio frontend (and integration) is very popular with our faculty and students. We would like to use our Kaltura Mediaspace repository to house the content created through Canvas Studio like we do for the other platforms we use. It looks like both Canvas Studio and Kaltura Mediaspace are capable of [bulk] transferring content to the other, but we are looking for on-demand/real-time transfers.

(*Everything except Canvas Studio)

[Chris__Scott]

This sounds like what you are wanting to do is to use Canvas Studio as your front end (client) and Kaltura as your storage database?

You don't mention why you'd want to do that?

The Kaltura API allows for bulk upload: https://developer.kaltura.com/api-docs/Ingest_and_Upload_Media/Bulk-Content-Ingestion.html

As does the Studio API:

https://tw.instructuremedia.com/api/public/docs/

The upload procedure here is similar to the files uploading in Canvas, requiring setting up a link to upload to and then sending the file. There are examples of this on GitHub of how to write the scripts of your IT team haven't used it already. Note that you can also upload captions, so you could use an external captioning tool with Canvas is that's your preference. FYI Canvas uses AWS in the background, so it's rock solid... if it's good enough for Amazon, Amazon Prime video and Netflix, it's probably quite stable 🙂

It looks like you can bulk download content from Kaltura, although this is done through the front end rather than the API. https://learning.kaltura.com/media/How+to+Bulk+download+entries+from+KMC/1_xm3ei543

You might not have seen that Studio also has a Zoom integration now via the <conference> tab. I believe that a similar Teams integration is coming (which will go very well with the existing one for meetings and channels).

We use both Panopto and Studio, with Panopto having the had several years of use and a large back catalogue of content. Therefore, some of that older content is still in use and can be placed in Canvas (although the permissions are really not friendly at all and cause issues.)

Studio integrates far more easily in Canvas than Panopto (and I would guess Kaltura), offers bettering editing (Panopto has none really) and is much simpler in terms of permissions and sharing content within Studio. 

(It's a shame Studio lacks the ability to act in a standalone mode and the method for accessing the editing features is so cumbersome — please can we have some kind of sync mode and a save button instead!)

The video content in Studio can also be shared via a public link, so can be placed on a web page outside of Canvas, albeit without the quiz and commenting functions. I've even embedded Studio videos in a Miro board and they all play without a hitch.

Sorry if this if this meandered.... my first post! 

I think my question is still one of why, and what gain do you get by doing this, vs the cost and time of creating a bespoke integration to do it.

[tricon]

@Chris__Scott Good questions and thanks for the response!

We have a few reasons for wanting to move everything to one repository:

As you suggest, our plan is to use Canvas Studio as our frontend (client) and Kaltura as our storage database. This could work in reverse, but at this time Kaltura has better media storage and editing options while Studio has the better frontend -- We're trying to get the best of both worlds 🖖🏻!

We also generate media content from several different places. Rather than relying on (and paying) each individual vendor for their storage solution(s), we are trying to consolidate everything in one place. We automatically feed Kaltura our live content, classroom recordings, Zoom sessions, MS Teams is in-progress, and we also have software deployed on college devices that automatically upload recordings to Kaltura. Studio is really the only media recording tool we have that doesn't save to Kaltura. Again, this could probably work in reverse, but having a single, standardized process and player makes for much easier training, support, etc. We'll need to further explore the Studio ↔️ Zoom conferences integration.

And the other big reason is that we only have access to our professional captioning service through Kaltura. We are not (at least at this time) able to use the service with Studio directly. However, if the media could be saved/moved to the Kaltura repository, we would be able to request professional captions.

[Chris__Scott]

Okay, I understand I think.

Would it work to use Kaltura to capture and Studio to serve up the video? I've often used Zoom as a capture device as it's very good at screen sharing (better than Studio) and also has functionality to take phones and tablets which is great for capturing those devices. If you record in this way and then add the files into Studio, you'd also have the option to upload that same file into Kaltura. (A script that looks at a dropbox folder and automatically uploads content is probably something you might already have if you are using automated recording; it might me a case of leveraging the same server locations to upload the video files from?)

If. that wasn't clear, I mean: Record in Zoom: Upload to Studio AND Upload to Kaltura. Of course, if you need to have edited video in each then you're back to the download/upload scenario.

I guess it depends on how heavy your editing work is and which tools you're using to do it. 

In terms of downloading Studio content, although there's a button to do it, it appears that the file names are really obfuscated and so you'd have to run several queries to get a list of media files that you could then download and upload to Kaltura.

It's an interesting problem! I'm going to chat with our resident Javascript/integrations guru tomorrow and see if he can spot a way to do what you're after.

Not saying we'll have a code solution, but might get general direction!

[ProductPanda]

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