Arc and Collections

[tdarrow]

Hey all,

I wanted to see what would happen if I deleted videos from one of my Arc collections after I had uploaded videos to Arc and embedded them in a course. I actually tested this scenario by deleting every Arc video I had embedded into my Spanish course, then reloading the lecture pages to see what would happen.

Initially the Arc videos appeared to be entirely broken. Some of the videos' splash images would load, some would load halfway, and some remained black. When I clicked on them, they all went to a black screen as if they were trying to load. They sat in this state for about twenty minutes, then immediately buffered and started playing all at once.

So after these tests, here are some takeaways that I could use some input on:

1. According to the Arc documentation, users are able to delete videos from their accounts as long as the videos are contained in other course collections, and the video will be retained. Because of this, what is best practice when it comes to uploading Canvas videos? Should we upload the Arc videos to Canvas using a generic account? Should we use individual accounts?
2. Once we have included the Arc videos in a course's collection, should we delete the Arc videos from an account's personal collection, or should we keep them in that account's personal Arc collection? (We would be looking at potentially hundreds of videos being associated with a Canvas Arc account.)

As a side note, do any Arc admins know why Arc freezes for about twenty minutes when the Arc videos are initially deleted from an Arc account's personal collection?

- Tim D.

[gdavies]

Hey Tim, 

Thanks for posting about this. I've been able to reproduce the issue where removing a video from a course collection breaks embeds of a video inside that collection. We actually don't intend for that to be the case, I've opened up a bug to get that fixed. 

I'm not sure I'm completely following question #1 - we recommend that whoever is editing/creating the course content in Canvas add the Arc videos, and once they're in the course collection they'll be available to anyone else who edits that course later. Does that answer your question? 

For #2 I'd recommend leaving the videos in their personal collection just to make it easier to embed them later, but it's totally up to you! If they're cluttering someone's account and they don't want a particular video in their My Uploads view they can go ahead and remove it if they'd like. There isn't a discrete benefit to deleting them there systematically - we aren't storing the video multiple times or anything like that that would impact storage allotments. 

Gentry

[tdarrow]

Hi Gentry,

Thanks for getting back to me. To answer question #1, let me clarify a little bit further: For whatever reason, when I upload the Arc videos to a Canvas course collection, my coworker cannot see those videos in when they navigate to the same course and click on the Arc Media Library tab. It's as if only the initial uploader of the video is the owner and every video he uploads must also be manually shared. After speaking with Deactivated user‌, he filled me in on how the migration of the lecture videos into the different course collections will allow any user to access the Arc videos in a course's collection, I'm hoping will solve the Arc video collection accessibility issues we have been running into.

Thanks again for the help! We are going to be using Arc lecture videos in two or three courses starting next week. Looking forward to seeing the results.

- Tim D.

[gdavies]

Exciting! Apologies for the slow response, I've been traveling the last few weeks. Let me know if your teachers aren't able to easily see each others videos in course collections, everything in the course collection should show up for anyone with a teacher role in the course. 

Thanks!