A quick glimpse at Studio plans for the next quarter

[AkosFarago]

First and foremost, it is wonderful to see how many of you have filled out our survey from the previous blog post that focused on improving Studio’s sharing capabilities. We are talking about (drumming sounds)... 94 people! It truly helped us understand the feature inside out. We are closing the survey now, but do not worry if you haven’t filled it out: we will soon come back with another one focusing on another much anticipated feature idea!

Now it is no surprise that we are putting some effort into sharing improvements this quarter. Creating groups and re-using them can be tricky to handle for all the different purposes we received in the survey, so we are now getting down to the nitty gritty of the feature.

But we do not stop here. With Studio, one of our primary goals is to accommodate teachers and admins with as many platforms to upload video from as possible. There are a number of conferencing tools used by institutions and storing recordings with them in Studio is a demand that we are well aware of. However, there are always challenges with integrating 3rd party tools that we need to overcome first for each tool one by one, hence whatever comes next quarter depends on those technical questions as well.

Another platform we work with is Vimeo - we know some institutions heavily use it, so that’s another area we are researching now. 

And what else? Of course, we are enjoying the wonderful weather, but we know that once it passes away, the last quarter will be nearly upon us, so we must start to outline our plans for the end of the year. And who knows? Part of our plans may be some video editing capabilities in Studio! One thing is certain, we want to put it under the microscope, so in the next blog post we’d like to gather some feedback with a survey on it.

So stay tuned and happy summer for all of you living in the northern hemisphere!

[Jeff_F]

Hello Akos - I am writing to thank you (köszönöm) for the recent update with the Studio embed process.  My discussion boards are much cleaner now and I am no longer editing HTML to remove the in video comment feature.  🤗

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ps. a few ideas re: Studio are below. Not sure we shared all these desires in the recent survey.

Topic	Summary	Our Urgency	Status	Workaround
Quiz copy	Currently Studio quizzes do not course copy.  A Studio quiz is a user owned object.	Medium	Idea posted to the Community  on 8/28/20.	Use H5P or a quiz that follows the video in a separate activity.
Improved Analytics	Improve existing dashboard within the course so that instructors do not need to click each student to view details on viewership.  i.e., an aggregation	Medium	It is currently challenging to see which students view the content as it is time consuming to click each student name. Instructors simply will not click 15- 35 student names to see if they viewed the media.	Add graded quiz during video to promote viewing.  But then we have the above issue.
Video titles	One cannot see the title of the video after it has been embedded.	Low	Need the title depicted at the top of the player as an overlay before the title plays – or maybe have the title appear as a mouse over action? Idea posted to Community on 4/26/21.Note: the HTML iframe tag that the RCE creates when embedding the video in the page is lacking the title attribute which violates best practices for accessibility.	Instructional Designers are typing the name of the video and duration (h:mm:ss) above the embed.
Improved filtering	At times filtering by tags does not function. Is there a lag time between when the tag is entered and when a search will list that media with the newly added tag in the results?	Low	A related idea: Better Sorting/ Filtering for Canvas Studio - Posted on 6/24/20.
List view	Currently a gallery view is available.	Low	Request had been posted to community a year ago.  However, it appears we need to repost as a new idea as they changed community tools and I cannot find the idea.
Permissions	An additional layer of permissions.  View, Edit, Own. Edit access can allow users to edit but not delete content.	Low
Playlist	A media player that shows videos added to a playlist.	Low	Posted to Community on 4/27/21.	Add multiple videos to the page.
Replace media file	Replacing the media without having to re-embed the title.	Low	Posted to Community on 5/19/19.	None.
Studio access via SpeedGrader	Enable easier creation of screen recordings for student feedback creation.	Low	Posted to Community on 5/22/20.
Ability to export list of titles and metadata	Desire ability for admins to export a list of titles within a community or for an account.  Include metadata to include: title, duration, description, tags, closed captions created?, # of plays, placements, collection, account owner, date uploaded, etc.	Low
Batch process caption requests	Via Studio account settings, create a tool that enables identification of uncaptioned titles within an account or Studio collection and configure so that captions are automatically requested. For example, a setting that has all uploaded videos has captions auto generated.  Related to: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Studio-closed-caption-as-default/idi-p/403772	Low	If this is not doable via an addition of a new Setting due to potential overhead concerns, is there a means to do this via the API?  Example: Establish a process that pulls the list of titles in a certain collection, apply a filter to identify those without captions, batch request captions for these. GET /api/media_management/caption_files/:id
Allow 1.25x speed for viewing	An option to play videos at 1.25x speed would be the perfect middle ground between 1x and 1.5x.	Low	Posted to Community on 6/25/2020.

[adamwarecs]

Wow Jeff. Just WOW.

[AkosFarago]

Hi @Jeff_F !

Thank you so much for this. As someone working on the product, it makes it extremely useful that not just you ordered the items by urgency, but also provided a workaround for those where applicable. Good news, that we are aware of many of these items and we already started to find place for those in the future. 

Akos

[mwilhelmchapin]

Hi, 

I'm not sure if this is the best place to ask my question so please redirect me as needed. Our community college faculty are avid users of Studio - well I should say were. The recent updates have shifted them to other video tools for the following reasons: (i'm hoping it's user error and someone can help us.)

1. Hiding the CC button under the Settings gear is a HUGE message to our deaf and blind students, faculty, and community members who now have to search to find the captions. I don't know why this change was made but it was noticed instantly and sends a message that says Canvas is not vetting their updates with a diverse audience. A major disappointment on many levels. 
2. Comments are always on. Even if I click the comment button to off, comments are still on. This clutters the page and means that the comments appear any place that the video is embedded. Is this a glitch that is being addressed? 

Thank you for having the space for me to voice my frustration and disappointment in an application that we thought we would be continuing to promote.

Mary

[AkosFarago]

Hi @mwilhelmchapin ,

thank you so much for reaching out with your concerns. 

1. Regarding CC button, we seem to have found a solution that is aligned with our future plans on improving the captions later, but also brings back the CC button to the player. We'll pick up this item very soon to see that there is actually no impediment in practice either. I took a note to myself to update you here soon!
2. I tried this but could not replicate the issue. Could you please share more on this? I've been embedding videos recently to pages and assignments but switching off the comments toggle in the Settings always disabled them. I would be glad to jump on this if you could share more to the CSMs or me. A screencast would be the most helpful to understand the problem.

Sometimes we can't find the best solutions at first and we must iterate, this might have happened with the CC button as well however, we are always grateful for these kinds of feedback. In case you have more to share on Studio, I am always happy to chat!

Akos

[mwilhelmchapin]

That's great news about the CC button and got virtual cheers from our Deaf Studies faculty. 

2. Comments on: If you log out and log back on, the comment are on again. Instructors used to be able to set the comments off at the time they embedded the video and  they stayed off. We are looking for that feature again. Also, the comments did not copy from course to course. An instructor reached out to me to share how the comments are accompanying the video now when you copy course material from semester to semester.

Mary

[Landmark_Coll]

I'm so glad I found this blog. Like Jeff (above), I've got a Studio wish list in table form...

Topic	Summary	Discussion	Notes
No Transcript support.	No easy way to view a transcript of a video.	https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Enable-closed-captions-transcripts-to-be-avai...	Workaround at https://etop.landmark.edu/transcript.html
Captioning requires intervention to create	Ideally, automatic captioning would occur upon uploading.	https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Question-Forum/Why-doesn-t-Canvas-Studio-automatically-caption-v...	This likely means a very small percentage of our videos will get captioned.
Captioning requires intervention to view.	No way to show captions by default.	https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Studio-closed-caption-as-default/idi-p/403772...
No Thumbnails in Canvas	It seems only the native media record/upload utility offers a thumbnail of the video on a Canvas page. Canvas also makes thumbnails for YouTube videos. All others use iframe which dedicates the space for the full playback.	https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Canvas-Studio-Resizing-Embedded-Media/idc-p/4...
No upload “as user” for admin.	An instructional designer or admin cannot upload a video on behalf of an instructor (without using “Act As…” which is limited to superadmins).	https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Enable-Admin-Upload-for-Canvas-Studio/idi-p/3...
No Editing once uploaded.		https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Studio-video-re-editing-anytime/idi-p/370489	This means even a very slight video edit will require another upload, and every place the media is embedded courses will need to be reworked along with reworking captions.
Cannot replace media without changing URL		https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Replace-media-in-Studio/idi-p/350511	This means even a very slight video edit will require another upload, and every place the media is embedded courses will need to be reworked along with reworking captions.
Cannot transfer ownership of videos by admin.		https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Enable-Admin-Upload-for-Canvas-Studio/idi-p/35...	If an instructor is replaced, all content will need to be downloaded by an admin and the new instructor will need to re-upload all videos and place them inside the course content along with caption files.
Cannot make videos downloadable retroactively.	If a video is uploaded with the ability for viewers to download it disabled, that switch cannot be changed without re-uploading the video (creating a new URL)	https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Allow-download-of-videos-from-Modules-Canvas-...
Suggestion: Allow various sizes when embedding.		https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Canvas-Studio-Resizing-Embedded-Media/idc-p/4...	Would avoid need to edit HTML.
Suggestion: Allow selecting new thumbnail by scrubbing already uploaded video to desired frame.		https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Studio-Select-new-thumbnail-by-scrubbing-vide...	Would avoid having to create and upload thumbnail image locally.
Suggestion: Hide toolbar unless mouse is over embedded video.	Toolbar/Control Strip obscures video content.	https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Question-Forum/Can-we-move-the-control-strip-in-Studio-vid...	Alternative solution would be to move control strip outside of the active video area or make it transparent.
Suggestion: Put captions at bottom of frame.		https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Captioning-in-Arc-at-the-Bottom-of-the-Video/...	Bottom is more commonly accepted location. Potential for collision with comments.
Suggestion: Open-ended Questions for Video Quizzes		https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Canvas-Studio-Open-ended-Questions-for-video-q...

[AkosFarago]

Hi @Landmark_Coll,

this list is extremely valuable for us, thank you so much for gathering them here! Looking at our plans with Studio, we'll address many of these items throughout the next 9-12 months!

Best,

Akos

[Landmark_Coll]

Hello Akos,

Thanks for the encouraging response. Our instructors will be very pleased to see some of these issues resolved.

One thing I neglected to include in the table was the need to restore the CC icon to it's original place on the Control Strip. That's pretty urgent as many have pointed out.

I'll keep my eyes glued to this space in anticipation of new features and improvements.

MK