School is just getting out for many which brings a much-needed break for students. At the same time many businesses are starting to re–open and employees are returning to work in this uncertain time. For Mediasite administrators there is no slowing down though. They are using this time to implement the latest Mediasite tools so when students and instructors return to class in the fall (whether that’s virtually, face-to-face or a hybrid approach) and employees return to the office, they will have the newest features at their fingertips to easily create powerful video communications.
The latest release of Mediasite has a wide range of enhancements that will help make Mediasite even more reliable, flexible and easy to use in this new digital-first reality. New closed captioning capabilities, learning management system (LMS) enhancements, accessibility and security tools and seamless support for external videos are among the new tools in this first release of the summer.
Add Video From Anywhere
With the use of video increasing faster than ever before across organizations and schools, we know that not all videos are created and live within the world of Mediasite. And that’s OK! That said, we’ve made it easier to include external content within a Mediasite video. A video can get posted essentially as a link from YouTube, Vimeo or many other sources. The great thing about doing this is that the external videos can then get included within a Mediasite channel, showcase or even the LMS. This will help greatly in keeping your students focused on the content presented rather than pushing them out to YouTube to view the ideal video.
Create Video–Based Assignments
On the topic of LMSs, this release brings video assignment submission to Canvas, a popular LMS at many universities and colleges. Joining the likes of Moodle and Brightspace, instructors can ask students to create a video for grading. This opens the door for a large breadth of Mediasite use. For example, students could submit a recorded speech, lab experimentation or other recorded demo to complete their homework. This has many possibilities and instructors are only limited by their imagination and creativity for how they can get students to use video.
Enhance Your Videos’ Accessibility
Accessibility has always been a high priority for Mediasite, and this release is no exception. There are several new tools that will ensure everyone can watch content and navigate the system, something especially important right now as video usage continues to increase. The most notable addition is the ability to add audio description files to a video. This will ensure that those viewers with low, limited or no vision are able to follow the video content with audio descriptions attached to the presentation as an MP3 file.
In addition to audio descriptions, further improvements have been made to the artificial intelligence captioning that is provided through 3Play Media. Previously captions were either shown or not shown within the management portal. Now it is possible to have a set value of accuracy. When the captions meet a per word error rate provided by 3Play they will be shown automatically. However, if they do not meet the threshold, it will allow you to revise the captions in the editor before toggling them to be available in the player.
See It In Action
This is just a highlight of the new features in this Mediasite release. For a more in depth look at how each of these features and multiple more work, check out the new training What’s New in Mediasite 7.4 on Mediasite U and read our press release.