What is Kaltura?

The Kaltura/MyCanvas integration allows you to easily upload large video files directly within MyCanvas to the Kaltura system, and easily publish and stream videos in MyCanvas courses. In addition, Kaltura allows you to easily create original recordings using your webcam, and integrate them into your courses.

Integrated with MyCanvas courses is Kaltura, a global media platform and the College’s academic media streaming service, which also includes a number of powerful video production and management tools designed to support all of your- and your students’- media requirements. This guide includes the major features- media hosting and publishing, screen capture and web recording, editing, enhancement, captioning, and video quiz creation.

Your entry point to the Kaltura suite of tools is via the My Media link, once you’ve enabled it on your course navigation menu. In My Media, you can access all the media that you’ve uploaded to your Kaltura account, and find tools to upload, edit, tag, chapter, and manage audio and video files.

Kaltura also includes a powerful suite of media recording and production tools, for the recording of webcam videos, the creation of video quizzes, and the development of multi-source annotated screen capture videos. Any media created in, or uploaded to Kaltura is machine-captioned by default. Media stored in My Media can be quickly published to a course’s Media Gallery to provide
student access. In addition, media can be easily embedded in Announcements, Quizzes, Assignments, Discussions, Pages, etc. and located in optimal locations within Modules.

How it Works?

As a rule, video files tend to be too large to store in MyCanvas courses, and generally should be streamed from a dedicated media server in order to be practical for distribution and playback. The Kaltura/MyCanvas integration is such a system, allowing all staff and faculty at Mohawk to upload and store huge video files, regardless of format, and make them available to learners within the Content and other MyCanvas tools.

Media streaming allows video or audio content to be sent in compressed form over the Internet from the media server (Kaltura) and played back immediately, rather than being saved first to the hard drive. With streaming, a user does not have to wait to download a file to play it, and because the media is sent in a continuous stream of data, it can play as it arrives.  The video packets are reconstituted within the video player itself.

Using Kaltura and streaming media, rather than uploading a media file directly into an MyCanvas course’s Content/Manage Files and requiring users to download it, provides a more efficient use of bandwidth because only the part of the file that’s being transferred is the part that’s being watched. Also, the stream delivers a quality viewing experience based on the bandwidth available; if the user is on a slow Internet connection, the stream characteristics will change to allow a reasonable viewing experience with minimal buffering. Another advantage for faculty is that streaming allows more control over the intellectual property, because the video file is not stored on the viewer’s computer. Once the video data is played, it is discarded by the media player.

Kaltura Training Dates