Panopto Desktop Recording and Editing
The Panopto Desktop Recorder allows you to record a lecture or a tutorial from your own computer. Panopto integrates with Canvas, so any recording made with Panopto can easily be shared with students.
BASIC RECORDING INSTRUCTIONS:
Index
- Installation & Setup
- Select a Folder
- Primary Input
- Screen Capture and PowerPoint
- Starting, Stopping, and Pausing
- Recording Status
- Editing in the Web Interface after Uploading
- Sharing and Downloading
1. Download and Install the Panopto Recorder
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1 Installation & Setup
- Download the Panopto installer using one of the links above.
1.2. Open the Panopto Recorder application on your computer.
1.3. Once open enter your Pennkey Username, and Password, click the Sign in button. You may also choose to save your information by selecting the Remember Me box (See Figure below).
* Note that if you have two factor authentication enabled, you will see the above window last to verify as well*
2. Select a Destination Folder for your recording
2.1. Click “Create new recording” on the top bar
- Under the drop-down arrow you can set the folder where the recording will be saved.
- The default folder Panopto is set to upload to is “My folder”, an automatically generated folder for each user to store content. You can also create additional folders with settings for sharing automatically with specific people or groups from the web interface. See the “after uploading” section near the bottom of this article.
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***IMPORTANT: Instructors should select the folder that corresponds to their current semester class. All students have access to this folder.***
- The subfolder with “Private Recordings” in the name will not be available to students by default—individual students needed to be added as users for that recording. Instructions here: https://www.law.upenn.edu/its/docs/canvas/panopto-manage-recordings.php
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3. Primary Input
3.1. Choose your sources.
- Under “Video” select your webcam to enable your video feed
- Under “Audio, select your microphone if its not automatically. Test the level meter by talking and make sure that the level hits the top of the green section when speaking, and if not adjust the slider for the volume level until it does. Do not let the level hit in the red from regular speech, this will result in unwanted distortion.
- You can leave the video input source as “none” if you only want to capture a powerpoint or web page or document. See screen capture and powerpoint just below this section.
- Capture Computer Audio - Captures sounds within windows/mac os, including and useful for capturing sound if you play back media (i.e. videos from the web or clips from your computer, sound bytes).
- Quality - can be left in “standard” for most users, setting this higher is possible however you will see considerably more resources on your computer being taxed, which makes older computers run poorly.
- Capture powerpoint - enables Panopto to record your powerpoint and capture the text when played back. It also makes the video searchable by text within the powerpoint.
- Capture Main Screen - enables Panopto to capture your desktop. Examples of which would be: web pages, videos played from the web, pdfs, word documents, etc. ITS recommends also checking this box if you are planning on using a powerpoint.
Note: You must select an audio recording option. A video source is optional.
4. Screen Capture and PowerPoint
4.1. Select your Screen Capture options
- “Capture Main Screen” will recording your desktop screen in its entirety.
- “Capture Powerpoint” will recording your powerpoint presentation and create chapter markers based on your slides. Note: you should also enable capture main screen during capturing a powerpoint. The capture powerpoint feature is for capturing text within powerpoint and will not capture video’s or embedded content.
4.2. You can also add an additional video source here if you have more than one camera or two screens plugged into your computer, however this is not recommended as it can greatly slow down your computer at the time of recording.
Note: In order to properly record PowerPoint presentations, after you have launched PowerPoint, you must have it in full-screen presentation mode.
4.3. Adjust Screen Capture Resolution
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To adjust screen capture resolution, click the drop down menu to the right of Resolution and choose the resolution you desire (1280x720 or higher recommended with “fps” set to at least 15 when possible). If you are unsure of what to select, keep the default settings selected. This is not applicable on a mac OS computer.
- Close out as many programs as possible not being used to deliver content in your recording before starting, as if you overburden your computer you may receive an error message that your “CPU usage is too high”. This is especially true on older machines.
5. Starting, Stopping, and Pausing
5.1. You can now begin recording. This is done by clicking on the red RECORD icon. Once your recording has started, that icon will change into PAUSE and STOP.
5.2. Clicking on STOP will stop the recording and close it out. If you had picked a folder before you started, it will then automatically begin to upload the recording to whatever folder you had chosen as long as you are still connected to the internet.
5.3. The PAUSE button will in a sense Pause your recording. It will continue to record, but will not show up in the final version on the website.
6. Recording Status
6.1. Once everything has been recorded and you have stopped your recording, you will be taken to the recording status page
For a sample video of a Panopto Recording click here
Manage Recordings Tab
6.2. Offline Recordings are recordings that do not have a folder selected in Panopto, so they are only on your computer.
6.3. Currently Uploading Recordings will show the video that you just completed and its status.
6.4. Uploaded Recordings will show the recordings that you have already recorded, picked a folder for, and uploaded to the server.
Note: It is possible to delete recordings stored on your computer. If they have been uploaded already, you can delete local and the recording will still be located on the server. If you delete a recording that has not yet been uploaded, that recording will be lost.
7. After Uploading / Edits
7.1 Recordings once uploaded:
- Pre-recorded Panopto lectures
When recording lectures using the Panopto desktop recorder, select your course folder. Student will have access to this recording as soon as processing is complete (about an hour). ITS will not review or edit your recordings. Instructors can review, edit or delete recordings by accessing their course folder through Canvas. If you want to limit student access to pre-recorded lectures, upload to your “Private” folder. When you are ready to give access to all students, move the recording into the course folder.
- Recordings of Zoom classes and hybrid classes
Whether you are teaching over Zoom or from a Penn Law classroom, your class will be recorded and posted to the Panopto Recordings page on your Canvas site. ITS will not review or edit your recordings. They will be available to students about an hour after the class is over. If you are teaching from a Penn Law Classroom, remote students will be able to watch the recording live on a 30-60 second delay.
Opt-in ITS Editing/Approval -
- As an alternate option, instructors may opt-in to have ITS trim/edit recordings by emailing itsmedia@law.upenn.edu. What this entails is that ITS will trim out any gaps during setup/before class meetings start present in recordings, as well as trim the ending and any gaps mid class if necessary (one example being if a private conversation was accidentally recorded).
- If an instructor chooses to take advantage of this service, it will create a delay of up to 24-48 hours in which a recording will come into an ITS technicians queue for editing, publishing, and “approved” for viewing. At which point it will be available to the class after a brief processing period typically under an hour.
Below is where to view recordings for classes within Canvas, click the “Panopto Recordings” tab
Below is the default view when you log into Panopto from pennlaw.hosted.panopto.com using your Penn Key or by clicking “view online” from the installed application under the “manage recordings” tab
7.2. Trimming/editing - by default a recording will be posted as is, without ITS intervention unless you have opted in by emailing itsmedia@law.upenn.edu.
*** ITS recommends if you plan on doing any editing beyond simple trimming as detailed below to sign up for our Advanced Panopto Training session via Zoom meeting here. ***
All instructors have the ability to trim/edit recordings. To do this hover over a recordings thumbnail to reveal an edit button, shaped like a pencil, that will pop up while hovering as seen below.
Which will bring you to an in browser editor which will look similar to this but may have an additional track for powerpoint if used:
You will notice a few things circled here which are the primary tools for editing and ease of using the editor.
Top left - the play button, used to view and review edits (as long as the preview edits during playback checkbox located and circled to the right of it is checked). The space bar is also a shortcut for play and pause.
- Below that you will see a scissor icon. This is your main tool in the editor, the trim tool. This allows you to cut out sections from the timeline that you want to skip during playback. Accidentally deleted something? Don’t worry, all edits are non permanent and can be removed by dragging the beginning or end of an edit. It is also possible to remove sections of a the secondary timeline, which is your desktop or powerpoint portion of the recording. This is useful for removing a powerpoint after you have finished or before you start using it. Note the circled “P1” and “S1” that denote Primary timeline and Secondary timeline respectively which generally correlate to your webcam video and your screen recording.
- To the right of this there is a black rectangle to note, this is just an example of how audio/speech shows up in Panopto.
- last but not least, there are various ease of use settings in the box in the right hand side of the edit window. These include a zoom in/out slider for more accurate edits. A playback speed button to alter playback speed as you might suspect. And a volume button/slider to adjust playback volume. Note this does not effect the recording volume or playback when viewing at a later time.
When you are finished and happy with edits, click the blue button in the upper right hand corner of the editor that says “Apply” as seen below
8. Sharing and Downloading Recordings
Once you are happy with your edits and hit apply, you will be taken to a processing screen where you will see only a few buttons as options in the upper right hand corner of the screen as seen below. All of these buttons are also accessible from the default view in Panopto on the web as well.
At this point, the recording is processing and will be available in typically less than an hour to students enrolled in your course.
Share settings (only applicable if sharing with anyone other than students)
From this screen you can also do a few things to get your recording to other individuals. First of all, you can add emails to select recipients to the “invite” field seen below.
Another option for sharing to a broader audience is to change the field where “Specific people” is displayed by clicking the down arrow to the right and changing it to “anyone with the link” and then copy the link above it seen below and underlined.
Downloading Recordings
Beyond sharing, the other main way to get your content to others is to download the content for storage and or another platform (i.e. Youtube, Vimeo, dropbox, box, Onedrive)
Below is the outputs tab, which can be reached by clicking the “share” button as described above either from the default Panopto view or after making edits. Note however that a Panopto recording takes some time to process after initial recording and also after any edits made so it may take up to a half hour until some of the options below are available.
The main things of note here is the download button (circled below), which will download a side by side version of your video (your camera and screen capture/powerpoint side by side in the same video).
This can be changed by clicking the drop down list next to “type” marked by a black box below. You can change it to just the Primary (camera) with audio, just the secondary with audio (screen recording/powerpoint), or a picture in picture which is not recommended as it will cut off a portion of your powerpoint to lay overtop your camera feed.
If these settings are altered and you hit “Apply” below it, the video will need to reprocess and will not be available until it is done, so check back later.
Lastly, you can download an Audio only version of your recording without reprocessing it as soon as a regular download is available.
That’s about everything for Panopto, enjoy creating and email ITSmedia@law.upenn.edu or call 215-898-9570 if you have any additional questions or need help or you can sign up more in depth Panopto training here.
