Panopto web recorder (Panopto Capture) recovery option
ADMIN Louis Pliskin
Crackerjack
We find that some people are unable to use the software Panopto recorder, so they end up using the Panopto web recorder (Panopto Capture) instead. While this generally can work for them, we find students from China in particular struggle to upload recordings successfully. If they were able to use the software recorder we could recover the recording from the local stored files. However the Panopto web recorder we are unable to do so and we have to tell them their content is lost and need to try again.
What we really need is the ability to recover a Panopto web recording in the same way as you can with the software recorder. Perhaps the files can just live in the computers temp folder for a bit or go to their downloads area. They do not even have to be MP4 files, just something that we can rebuild what they have made.
Comments
Hi Louis,
Panopto Capture does have failsafe recording built-in. The recording files are stored in the browser's memory until they are successfully uploaded to Panopto. If a user gets disconnected from the internet or their computer crashes, they should just need to re-open Panopto Capture on the machine and browser they were previously using to have the upload complete. You can read more about failsafe recording in this article. If this isn't working for you, let me know, and I can open a ticket with our support team to try to get to the bottom of the issue.
That being said, I can understand why uploading from China might present additional challenges, so I will leave this feature request open for voting in case others would also like to have easily accessible back-up files stored on the computer when using Capture.
Ah that is interesting, when I raised a ticket on 03/08/21 I was told it was not possible to recover anything from the web recorder. Thank you for the guide I will look into this.
But I think it still stands if Capture is to be the norm that we need a better way to recover it.
Hi Louis,
It is true that you currently can't go in and access the recording files as a whole for recovery. The recording is stored in chunks in the browser's memory, and as each chunk is successfully uploaded into Panopto, it is deleted from the machine. Having the full files on the machine is completely valid feature request.
But, if a user gets disconnected while uploading, please let them know that if they reopen Capture, the recording should still upload successfully. If it doesn't, please continue to open support tickets for those instances with a link to the partially uploaded video - the team will definitely want to take a look at why failsafe recording didn't work. Also, they may be able to guide you/the user to be able to see if any video "chunks" remain in the browser's memory, waiting to be uploaded.
@Kathryn , What if the internet connection is interrupted in the middle of the recording? The linked article does not discuss this. Also, do you recommend connecting to the Internet via the Ethernet or WiFi during recordings? Thank you.
@Elba Rios The recording is uploading in chunks as it is being recorded. If you get disconnected while recording, you would just need to reopen Capture on the same machine when you are reconnected to automatically finish uploading any video that remains on the machine. If you weren't finished recording, you can then go to the video's settings, scroll down to Actions, and then click "Resume in Capture" to continue recording additional content.
When recording with Capture you can connect with either wifi or ethernet, it should not make a difference.