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Download Video in 1080p
Jane Eckert
Tyro
An instructor has students creating a video to be posted on YouTube and would like to have them use Panopto; however, when recording in UltraHD and downloading a video from Panopto, it is 720p and not high quality. The videos must be at least 1080p.
2
Comments
There are two settings for this, but in many cases the webcam being used by the students is going to be the limiting factor. The first is a site setting that will bump up the default that podcast downloads will aim for. This can be set up to 1080p60 out of the box. Next, you are able to select how a video should be encoded in the session settings. If you open the session settings and select the "Outputs" tab, you can then select the layout and the quality. If either of these parameters are changed, the Podcast media will be encoded again which can take a bit depending on the specific session.
Here's a guide on those settings, fig. 1.2 shows the UI: https://support.panopto.com/s/article/How-to-Download-Video-or-Audio-Streams-as-MP4s
@Michael Espey A user tested as below and the Ultra HD setting test came out as only 720p. Is Panopto Capture unable to record in 1080p? Would Panopto for Windows have the same issue?
User's response:
I took a video using the MS Camera software built into my computer and it recorded in 1080p. I then uploaded it to Panopto and changed the outputs settings according to the steps provided by Panopto and when I tried to download again it came out as 1080p.
I then tried recording within Panopto Capture using the Ultra HD setting and the same camera I used in the previous test. I changed the outputs settings according to the steps provided by Panopto. When I downloaded this video it came out as only 720p.
Honestly, I've never recorded anything "real" in Ultra HD using Panopto Capture because Panopto maxes outputs at 1080p. I know the 1080p recording option in Panopto Capture results in a 1080p output. I did go back to the documentation to verify that Ultra HD captures should result in a 1080p output, so I broke out my 4k camera and recorded a quick video which did result in a 720p output. Then just as a sanity check, I recorded a similar video on the same camera, only on the "HD" recording mode in Capture which resulted in a 1080p60 output as expected.
I'm going to throw a ticket to support and see what they say, but it seems like maybe there is a bug with the Ultra HD mode.
Hey everyone
Big thanks to Michael for helping us investigate what's going on here!
As already mentioned, Panopto doesn't natively support 4K (UHD). When attempting to record videos at that resolution, the video will be downscaled based on your site's backend settings. By default, this will drop the video to 720p quality. Videos recorded in an accepted format, such as 1080p, will not be subject to automatic scaling. This is why you can choose to record in 1080p and still get a 1080p recording even if the backend setting is set to 720p.
Note: This isn't specific to 4K — any unsupported resolution will be automatically adjusted.
As a general workaround, it's best to record up to 1080p (HD) until such time that Panopto supports 4K videos.
If you'd like to change this behavior on your site, please get in touch with Panopto Support.
Regarding this as a feature request, I believe a more accurate description is: "4K recordings should downscale to 1080p HD by default." If you have no objection, I'll update the post to clarify the intent of this request.