In anticipation of exams starting next week, I wanted to share two tips about Panopto videos that you might not already be aware of. If your professor records your classes, you can actually search the entire lecture for “key words” using the search bar within the video window. For instance, let’s say I want to find every instance where Prof. X says the word “jury” during a particular lecture. If I enter the term into the search bar at the top left of the recording window and press enter/return, I will get an index of every time that word was said. That’s a powerful search tool!!!!! Panopto uses voice recognition to index nearly every word in a lecture. Of course, there are some terms that will be missed, depending on speaking volume, clarity, and each individual professor’s accent, but for the most part, it’s very accurate!
You can also add custom bookmarks to those recordings by following the instructions below. This will save time if you plan on watching multiple recordings of your class and you want to come back to an important part later.
If you’re in a study group, you can also share these bookmarks with others (also included in the instructions below)!
Bookmarks in Panopto:
You can bookmark specific times in a recording that you want to return to.
To start, click on a session you’d like to bookmark. This will take you to the normal viewing layout.
On the left-hand side of the screen, click on Bookmarks.
Once you click the bookmark button you will be prompted to label your bookmark at the time of entry. Enter a note (for instance “important”) in the text box, and hit enter. This will save your bookmark.
If you click on the “8:16” time stamp in your bookmarks sidebar, you will move the session playback to this time.
Now, click on See all your bookmarks. You will now see a list of all of the bookmarks you’ve created.
Click on one of the bookmarks you created. This will launch the session as normal, and resume playback at the allotted time you’ve bookmarked. You can remove a bookmark by clicking the X next to any bookmark.
Note: After clicking a bookmark, you can send the URL in the browser window to other viewers and they can see the video starting at that point as well!
You can ALSO add NOTES to a recording in pretty much the same way, but instead, click the NOTES tab on the left. These notes are only visible to you. For more info on that, click here. (Note that the “Make Public” feature is sometimes turned OFF on some recordings, but if you do see that option, be VERY CAREFUL what you type because when they say PUBLIC, they mean it! — all your classmates and professor can see that note once it’s made PUBLIC.)
Good luck on your exams. I hope this helps! – Carl Hamm Multimedia Services Coordinator
(Post updated Dec 5 2019)