The Mediasite product team is always on the lookout for how we can Make Mediasite better, easier to use, or do more of what you need. If you had a magic wand, what would you change tomorrow?
To optimize our video productions our Universityās Multimedia team needs to re-upload videoās over the previous existing file on a regular basis. This has consequences for the interaction options that were already in place for this video, which weād like to see optimized.
Iām curious to see if other community members can also benefit from these options, so Iāll take the liberty to point some of them out in this post:
- An option to keep the hotspots/buttons etc. in the Edit interactions window, after re-uploading the video over the previous existing one (Weāve mentioned this before, and know that the Mediasite team is thankfully working on a solution for this already)
- An option to keep the Chapters in place, when we re-upload a video over the previous existing one.
- An option to keep the redacted Captions in place, when re-uploading a video. I know itās possible to download the file and re-upload the captions file separately, but itās an extra step in the process, which hopefully can be optimized.
Further optimization weād hope to see in the future has to do with accessibility of the source material in second-party platforms, such as Edusources.nl. To optimize this, itās necessary to update the metadata fields that correspond with the NL-LOM standard.
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Thanks for sharing your feedback! I didnāt even know that the resources at Edusources.nl existed! Great to share that with the community.
One of the problems with replacing/resetting media in Mediasite, is we have no way of knowing if the video is at all similar to what previously existed. So chapters, interactions, captions, etc. may not make sense in the new context. We are considering a workflow that would ask users if they want to keep or discard this data when replacing media, as you suggested. Would the extra step of selecting which data you want to keep be valuable or annoying in your workflows?
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We understand the implications when uploading something completely differently over the existing video. Most of the time thatās not really the case with our video content. So, for our team the feature you describe would be very valuable and a necessary step in our workflow.
I am curious what the type of changes are you typically needing this type of change to be made. I would imagine that the content is essentially unchanged, as otherwise the captions would almost certainly be different, so is it just a change in some component of the video or audio? Iām wondering if itās something like changing out a part of a video image, like covering up some information that you donāt want in the video, or updating a slide or logo.
If it was something like that, the web editor feature and the āInsert Imageā feature can be used to add watermarks, but it also can be used to replace a part of the video that you want to update over a set time. Itās fairly simple in that it overlays the image over top of the video for the time range selected at the place that you put it, but it can work well for blocking out sections that you donāt want to be seen, or updating logos, adding watermarks, etc. Since this is all done within the Mediasite workflow, the other content should all remain in tact (though I havenāt tested it with interactions that are added before an edit like this, so I canāt say for sure on that edge case)
I do like the feature request though! Certainly can help for the user that wants to take their pretty up their video and/or sweeten their audio.
I think I might have just the tool to provide you an effective workaround, Marijke!
Iāve made a Chrome Extension that you and your team can use to save time on replacing interactions and chapters on your presentations. Based on what you have described, if you are replacing an existing piece of content with an āupdatedā one that is essentially the same duration, but has new content and you want to keep the Interactions and Chapters, this tool is perfect for it.
Iāve made a short video explaining how it works. Take a look and let me know what you think. If you think it could help you and your team, just let me know and Iāll drop you an email with the instructions on how to install and configure the tool.
If anyone else is interested in having access to the tool, drop a like on this reply and Iāll be happy to share the installer and instructions.
Gone a step further and just made this an officially supported Google Chrome Extension so you donāt need to run your extensions in developer mode. You can simply download this extension and start using it with your Mediasite instance straight away:
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Hi Nathan,
Yes, thanks for your reply. This workaround is very helpful indeed for the time being.
Our colleague, Klaas, helped us set it up and explain things further as well 
To answer your question @Paul.Baumgaertner
We are a specialized team within our university that help teachers make educational video content. We try to make the videoās as durable as possible, as to avoid many changes, but usually a few changes will come up during the post-production process.
Sometimes just certain components, but sometimes whole sections need to be changed in order for the video to look and feel coherent throughout. If we use the web editor feature and the āInsert Imageā feature you mentioned we run the risk of it being noticeable as an overlay. And that would take away from the quality of the finished product weāre trying to maintain.
Thatās why we prefer to edit the video in the original video editing program and then reupload. Hope this helps to clarify?