Spring 2024
Transcript Download – Added a button to the viewer and embed player to download a clean caption transcript – without timestamps, for any user with access to view when the new site wide admin setting (‘Captioning – Enable Download in Viewers’) is true.
Panopto for Mac Update – Added support for MacOS 14 (Sonoma) and dropped support for MacOS 11 (Big Sur). Upgraded Capture Computer Audio to be compatible with MacOS 14 (Sonoma). Added user alerts when recording upload is blocked due to the Panopto upload service not running. The alert provides a link to MacOS system settings so users can enable it to run in the background if needed. Added a new ‘Enable audio checks’ preference to disable or change the threshold for the alert that displays when no audio is detected during a recording. The default preference state is enabled.
Improved Video and Caption Settings – Redesigned the Panopto viewer video settings menu for improved usability of caption and audio description language, playback speed, caption layout, and video quality selection
UI/UX Changes – With the release of Panopto 14.10, Panopto is rolling out significant enhancements to the UI/UX, focusing on refining the overall look and styling of key components, along with a few helpful updates in the form of stability improvements for Remote Recorder. Users may also observe subtle styling adjustments contributing to greater design consistency.
Panopto added captioning & player controls in Panopto Viewers – increasing the discoverability of caption controls and player settings within the interactive and embedded players.
Summer 2023 – Video Progress Gradebook Reporting
Instructors who embed a Panopto video in your Brightspace course can see a grade that corresponds to the percentage of the video each student has viewed. This feature keeps instructors informed of whether or not your students are engaging with the video content you’ve assigned.
Learn How to Use a Panopto Video as a Graded Activity in D2L Brightspace.
Summer 2023 – New UX Changes for Improved User Experience
Panopto has been continuing the incremental rollout of user experience changes since April 2023. The updates in release 14.0 make some noticeable improvements to the layout, functionality, and styling of list views in Panopto. In addition to the main changes called out in the image below, you may also notice some other minor styling changes that don’t affect functionality but increase consistency across design elements.
Since the UX changes are minor, they’ll be applied to your Panopto libraries automatically. No action is required on the part of Panopto content creators.
Summary of 2022 Features and Updates
Student Video Submissions in Brightspace – In Brightspace, instructors can now create assignments that request their students to submit a video recording using Panopto. Check out our knowledge-base guides on (1) How do Instructors Create Video Assignments in Brightspace?; and (2) How Do Students Create and Submit video Assignments in Brightspace
Panopto Mobile App — In February 2022, Panopto released a completely new app for iOS and Android, giving users a modern, fast, and intuitive way to discover and watch relevant content from their organization’s video library right on their mobile devices. The new app now allows users to create recordings of unlimited duration and upload videos while the app is in the background. Users can also easily share videos from within the app.supports offline videos, personalized home screen, a comprehensive search experience, and ability to upload or record new videos using their phone’s camera. The new app is available in the iOS and Android app stores.
Video Reference Copies — Users can now place a reference to a video within a new folder, so it can be distributed to a different audience. Reference copies allow some settings to be overridden, have a completely clean slate of student-contributed metadata, and do not consume stored hours or usage hours. Reference copies refer to the original video’s streams, table of contents, captions, quizzes, and other elements of the timeline but allow modification of the video’s name, description, tags, access controls, and other settings. A user with Creator access to a reference copy can convert it to a full copy just by opening the editor. A user with Creator access to a reference copy can share it with Viewers and those Viewers do not require access to the original video. With this version of Panopto, all batch-copy operations will now create reference copies instead of full copies, including course copy, folder copy, and batch copy from the video session list. Learn how to make Video Reference Copies.
Multi-language Captions – In January 2022, Panopto introduced language-specific caption tracks, allowing users to upload caption files for multiple languages on the captions settings modal for any video. Learn How to Use Multiple Language ASR Captioning.
Note: Currently the browser does not automatically select the caption language. The user has to manually change it in the interactive or embedded player.
Discussion Notifications – With this release, all users will default to receiving a daily digest email of discussion comments and replies for their videos and comment threads. Users can choose to opt-out of this feature or choose to receive a daily digest or a notification about each comment. Learn how to use Discussion Notifications.
Audio Descriptions — To improve accessibility, Panopto’s viewer interfaces will now automatically pause and read audio descriptions aloud, using machine speech synthesis. Audio descriptions can be uploaded or created in the Panopto editor. Learn how to add Audio Descriptions.
Internet Explorer 11 Browser — Panopto dropped support for Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) on June 26th, 2021. IE11 users who attempt to access Panopto will be prompted to upgrade to a modern browser. Check out the documentation about Panopto’s Maintenance Policy for IE 11.