Information About Media File Hosting

Kaltura is the Faculty of Medicine’s enterprise media hosting service that houses most of the curriculum video material for UME, as well as video material for other FOM departments. Use the Typical Media File Hosting Scenarios below to help inform your file hosting decisions and any requests to Discovery Commons. 

It may be helpful to review a Glossary of Media File Hosting Terms.

Before a video is created, you should consider how your viewers will access the video.

While you may plan to put a link to the video onto a website, that, in and of itself, does not allow viewers to see the video. It must be put on a server (or hosting platform) first, and then the link to the video file on the server is posted on the website.

Typical Media File Hosting Scenarios

Scenario 1: You have a video that you want posted into portal

Discovery Commons can post the material for you, or we can provide you with an embed code that you post (see How to Add Kaltura Embed Code to Portal). Once submitted on the Content Item page, this will show a thumbnail of the video in a player, and allow students to click to play the video.

Videos hosted on Kaltura that are destined for portal have some security features attached to them: they will only play from portal, so students must be signed in to the course in portal to view. If an enrolled student copies the url to the video (which appears in the address bar of the browser) and pastes it into another browser window (or more realistically, pastes it into an email and sends it to a friend not enrolled in the course) the page to the video will not open.

Here is an example of an embed code:

<script src="https://cdnapisec.kaltura.com/p/1499521/sp/149952100/embedIframeJs/uiconf_id/20397731/partner_id/1499521?autoembed=true&entry_id=1_o9khkd4c&playerId=kaltura_player_1430423984&cache_st=1430423981&width=800&height=480&flashvars[streamerType]=auto"></script>

Note: you don’t need to know what the embed code says; what is important is that, when you are sent the embed code, it gets copied and pasted in its entirety (from <script to script>). It holds the information about which video gets played, which video player is used and its size, and if there are any security features enabled.

How to Add Kaltura Embed Code to Portal

Scenario 2: You have a video that you want to email to others

Discovery Commons will send you a link that you can email to others. They click on the link in the email and the video will play in a browser tab or window.

Emailable links have no security features available. Anyone who has the email link or the url for the video (which appears in the address bar of the browser when the video is playing) is able to view, copy and paste, or add the link to a webpage. Emailable links can be used to send a large number of people the link to a video to view if there are no concerns about public access to the video. Emailable links can also be handy to allow a small number of trusted people to view a video for approval, for example. If your video shouldn’t be seen by unauthorized people, it’s a good idea to mention in the email message that recipients shouldn’t send the link or forward the email to others not originally included.

Here is an example of an emailable link: http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/kxmia

Scenario 3: You have a video you want to post onto your website (other than portal).

There are three possibilities with this scenario.

1. The first is that you have a website with a service that can also host videos. In this case:

• Discovery Commons will provide you with an MP4 file (the video file)
• you will arrange to have the file uploaded onto a server and a link to the video added to your website

Note that we will provide the MP4 file via Sharefile or WeTransfer (file transfer applications), as video files are usually too large to email.

2. The second possibility is that, because your web service does not also host videos, you require Discovery Commons to host the video on Kaltura. In this case:

• Discovery Commons will provide you with an embed code for the video
• you will add the embed code for your video to the website

3. The third possibility is that your web service does not also host videos, and you want to host the video on Youtube or Vimeo

• Discovery Commons will provide you with an MP4 file (the video file)
• you will arrange to have the file uploaded to Youtube or Vimeo and the link added to your website

Note that we will provide the MP4 file via Sharefile or WeTransfer (file transfer applications), as video files are usually too large to email.

Note also that unless otherwise arranged, Discovery Commons does not keep a copy of the MP4 file if you receive one. Your copy should be treated and safeguarded as the master file.

Scenario 4: You have a video you want to play from your computer.

In this case, the file is not hosted on a server, but you receive the file and play it from a computer whenever you want it shown.

• Discovery Commons will provide you with an MP4 file (the video file)

Note that we will provide the MP4 file via Sharefile or WeTransfer (file transfer applications), as video files are usually too large to email.

Note also that unless otherwise arranged, Discovery Commons does not keep a copy of the MP4 file if you receive one. Your copy should be treated and safeguarded as the master file.

Summary of Hosting and Posting Scenarios