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Copying Your Vidoes on Panopto

From January 2022, the process for copying your videos on Panopto has changed, and there are now two types of copy at your disposal depending on your desired outcome. You will find below a short explanation of the two types of video copy within Panopto:

  • A ‘Full’ Copy – This is when you create a standalone copy of your video, for example copying a video from a 20/21 academic year module to the 21/22 instance, if you edit the new copy, no changes are made to the original, and vice versa, and is likely to be used in most cases.
  • A ‘Reference’ Copy – This is when the video copy is continuously linking back to the original video’s streams, table of contents, captions, quizzes, and edits made. However, you are able to adjust the copied video’s settings, such as the video’s name, folder, tags, description, owner, availability and more. Any editing made to either the original or copied video, for example cutting out 2 minutes at the beginning, will be reflected in all referenced videos. You are only likely to use a reference copy when you have one video stored in your My Folder, that is being used across multiple modules. When you edit the original video, all copies will be updated in all modules.

Before Copying Videos on Panopto

On Panopto it is important to understand how to copy your videos either from your personal folder to a module folder, or from a module folder from the previous academic year to the next.

Note: Even if you complete a Blackboard site copy from one academic year to the next, it may look like Panopto videos have also been carried over, but if you look in the Panopto folder for your destination site it will be empty. This means you have only copied links to the videos from the previous years which your new students will not be able to access.

As such, you should:

  1. Copy your Blackboard site over from one academic year to the next using the site copy feature and selecting ‘content’ only.
  2. Once the copy has completed, go to the destination site and delete any content items containing Panopto content from your ‘Module Content’ folder.
  3. Proceed below with steps to copy the Panopto videos

Note: If you just wish to copy Panopto videos and won’t be copying any module content, you can ignore the steps above and move to the steps below.

In order to copy videos to a different module site, you will need to ensure that you are enrolled as an instructor on both the source and destination site, otherwise you will not be able to complete this process. Please ensure you enrolled on the previous and the new module site before continuing.

Accessing Panopto to Begin Copying Videos

  1. Login to Blackboard.
  2. Go to the module where you want to copy the videos from.
  3. Go to the Panopto area of the module site.
  4. Click the arrow in the top right-hand corner. This will open the Panopto page in a new browser tab and provide you with additional functionality.
  5. Review your video content and decide which to keep and which to delete.
Panopto area on a Bb site with the Panopto area on the menu and the open in new window button highlighted.

There are now two process which you can choose to follow:

1. Copying a Single Panopto Video (Full and Reference Copies)

To begin copying a Panopto video:

  1. Hover your mouse cursor over the video you wish to copy, until you see a range of buttons, click on Settings.
A screenshot of a Panopto video displayed in a Module Folder. The video thumbnail and title are shown, as well as four buttons: settings, share, edit and delete.
  1. In the Settings window, select the Manage tab, from the left-hand side of the menu.
  2. In the drop-down menu, choose the folder you wish to copy your video to.
  3. Select from either Create Reference Copy or Create Full Copy as described above.
A screenshot of the Manage tab for an individual Panopto Video. A redbox highlights a dropdown box, where the destination folder is selected, and two copy buttons, one for a reference copy and one for a full copy.

2. Copying Multiple Panopto Videos (Reference Copies Only)

It is possible in Panopto to select multiple Panopto videos in order to perform a bulk copy, for example, selecting all lecture videos in a Module Folder for the AY20/21 and copying to the new Module Folder for the AY21/22. In the new copying workflow, it is only possible to create reference copies of videos when performing a bulk copy, however this guide will show you the process for turning these into full copies if required.

  1. Hover your cursor over each video you wish to move in turn, and tick the box that appears in the top left corner for each video.
  2. Once you have selected all the videos you wish to move, click Copy on the top menu bar.
A screenshot of a Panopto folder where two videos have been selected using their respective checkboxes. The Copy button displayed at the top of the screen is highlighted.
  1. Enter the module code for the site you wish to move to in the Copy Session To box.
A screenshot of the Copy Process in Panopto. A dropdown box is shown to enter the destination module ID, the video selected is shown below.
  1. Click Copy.

If you have followed process (2) above, you may want to convert your reference videos to seperate videos. Follow the steps below to do this:

Converting a Reference Copy to a Full Copy

You can convert any reference copy of a video, by simply editing the video that you created during the copy process. This process must be repeated for each video individually.

  1. Hover over the video and click ‘Edit’
  2. You will be presented with the following message:

Your video will now process following your changes being made in the edit, and will act as its own distinct copy, with no reference link back to the original.

A popup message from Panopto titled 'Edit Reference Copy?' Full text available before this image is presented.

3. To switch the video to a full copy and unlink it from the reference copy, click ‘Unlink and edit’.

4. Repeat steps 1 – 3 above for all other videos you have batch copied.