As more and more AV professionals in businesses and universities use Panopto, we’ve received a growing number of requests for the ability to edit Panopto recordings using these and other external editors.

So in the latest release of Panopto, we’ve included a feature that enables this capability. Below is an overview of how AV teams and videographers can use the feature to make more advanced edits to their Panopto recordings. To summarize, using the Panopto Macintosh recorder, you can record an offline session, grab the .MOV file from your Panopto directory, import the .MOV file into an editor of your choosing, make your desired edits and then upload the video into your Panopto site. This article will show you, step by step, how to accomplish this.

Important note:  This demo will only cover recording a single-feed session, i.e. a single source of Video without any other sources being recorded, such as a screen capture.   If you are editing a session that also has a screen capture, or Powerpoint, you should pay special attention if you change the duration of a video feed using an external editor, since the edited feed will no longer be in sync with the other feed from your recording. For example, if you use Adobe Premiere to trim out parts of your screen recording, the updated screen recording will have a shorter duration than the presenter video. In these cases, you’ll typically need to edit ALL feeds in the external editor to ensure that they remain in sync.

The first step will be to set your Panopto recorder app to record in Offline mode.

1.  As seen below in the screenshot, you will simply click the “Folder” drop-down, and select “None (Record Offline)”.  This will cause your Panopto recorder app to simply save your recording to your hard drive, rather than uploading it immediately to the server.

 

2.  Record your session, and then Stop recording when you are finished in order to save the recording to your hard drive.

3.  You will now see your recording listed in the Recorder app, with a status of “Offline Recording” as seen below.  Single-click on the desired recording to highlight it, as seen below.

4.  Now that you’ve single-clicked your recording to highlight it, you will click “Actions” (as seen above in red) and select “Show Files” which will open up the directory which contains the .MOV file for the recording, as seen below.

5.  Once you click “Show Files” a window will open, containing the .MOV file for your recording, as seen below.

Editing the movie in an editor of your choosing

6.  Now, simply import this .MOV file into a video editing suite of your choosing.  In this example we are using VideoPad Editor Free.

Uploading the edited movie into your Panopto site

7.  Once you have your .MOV file edited just the way you like it, export or save the video with the exact same name as the original .MOV file and place it in the exact same directory as the original .MOV file. This is crucial, your new video will not upload properly if this step is missed. The newly created .MOV file also needs to be the same duration as the original file in order for this to work. You will need to either delete or move the original file out of directory to make this possible. I will elaborate on this process below:

a. Original .MOV file for the example session above was named: “EFF9BA57-0D52-4222-9D2B-01D1EBAEEFE3.DV.mov” and was located in: Documents/Panopto Recordings/4B09C270-A731-4B9F-9260-6C59847AB55B/
b. Once imported into my Video editing suite, I made desired edits and alterations to the video, exported the video and named it “EFF9BA57-0D52-4222-9D2B-01D1EBAEEFE3.DV.mov”
c.  I deleted the original .MOV file from: Documents/Panopto Recordings/4B09C270-A731-4B9F-9260-6C59847AB55B/
d.  I then moved the newly created and edited .MOV file into: Documents/Panopto Recordings/4B09C270-A731-4B9F-9260-6C59847AB55B/

8.  Once you have completed the previous steps, you will now open the Panopto recorder app, and login to your server. Once you are logged in, you will simply click on the session in the list to highlight it, and then click “Choose Folder and Upload” as per the screenshot below.

9.  Once you click that, you will see a drop-down menu where you can choose the folder you wish to upload this new video into, as seen below.  In this example, we chose “Unison Sessions” but your menu options will more than likely vary.

10.  Once you’ve selected the folder you wish to upload to, simply click “Upload” as seen below.

11.  Now the file should upload, and once uploaded, will display in the “status” tab that it’s uploaded, the status should then change to processing media, and should eventually goto “completed” status, as seen in the screenshot below.

Congratulations!  You’ve successfully recorded, edited, and uploaded your Panopto session!