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Kaltura Capture can be used to record your screen, your webcam, or both at the same time. One of the biggest benefits with Capture is that recordings can be saved and automatically uploaded directly to your Kaltura My Media collection, ready to be embedded directly into your Canvas site without any need to upload files yourself.
This video from Kaltura gives a brief overview of Capture, what it can do and how it works.
Accessing Kaltura Capture
We recommend launching Kaltura Capture through ‘My Media’ in Canvas [guide]. You can also access it from the university’s enterprise Kaltura site kaltura.uts.edu.au, or through the Browse and Embed tool. Basically, anywhere in Kaltura where you can ‘Add [a] New’ media file – it will then work across all systems (eg. a new recording added through Blackboard can also be used in Canvas.)
Once in Kaltura My Media, click on ‘Add New’ [1] in the top right corner, and then select ‘UTS Capture’ [2].
If it is your first time using Kaltura Capture you will be prompted to install desktop software that will handle the recording.
Installing Kaltura Capture
Kaltura Capture requires a once-off installation on your laptop or desktop before you can use it. You can install it via the Software Center, which can be found on the Desktop of a Windows computer. In most cases, Software Center will only work if you are on campus. If you are working offsite or using a UTS Macbook, ITU may need to install Kaltura manually; this can be done via a Service Connect ticket.
Select either the Windows or Mac version. After it’s finished downloading to wherever you’ve saved it, open the downloaded file (ending in ‘.msi’ on Windows or ‘.dmg’ on Mac). You will be prompted with steps to install it, depending on the system you use:
Unless you have reason to otherwise, accept the default settings. Once this is completed, you will be ready to record. Go back and repeat the steps ‘Add New’ > ‘UTS Capture’ again. It should now prompt you to open Kaltura Capture.
Setting up Kaltura Capture to record desktop and/or webcam
By default, Kaltura records both your desktop and your webcam. You can tell that both are recording because the icons are blue (instead of grey) and neither have a line through them [1] (see below for an example of the appearance of webcam turned off). You can switch between your desktop preview and webcam preview by clicking on the names [2], and toggle their recording on or off by clicking on their icons [1]. You could even turn both pictures off and do an audio-only recording.
There are other configuration options, such as recording only a portion of the screen, or changing the sound input. Check out the following video for more information:
Recording
First check that your microphone is registering input [1]. As you speak, you should see the blue line in the middle of the Audio icon move up and down. If it remains static, your microphone may be muted on your computer, or it may have the wrong input source. See the previous video link for some troubleshooting.
Once you’re ready to begin your recording, press the big red ‘Record’ button [2]. Don’t worry, you’ll have a three second countdown before it begins, so you can start a full screen.
The recording control panel allows you to minimise the panel [1], pause the recording [2], end the recording [3], and cancel the recording [4], as well as some other advanced features (including live screen annotation).
If you try to stop the recording and encounter the error message “Failed to stop recording. Please try again.”, this is usually due to your computer’s screen recording permissions. Go to your computer’s security or privacy settings and check that your permissions for both screen recording and camera recording are enabled to fix this issue.
Saving and uploading the recording
The following section shows you how to automatically transfer your files to Kaltura. However, it is possible to access local versions of your recordings as .mp4 files, which can then be distributed via any method you like:
Windows:
Open the file explorer and type the following into the address/location bar and press enter –
%localappdata%\Kaltura\Capture\Recordings\
MacOs:
Open the finder, from the menu at the top of the screen, click Go, and then select Go to Folder
Paste the following, replacing the [your user name] with yours (usually staff ID for UTS machines) –
/Users/[your user name]/Library/Preferences/Kaltura/Capture
Change the title of the recording [1] – this is mostly for your reference. The details on this page (Title, Description, Tags) are not usually visible to students if you use the regular “Browse and Embed” method on your site.
Finally, ‘Save & Upload’ [2]. This will automatically send it to your Kaltura My Media. It can sometimes take a few minutes to transfer across and become available, so if you don’t see it immediately available, check again in a little while.
Now that you’ve created your file, there’s a few extra steps:
- To trim the start and end of the recording, see Managing and editing your media files with Kaltura My Media
- Create captions with the Kaltura Captioning guide
- To add your content to a page see Adding your media to a Canvas page with Kaltura Browse and Embed
What students see
If you provide only one source recording (screen OR camera), it will appear as any other video.
If you enabled both screen and camera recordings, then Kaltura will display both, with the configuration available to students.
The default player shows picture-in-picture, in which the camera is maximised, with the screenshots displayed in the corner [1]. The viewer can swap these around (have the screencast maximised and the picture in the corner.) [2]
They can move or resize the smaller picture by clicking and dragging [1].
A user can toggle between three different viewing modes by clicking the icon in the top right corner (which will expand to display the three modes):
- One source only (screencast OR camera) – viewer can choose which
- Side-by-side – viewer can swap left and right
- Picture-in-picture – viewer can swap large and small
Resources for your Subject Site
Feel free to copy and paste this section into your subject site.
Did you know:
Where a video has both a face and screen recording available, you can swap the order that they’re displayed in:
You can move the picture-in-picture around by clicking and dragging from within, and resize by clicking and dragging from the corner:
You can also swap the display between picture-in-picture, side-by-side, or single display:
