Managing Recordings

Last updated: May 12, 2022.

About Collaborate Recordings
Why can’t I see my LMS recordings under All Recordings?
Bulk Download or Copy Recordings
Bulk Delete Recordings


About Collaborate Recordings

Moderators can record their sessions and share them. The recordings are saved as MP4 files. Users can stream or download the recordings to view them.

Recordings capture the audio, video, and any content that is shared during a session. Audio is recorded in mono.

Recordings also capture any real-time captions or subtitles available during the session. If there are more than one caption available during the session, the recording captures only the first one.

More on recording features for moderators


Why can’t I see my LMS recordings under All Recordings?

Managers and administrators can only see the recordings of sessions the manager or administrator accounts were invited to and don’t show the Learning Management System (LMS) recordings at this time.


Bulk Download or Copy Recordings

Before you bulk delete recordings, download them locally or copy them to Amazon S3 storage for your institution.

Attention: Only Manager Accounts can choose to download their institution recordings to a local drive or copy them to the Amazon S3 storage.

Local bulk downloads are limited to 10 GB at a time. Anything over that must be copied to the Amazon S3 storage.

Download the Recording report. Edit the file to include the recordings you want to copy. Select Copy Recordings to upload the file and start the process.

 

Download and edit the recording report

  1. Sign into Collaborate as a manager.
  2. Expand Reports in the left navigation and select Institution reports.
  3. Select Recording report and download the report. If there is no report to download, you need to generate the report.
    Note: The date range can’t be longer than 6 months and uses the UTC/GMT (00:00) time zone.
  4. Import the downloaded report into Excel.
    Attention: Click here for steps to properly format your CSV file before proceeding.
  5. Remove recordings you don’t want to download or copy to your institution storage. Each row is a recording.
    Tip: Local downloads are limited to 10GB at a time. Anything over that must be copied to external storage. Use the StorageUsageGigabytes column in the report to help determine size.
  6. Save the file and return to Collaborate to start the download or copy.
    Attention: We recommend saving the file in Microsoft Excel as ‘CSV UTF-8 (comma delimited) (.csv)’ file format.

 

Download recordings locally

Local downloads are limited to 10GB at a time. Anything over that must be copied to external storage.

  1. Sign into Collaborate as a manager.
  2. Select Recordings in the left navigation and select Institution recordings.
  3. Select Copy Recordings. You can’t start a new copy while one is in progress.
  4. Select Upload CSV file and browse for the edited recording report.
  5. Select the Local Download.
  6. Select Download.

 

Copy recordings to an external drive

  1. Sign into Collaborate as a manager.
  2. Select Recordings in the left navigation and select Institution recordings.
  3. Select Copy Recordings. You can’t start a new copy while one is in progress.
  4. Select Upload CSV file and browse for the edited recording report.
  5. Select External Storage.
    Note: Collaborate needs permission to copy recordings to your Amazon S3 storage. If you haven’t already, select the CloudFormation template link to set up your storage. You’ll need to sign in with your Class Collaborate and Support credentials to get access to the templates.You only need to do this once.
  6. Enter the required information:
    • S3 bucket name: Copy the S3 bucket name from the AWS console. Look for ClientBucket in the Logical ID column. The Physical ID for the ClientBucket is the S3 bucket name you’ll need.
    • Email for alerts: The email address that will receive an alert when the copy is complete.
  7. Select Copy.

It may take time for Collaborate to copy the recordings to your Amazon S3 storage. You can leave this page any time. An email will be sent to the address you provide when the copy is complete.

You can also see the status of the copy on the Institution recordings page.

After the copy is complete, go to the S3 bucket to see your files:

  • Recording MP4
  • Chat TXT file
  • Caption VTT file
  • Metadata log CSV

Tip: The Copy ID on the Institution recordings page is the same as the folder name in the Amazon storage where you can find the log and copied files.

Review the metadata log to see if everything copied successfully. The file starts with the year, month, and day of when the copy started. The file name ends with “Collaborate_recording_extract.csv”. The CSV content is the same as the Recording report used to start the copy process with these additional columns: 

  • RecordingLink: The path in your S3 bucket to find this specific recording.
  • RecordingFailureStatus: If blank, there were no problems copying the recording. 
  • ChatLink: The path in your S3 bucket to find the chat file. If blank, there was either no chat for the recording or the copy failed.
  • ChatFailureStatus: If there is data (NOT blank), there was a problem copying the chat file.
  • SubtitleLink: The path in your S3 bucket to find the caption file. If blank, there was either no captions for the recording or the copy failed.
  • SubtitleFailureStatus: In case of copy failure, the field may contain detailed description of the problem.

Bulk Delete Recordings

To manage your institution’s storage capacity, managers can delete recordings in bulk. Before you do it, make sure you download locally or copy the recordings you want to keep.

More about Bulk download or copy recordings above.

Attention: Only Manager Accounts can choose to delete their institution recordings.

To delete recordings, you need to download the Recording report first.

 

Download and edit the recording report

  1. Sign into Collaborate as a manager.
  2. Expand Reports in the left navigation and select Institution reports.
  3. Select Recording report and download the report. If there is no report to download, you need to generate the report.
    Note: The date range can’t be longer than 6 months and uses the UTC/GMT (00:00) time zone.
  4. Import the downloaded report into Excel.
    Attention: Click here for steps to properly format your CSV file before proceeding.
  5. Remove recordings you want to preserve and keep only the recordings you want to delete. Each row is a recording.
    Attention: Additional edits to the report, such as removing/editing cells and columns, can cause erroneous data in the output report or prevent individual recordings from being deleted.
  6. Save the file and return to Collaborate to start the deletion.
    Attention: We recommend saving the file in Microsoft Excel as ‘CSV UTF-8 (comma delimited) (.csv)’ file format.

 

Delete Recordings

  1. Sign into Collaborate as a manager.
  2. Select Recordings in the left navigation and select Institution recordings.
  3. Go to the Delete recordings tab and select the Delete Recordings button below.
  4. Select Upload CSV file and browse for the edited recording report.
  5. Select Delete. You can’t start a new deletion while another one is in progress.

Once the deletion starts, you are able to Stop the process while it’s still running. After it stops, you will have a report with the deleted and non-deleted recordings up to that point. This will only prevent further deletion of the recordings.

It may take time for Collaborate to delete the recordings. You can also see the status of the deletion on the Delete recordings tab from the Institution recordings page.

Attention: Recordings marked as deleted will get fully wiped (“hard delete”) from our servers (including chat, captions, and so on) between 0 to 5 days after a 30 days grace period, without the opportunity to request restoration through support after that grace period.

To check if everything was deleted successfully, check the report from Download Report hyperlink shown in the last column (for successful deletion, DeletionStatus shows DELETED). To know your current institution’s storage, run the Storage Usage Report.

Attention: To download the Deletion Report using Safari, click “Get secure report link” > right-click “Download report” > click “Download Linked File.”

In the Bulk Delete report you will find:

  • DeletionStatus: If it says DELETED, the recording was successfully deleted.
  • DeletionFailureDescription: In case of deletion failure, the field may contain a detailed description of the problem.