This FAQ addresses common questions about editing your videos inside the Kaltura video editor. The video editor can be accessed in both Canvas and MediaSpace by going to "My Media," clicking the pencil icon on the row of an entry, and then clicking Launch Editor in the gray box next to the player.
Use the list below to jump to a question/answer, if desired:
You can only make cuts and add fade-ins and fade-outs.
You can remove whatever you want to from your video, but that's pretty much it. You aren't able to splice in clips from other videos, though soon we'll introduce the ability to stitch videos together end-to-end. If you need to make more sophisticated edits to your videos you should download them and use software like iMovie, Camtasia, or Adobe Premiere.
Do note that there are other sections of the editor that allow you to do other stuff to your videos. The Quiz Editor allows you to add in-video questions, and the Hotspot Editor allows you to insert clickable text links in your videos that allow your users to visit a URL or jump to a different part of the video. In this FAQ, though, we're only addressing the section where you make cuts.
There are a variety of reasons you could have for trimming parts out of a video. For example:
A web browser and a video you're allowed to edit.
The Kaltura Video Editor is web-based, so from a technical perspective, all you need is a relatively up-to-date web browser.
You can only edit videos for which you are the owner or a co-editor. To learn more about co-editors and other collaborative roles, see our documentation on sharing Kaltura videos.
Software-wise, you're probably on your own. But you can make edits with whatever software you have and then replace the original video.
If you're an instructor, it's possible your department has a license to some sort of editing software like Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, or Camtasia, but each of these has its own learning curve (and cost). Some computers have built-in editing tools. For example, most Macs come with iMovie, which allows you to perform a variety of edits on your media.
As mentioned above, if you make edits offline and want to replace the video in Kaltura, that's easily done. See our documentation on replacing your Kaltura media.
Camtasia (Mac/Windows) and Screenflow (Mac only) are robust pieces of capture/editing software that have gentle learning curves.
Camtasia and Screenflow have very similar feature sets, and both allow you to both record AND edit. (Though you don't have to have recorded using the software in order to edit something.) The cost of the two varies, but typically Camtasia is a little more expensive while Screenflow only works on Macs. They allow you to do a lot with your media, though you'll have to familiarize yourself with their features and how to export the video to a format and quality level you like.
Kaltura likes to answer this carefully: video processing may take as long as 15 times the duration of the video. But that's pretty unlikely. It'll probably be a lot sooner. Probably within an hour.
Want to know what happens when a new entry is ingested into Kaltura? Well, you asked, so brace yourself. When a video is added to Kaltura, a process called "transcoding" begins, where basically new versions of the video are created. This is done so viewers can get a good viewing experience. If they're in a bandwidth-constrained area, they'll be presented with a lower-quality version of the video, which will reduce the likelihood of the video stuttering and buffering.
While transcoding times vary based on a variety of factors (such as the amount of movement or color), the biggest influence is the size (in pixels) of the video. As of August 2021, Kaltura provides the following typical transcoding times:
This means that if you make minor edits to a 2-hour 1080p lecture video and save those changes, Kaltura says it could take as long as 20 to 30 hours for that video to be ready for viewing/publishing. Even though this length of time is very unlikely, it's partly why we generally recommend clicking "save a copy" instead of "save" when making edits - if you have the choice. That way you can always use the original copy if you need to.
All of this said, if you feel like your video is exceeding the average transcoding time articulated in the formulae above, email us at kaltura@ucsd.edu.
Once in a while, a video gets stuck waiting for a user or moderator to "approve" the edits. While it's unclear at present whether users can fix this themselves on the front end, we can definitely do this for you on the back end, so, again, let us know at kaltura@ucsd.edu if you're encountering some excessively long wait times for edited videos.
"Save" will overwrite the original video. While the new version is processing, viewers will still be able to watch the old version. "Save a Copy" will create a new copy of the video and leave the original alone.
In most circumstances, we recommend that you click "Save a Copy." Though it adds another entry to your "My Media," it feels safer to have the original intact just in case. Be sure to employ a good naming and/or tagging scheme so you can tell which one is the edited version.
That said, there's an asterisk here if you're editing a podcast. If you're expecting your students to visit the podcasting site to view your recordings, any changes you make in the Kaltura video editor will only be reflected on the podcasting site if you click "Save." The podcasting site currently shows ONLY the original copy of the video that was created.
The video is either not done processing the changes, or you clicked "save a copy" instead of "save" when you made your edits.
See the answer to the question about "save" vs. "save a copy" above for more information on that topic. It's important to mention, however, that when you click "save," the new version of the video will kind of process in the background. So your original video will still be visible (without any changes). Once the new video is done processing it will suddenly replace the old one without warning. So if you don't see it yet, it's possible that it's still processing the changes.
Kaltura doesn't provide a lot of clues, but one thing you can check is the "media status update date" field on the edit page (after you click the pencil icon on an entry in your "My Media"). If that field says "replacement in progress," then that informs you that the new version is still being processed.
As always, if you think your media has been processing for far too long given your previous experience, shoot us an email at kaltura@ucsd.edu.
They will be trimmed along with your video and the timings should remain accurate. If you "save a copy," the correctly-trimmed captions will be present but a new request for machine captions will be submitted.
When you're done editing your video, your existing captions will be cut appropriately. (That said, it never hurts to do a spot check around the points of your edits to ensure that everything looks good.)
If you click "save a copy" (as we recommend), a new copy of the video is created. All new videos in Kaltura generate a request for machine captions, so you should expect an additional caption track to be added to your video. Provided that you have existing captions that are accurate, you can hide or delete this additional track if you wish.
Related documentation:
No.
Unfortunately, cuts performed to a Kaltura Capture recording affect all the video streams. So you can't, say, cut off the stream of your screen a minute before the end of your video and have your audio keep going - you'd also have to cut the camera/audio for that minute.
Nope.