6 Video Streaming Options
Accessibility
All the options below are available to Queen’s instructors and some are available generally, or as institutional options at other universities. They have differing accessibility for students and you will need to choose based on what you know about your audience.
Viewing: For OER, your reach must extend as broadly as possible. Closed services are only suitable for material restricted to students at a particular institution.
Blocking: Some governments are known to block or throttle some services. For example you may need to provide alternate arrangements for students in the People’s Republic of China, Iran or some other countries, or they may be able to do so themselves.
Download: Students with limited internet speed may need to download overnight rather than stream, and will need alternate arrangements if the streaming server doesn’t allow downloads. Note that the original RA Basic Workflow mp4 in HD is 95MB for three and a half minutes, so the download option may need to be low resolution. Downloading an hour’s worth of that video would require 1.6 GB, which is over 8 hours at 400 kbps. The vast majority of students surveyed said they would be able to stream video most of the time.
CC: Closed Captioning can be generated automatically by most streaming services, but may need to be enabled when you upload the video. Auto-captioning is an extra cost feature for Ensemble that was installed late summer 2020 for Queen’s. If you need higher quality captioning with human input, rev.com provides good results captioning YouTube video directly in place, with overnight or faster turn-around. See the Queen’s ETLT staff for recommendations on other platforms.
| Service | URL | Posting | Viewing | Known Blocking | Download | CC |
| YouTube | youtube.com | Open | Open | PRC, Iran | Owner Only | Yes-Auto, rev.com |
| Vimeo | vimeo.com | Open | Open | ? | ? | ? |
| MS Stream | web.microsoftstream.com | Closed | Closed? | ? | Owner Only | Yes-Auto |
| Ensemble | stream.queensu.ca | Closed | Open? | ? | All if Enabled | Yes, Must Enable |
Embed from Youtube with Add Media / Insert from URL
Embed from Ensemble direct paste of embed code generated in iFrame responsive mode to HTML text editor
It would be nice if we could get it to start in fullscreen, or otherwise properly aligned with the frame. Paste ins of Ensemble embed code generated in javascript responsive mode and javascript mode both get eliminated by the pressbooks editor when saving.
