How do I use videos in Perusall?

Adding video to the Library and assigning them

You can add video to your Perusall course alongside your reading assignments. To add a video, select Library > Add content > Video and then enter a URL based on where the video is stored.

Video types

• Enter the URL of the page in YouTube that has the video you want to add (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTQJp9wllow). The video must be publicly accessible (Perusall won't be able to import private videos).

  Perusall will show captions on YouTube videos if they’re available. However, only captions uploaded by the video author will appear (YouTube's auto-generated captions won’t). To see the original YouTube video and any additional captions or transcripts, click "View original web page" in the Perusall Library entry for that video.

• Enter the URL of the page in Vimeo that has the video you want to add (e.g., https://vimeo.com/98256980).

• In the file list in Google Drive, right-click on the video and click Get shareable link; then paste that URL into Perusall. Alternatively: open up the video, click the three dots button in the upper-right corner, click Share, click Copy link at the bottom, then paste the link into Perusall. The link must be publicly accessible (Perusall won't be able to import files that are only shared privately). 

  We recommend only using Google Drive for small video files. Google Drive places bandwidth restrictions on how much can be streamed from your account. Platforms like Google Drive limit not just how much storage space is used, but how much is transferred/downloaded by students. So if a lot of students watch the video over a short period of time, and the video file is large, then you could hit the bandwidth limit.

• Find the file in Dropbox, then click the Share button. In the resulting dialog: click Create link, click Copy link, then paste the link into Perusall.

  We recommend only using Dropbox for small video files. Dropbox places bandwidth restrictions on how much can be streamed from your account. If you exceed 20 GB per day in bandwidth across all shared files on your Dropbox account -- 200 GB per day for Plus, Family, Professional, and Business accounts -- then any Dropbox videos in your Perusall course. For more info, see here.

• If your video is hosted elsewhere in MP4, MPEG, or Ogg format, you can provide Perusall with a direct link to the file. The file must not be behind a login and must be set to public. 

  For example, Yuja videos will need to use the permalink option.  The URL should start with 

    https://[institution].yuja.com/Dashboard/Permalink?authCode

• For users interested in adding videos from Kaltura to your Perusall course, follow these steps to locate the direct link:

  1. On the webpage with the video, open your browser's Developer Tools, navigate to the Network tab, and use the Fetch/XHR filter.
  2. Click play on the video within the webpage
  3. As the video plays, links will populate in the Network window.  You can type "cfvod" to filter.
  4. Look for the links that start with the following url:

     • "https://cfvod.kaltura.com/scf/hls"

  5. Copy the link, and replace “scf/hls” with “pd”

     • "https://cfvod.kaltura.com/pd"

  6. Use this new URL to add the video to your Perusall course library.

Synchronized videos

If you have multiple videos that should run simultaneously (e.g. a video of a lecturer along with the slide show), enter URLs to both videos in the Video URL and Secondary Video URL field. The secondary video will display in a smaller box above the main video, but progress will be synchronized between the two videos.

YouTube and Vimeo videos cannot be displayed simultaneously with other videos.

Adding comments to videos

When viewing a video, click the Add comment button in the upper right corner of the video to pause the video and start a conversation. A blue (instructor) or yellow (student) dot will appear in the video timeline to show there is a conversation at that point in the timeline.

Inserting video as a part of an comment