As part of the ongoing work reviewing and improving the Re/Play service, the DEO has upgraded Re/Play over the summer to the newer, more robust LTI 1.3 version. The core service of automatic lecture capture will still work in the same way and there are many improvements, but there are some changes that may affect existing videos and your future work. 

The key changes are: 

• Streamlined and improved workflows to add Re/Play content directly within Blackboard: You should ensure you are familiar with these workflows for adding content to Blackboard. 

• Improved integration of permissions using Blackboard roles: Provided you follow the revised workflows, this will ensure your students get the best experience as it uses their Blackboard roles to grant the correct access to Re/Play content. In addition, it enables all instructors on a course to find and edit a unit’s recordings. 
• Improved search functionality, allowing for filtering of search results: You should familiarise yourself with these changed filters as you may need to adjust them to find what you are looking for. 
• Older content may need review: 
  • Make sure any older content added to Blackboard is working as expected, and re-add anything that isn’t playing for you. This is relevant for rolled over content which was added prior to June 2022.  
  • If you used the now out-of-support ‘iframe embed’ workflow (adding recordings using the html editor), replace those with the new ‘embedded player’ option wherever possible. 

We have updated our Re/Play guidance – Re/Play videos: upload, enhance, share – to include more details on all of the above.

We recommend you bookmark this link to refer to as you get used to the changes. 

In addition, we have responded to the feedback and consultations we have had with staff and students in the Digital Learning Environment review focus on Re/Play and have made some further improvements to the lecture capture experience.   

• Lectures will now be recorded by default in the higher framerate, meaning that they will capture handwriting or animations smoothly without the need to request a ‘screencast’ in advance 

• Recordings will be made available to students after 24 rather than 48 hours 

Where to get more help and training 

You can find all of the guidance for getting the best from Re/Play via the DEO’s Re/Play webpages. Re/Play | Digital Education Office | University of Bristol  

There are also a number of Re/Play related workshops and training sessions planned for the start of term. 

DEO have new Re/Play training which you can find and book via Develop. https://develop.bristol.ac.uk/ilp/pages/description.jsf?menuId=1108#/users/@self/catalogues/1464674/coursetemplates/3160151/description  

IT Services have user guides and run sessions on the audio visual equipment in rooms. 

• Audio visual equipment videos (sharepoint.com) 
• Audio visual training workshops in September 2023 (sharepoint.com) 

This is an update of the issue from 29.11.22 

The issue identified yesterday which resulted in a time-out error when accessing Re/Play collections is now resolved. Our supplier confirmed that they had fixed the issue, and currently the system is working as expected.

We will continue to closely monitor the service.

This issue is now resolved. See the updated blog post for the latest information. 

We are aware of reports of a timeout error message when trying to access Re/Play from a Blackboard course menu link (eg to the unit collection of recordings). The supplier has identified the issue is related to search based functions, and is working to resolve it as soon as possible. Recordings added or shared by other methods (eg added via the build content tools in Blackboard) are currently unaffected.

We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.

The issue that was experienced on 26 September, where some sessions were not passed to Re/Play to record, has been resolved. This was caused by an issue with the provisioning app, which passes timetabling information into the Re/Play system. This issue has now been fixed.

While IT Services were working to fix the issue, we manually provisioned all recordings in order to prevent any further missed recordings. Therefore, the vast majority of recordings were processed yesterday (27 September) as planned. We sincerely apologise for any that were missed, or which were not the correct length. 

Recordings that were processed on 27 September may temporarily be assigned to the DEO as ‘owner’, so even though they are recorded and in the system they may not be immediately visible to the usual owner in their ‘My Re/Play’ area. We are working to rectify this situation, and appreciate your patience as we carry out our work on this.

If there is a recording that you need immediate access to – for example, for urgent editing – please email us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk with details of the recording, so that we can restore your access.

This issue is now resolved – see here for the update.

We are aware of an issue affecting the automatic recording of some lectures since 26 September. Although the majority of scheduled recordings were processed correctly, for some sessions the recording ‘red light’ did not come on, and the session was not recorded.

Work has been undertaken on 26 September to mitigate this issue for future recordings. 

Important! If you do not see the red light come on when you begin a session that you want recorded, please use Record Now to manually start the session. Full instructions on manually recording using Record Now are found from our Lecture Capture pages. The recording will appear in your ‘My Re/Play’ area, but can be added to your Blackboard course space in a number of ways.

In order for lectures to be triggered to record (either automatically or manually), they need to be held in Re/Play equipped rooms. The list of Central Teaching Spaces contains information on whether a room is equipped to record.

We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused by this issue.

This post summarises the current status of the Re/Play service giving details of what is working, what has been fixed and any open issues.

Open issues are listed below and provide details of any workarounds that can be used and when a fix will be applied.

Background on this week’s incident and current status

A problem with access to Re/Play recordings was identified around midday on Monday 7 February. The issue involved students losing access to Re/Play materials accessed via the left-hand menu in Blackboard. This was resolved on the morning of Tuesday 8 February and has been working without incident since that time.

Please note the following features of Re/Play are currently working normally and being used intensively:

• lecture capture and automated recordings of teaching
• creation and upload of new materials
• streaming of live lectures
• student access to video content through channels, the Re/Play course menu item and via URL links to content.

Outstanding issue: Now Resolved – see the update on 11 February

• No access to Re/Play materials added via the “Build Content” menu option

Since 10.30 am on Tuesday 8th February materials uploaded to Blackboard using “Build Content” have not been usable. There are five common ways materials from Re/Play are added into Blackboard. ‘Build Content’ is one of the less frequently used methods.

*Update*: work to resolve this problem was completed on Friday 11 February.

Workaround: DEO has posted instructions on how to make materials available to students who need them urgently.

Other issues currently identified

• Staff access to some TB1 2021 materials removed

From Monday 31st January staff may have been unable to access some TB1 21/22 materials housed in Re/Play. No content has been lost or deleted and student access is unaffected.

Work to resolve this problem is planned for the week commencing 14 February 2022.

Workaround: DEO can restore access to materials if they are needed urgently.

• Links to materials copied from old courses not working

There have been a small number of reports of issues when re-using content from previous years courses.

Work to resolve this issue is substantially complete. A final review and institutional fix will be applied in week commencing 21 February 2022. We will also update guidance for staff on how to re-use materials.

Workaround: Simple instructions can been used by DEO and school staff to resolve this issue.

• Student access to materials embedded using iframes – resolved

In the summer of 2021, there was a change to the way University systems authenticate users online. Following this change, videos embedded in Blackboard using an iframe need to be set to ‘Everyone can view’ in the Mediasite permissions in order to play.

Resolution: this was resolved in archived courses and for existing materials in 2021/22 Blackboard courses by DEO and IT Services work over the summer to replace embedded content.

For content added this year, updating permissions is a simple step which can be done by school staff. DEO have now resolved the issue for all new 21/22 content in Blackboard and will be running weekly reports to check that permission settings have not been changed.

Current situation and support

Despite the issues listed above, our use of Re/Play continues to be very strong; for example, between 20 September and 22 November 2021, almost 253,000 hours of materials were watched by our students. This data underlines the potential impact of issues and the criticality of the Re/Play service, and we sincerely apologise for any stress and disruption to colleagues and our students.

As you might expect, the DEO Helpdesk is very busy at the moment. To ensure we maintain good response times, the number of staff responding to inquiries to digital-education@bristol.ac.uk has been significantly increased while we work through the backlog of inquiries.

This post is a further update to the issue first identified on 07 February, where the Re/Play link in the Blackboard left-hand menu was displaying an error message, and students could not access materials.

As reported earlier today, all students should now be able to access Re/Play materials shared via left-hand menu links in Blackboard. Automated recordings of teaching have not been affected by the technical bug and will still be available after 48 hours or when published by the academic staff member.

However, we are still applying fixes to some pre-existing problems with Re/Play which might affect the ability of some students to view some videos in Blackboard.

We have Blackboard and Sonic Foundry engineers working to resolve these issues and plan to apply another fix tomorrow. If your students are being affected and you urgently need them to be able to access a recording, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk so that we can assist.