Service announcements and essential information from the Digital Education Office
We are pleased to confirm the issue connecting to the Re/Play service, which was affecting playback of videos in Blackboard is now resolved. The Digital Education Office are continuing to monitor the service.
If you have any questions please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.
This is an update of a previous post regarding the same issue.
We are aware of some instances where editing a Re/Play lecture recording using the Re/Play editor has caused playback issues with the video. Our supplier has identified a bug in the current version of the software, but an update last weekend has failed to fix it. We are now working with our supplier to urgently identify the problem. We will send out further information when the bug has been fixed and tested.
For now, the best solution is to avoid editing any recordings from a lecture. However, if you do have a video that urgently needs editing, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk for further help.
We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.
On the 16th November some people experienced Re/Play running slowly or timing out when trying to view videos within Blackboard courses. Our supplier identified the problem, and applied a fix around 4pm on the 16th. Since then the service has been back up to normal speed, but we continue to monitor the situation.
We apologise again for any inconvenience caused.
This has now been resolved – please see the update blog post for more details.
We have had reports of the Re/Play catalogue areas of some courses being very slow to load, or timing out before loading successfully. We are working with our supplier to identify a cause and restore good access as soon as possible.
This does not appear to be a widespread issue, but if it is affecting you or your students we apologise for any inconvenience caused.
There is an update to this issue, which can be found in this post from 01.12.21
We are aware of some instances where editing a Re/Play lecture recording using the Re/Play editor has caused playback issues with the video. Our supplier has identified that this is related to a bug in the current version of the software, which will be fixed with an automatic update this week. Therefore, from the 27th of November this should no longer occur.
If you have experienced this issue, have a video which won’t play after editing, or have a video that urgently needs editing before the 27th November, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk for further help.
We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.
From the 8th November until 11am on the 9th of November, several lecture recordings made via Re/Play were delayed in moving from the in-room recorder boxes to My Re/Play. Our supplier identified the fault as being within the data centre, and it was fixed as of 11am on the 9th.
Recordings are now being moved from the boxes to My Re/play, and staff members will receive an email as usual when their recordings are available. If your recording from the morning of the 9th has not yet become available, we apologise for this delay in accessing your recordings. They will be restored to you as soon as possible.
We understand that delays in accessing recordings can be very problematic and apologise again for any inconvenience this may have caused.
We are aware that some scheduled recordings via Re/Play have not been uploaded from the in-room boxes to My Re/Play as usual. We are working to identify the cause of the issue as soon as possible, and will update here when we know more.
Recordings were still created successfully – as far as we are aware no recordings have been lost, but are just not being transferred to My Re/Play for staff to access. If you are missing a recording, it will be restored to your My Re/Play as soon as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
If you are missing a recording which is urgently needed, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk with details of the session so that we can help further.
Desktop Recorder is no longer technically supported by our supplier, and no longer functions with our systems as it isn’t compatible with the newest version of our Re/Play software. It is now being retired, and we recommend switching to Mosaic as soon as you can.
This summer, we introduced the new tool Mosaic screen capture, which you can use to record anything you can see on your screen, alongside audio and, if chosen, video from a webcam. It’s a very easy-to-use software with essentially just three buttons, to choose your inputs – microphone, webcam and which window or display to capture. If you choose a window and a webcam, both will appear side by side in the video.
Mosaic then automatically uploads your videos to your My Re/Play area. Log into Blackboard and click on the My Re/Play link as usual. Once in My Re/Play, you can edit the videos, add captions and set the permissions of your recordings.
There are of course also many alternatives for creating pre-recorded videos, including narrated PowerPoint presentations or using Camtasia for anything more complex.
See our guidance on Pre-recording lectures to help decide which is right for you.
Mosaic is available for Windows 10 and Mac OSX 7.4 and newer. Follow this link to install Mosaic and register it to get started. Note that you should use this link in your web browser and not from within the My/Replay area in Blackboard, for the best experience.
If you have an older version of macOS, or have trouble downloading the software, get in touch with us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk and we’ll help you find a solution.
As Mosaic is connected to My Re/Play, you can also use it to automatically import any video files from your computer to your Re/Play – for example, recordings made in other tools like Teams or Zoom. To do this, you set up what’s called a ‘watch folder’, which Mosaic ‘watches’ for new content to add to Re/Play.
Find out how to set up a watch folder for Windows and for Mac OS.
If you have any questions or further information, contact the Digital Education Office.
The upgrade of Re/Play completed successfully overnight.
Initial testing indicates that the service is performing well. Most materials are now available but some more recently added content will be moved across during Saturday 18th September. During Saturday the search function will also be patchy as the moved materials need to be re-indexed to make them searchable. Both the moving of new materials and search function should be complete by Monday 20th.
Please avoid uploading new materials to the Re/Play service on Saturday 18th September to allow the upgrade and maintenance work to complete fully.
On Wednesday 8th September at 15.30, the Digital Education Office will be making a change to the Re/Play service to allow for presentations to be added via the text box editor in Blackboard. This piece of work is minor, and there should be no noticeable impact during the work, but please note that the service will be at risk between 15.30 and 16.30 while we make this update.
This will not affect recordings in rooms, but there may be a very short break in service at the start of this time.
If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.