We are aware of an issue affecting the automatic recording of some lectures on Friday 15 November 2024. While most scheduled recordings were successfully processed, some sessions were not recorded due to the recording ‘red light’ not activating. 

To avoid disruptions, we recommend checking that the red light activates at the start of your session. If it doesn’t, you can use the Record Now feature to manually start the recording. Instructions for using Record Now are available on our Lecture Capture pages. Manually started recordings will appear in your ‘My Re/Play’ area and can be added to your Blackboard course space in several ways. 

If you have been affected by a recording not being captured, and a recording from a previous year could serve as a useful substitute for your students, please contact us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk for assistance in sharing it. 

We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. Our team is actively working with the supplier to investigate and resolve the issue.

As part of the DEO’s work to future-proof and improve the Re/Play service, we will be working with IT Services from 11 am on 12 April to implement an improved data service. This work will switch the data provision from legacy to current systems and introduce some improvements in the way staff are associated with recordings.

There should be no impact on the service and we will be monitoring activity prior to and during the start of term.

If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

As we enter 2024 and approach the start of TB2, we wanted to highlight how to get the best from Re/Play content that has been copied into Blackboard courses from previous years. During 2022 and 2023, we updated the way that Re/Play presentations are added to Blackboard and, as a result of that, content that was added prior to 2022 will not work for students when copied into new courses.

As part of your content preparation, we would recommend checking your Re/Play presentations and updating them where needed. If a presentation does not have the orange play icon, but has either four orange dots or a green play icon, it will need replacing.

To replace a presentation:

1. Log on to Blackboard.
2. In your Blackboard course, click on Build Content and Item or Blank Page (or edit an existing item).
3. In the Blackboard editor, add any descriptive text required to support the presentation, position the cursor where you wish to add it, then click the ‘⊕’ button in the editor menu bar (if the button is not visible, click ‘…’ to expand the bar.)
4. Choose Re/Play Content from under Additional Tools. If the presentation you want to add is already on Re/Play, in this Add Video section you can select it. If you can’t find it, use the Filters box to narrow down your search. You can filter by several parameters. First check for ownership – whether you created the video or if it was shared with you. Then you can filter by how the recording was created. Mediasite recorder is the in-room box for lecture capture, Mosaic (video showing installation and use) is the software you can use to create ad hoc recordings, and Media Upload is where you have manually uploaded a file from your device.
5. Then select Embed Video.

For further support, please see our Re/Play guidance.

Some students are experiencing issues when trying to view Re/Play videos embedded in Blackboard, receiving an error message stating that there is a problem with the LTI launch due to not being authorised to view the content. Playback via the link in the left-hand menu of courses is not being affected.

The supplier is aware of this issue and is working to bring the service back to normal functioning. We will update this blog with any further developments.

You can add content via the ‘Build Content’ menu in your Blackboard course to mitigate the issue:

1. In your Blackboard course, click on Build Content and Item
2. Select RePlay Content
3. Locate the presentation you wish to add and select Link Video.

If you have any concerns or questions, please contact us by emailing digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

You may be experiencing intermittent issues with searching within Re/Play when adding presentations to Unit Collections, or searching for unit folders to locate presentations to add to Blackboard content areas. As these issues are intermittent, you may have success trying again at another time.

The supplier is aware of this issue and is working to bring the search back to normal functioning. We will update this blog with any further developments.

Student playback of videos is not affected by this issue.

If you have any concerns or questions, please contact us by emailing digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

Full transcripts of Re/Play presentations are now available for staff to download. These text files can be downloaded by selecting Download to Computer in a presentation when viewing it in My Re/Play. Transcripts can be accessed by either the presentation owner or anyone with editor or moderator rights.  

You may now notice a tag appearing for some presentations, which says ‘edited captions’. A team of Student Caption Editors have been working in the DEO to correct automatic speech recognition errors in some Re/Play presentations.  

If you, or someone else in your school, is editing captions, you can now also add the ‘edited captions’ tag in the Information tab in My Re/Play. These tags will be visible to both students and staff in Re/Play collections, and help students to recognise which captions are likely to be more accurate. Ideally, all captions should be checked for key terminology and usability.