The Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning is very happy to announce that the new service that will power VIUTube is Yuja. 

Yuja was chosen through an open, competitive procurement process as the best fit for VIU’s video hosting and streaming needs. Over the next few months, CIEL will work closely with our new vendor to migrate existing media from the current VIUTube service to the new platform and get everything set up for the VIU community to begin using Yuja in the Fall 2022 semester and beyond. 

Updating Existing Video Content

The URL and embed code for all content migrated to the new service will be different from what was used to access that content on the current VIUTube. Anyone who has shared video content on a website, in a course, or by sharing a link will need to update that information once your content has been migrated to the new service.   

CIEL staff is happy to assist instructors with updating videos that will be copied from a past course into a course for the 2022-2023 academic year. To request that CIEL update your video links and embed codes, please send a list of the videos that need replacing and their exact location in your VIULearn course or VIUBlogs site to learnsupport@viu.ca. You can use this template to create a list of the videos that need to be replaced. 

Please Note: CIEL staff cannot replace videos located anywhere other than on a VIUBlogs or VIULearn site. If you have videos located on another site, you will need to wait until your media is migrated to the new service and then update your link or embed code. CIEL will be able to help you find your new links or embed codes, but we cannot update your site for you. 

Highlights of the Yuja Platform 

In addition to media storage, streaming and sharing capabilities, and a free video capture tool for students and employees on Mac or PC, Yuja offers a number of important features and functionality that will benefit teaching and learning at VIU. We will share more information about how to use Yuja in future posts and on the CIEL website once the new platform is live. For now, here are some of the features we are most excited about adding to VIUTube. 

Automatic Captions and Interactive Transcript 

All videos uploaded to Yuja can have computer generated captions added to allow greater accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing people as well as anyone who wants to view your content in a place where they can’t easily hear the video’s sound. Computer generated captions are imperfect, so Yuja allows video owners and editors to easily edit the computer generated captions to correct mistakes. 

If you have your own caption file, you can also upload your captions when uploading your video to use those in place of the machine generated captions from Yuja.

The automatic captions of the video can also be opened as an interactive transcript which can display in a side panel of the media player allowing anyone watching the video to view the transcript, download it (if your settings permit) and use the transcript to jump to a specific portion of the video by clicking on that part of the transcript. 

Media Collections and Enhanced Sharing options 

Use Media Collections to organize the media you share with others into channels or sub-channels to group like content and keep your own media library well organized. 

When sharing a collection or an individual video you will have enhanced options to control who can see your shared videos and from where they can access them with enhanced security options including password protection and restrictions based on date, IP address, location, or domain. 

In addition to sharing videos for others to view, Yuja allows you to give others permission to edit your videos to allow greater collaboration within the VIUTube platform. 

Improved Online Editing

The in-browser editor from Yuja gives video owners many options to adjust an uploaded file including: 

• Edit captions
• Clip or trim a video to remove unwanted content  
• Swap out individual slides from uploaded slide presentations
• Insert slides, images, or another video stream into an existing video upload
• Add a text overlay or draw annotations on your video 
• Add a virtual background, watermark, or even blur a portion of the video 

Tools for Engagement

Yuja provides a number of ways that you can create, encourage, and facilitate active interaction with your videos. When designing your video you can use the Video Quiz tools to add reflection points or even create a choose your own adventure type experience with Decision Point questions that jumps viewers to a specified point in the video timeline based on their answer to a question. 

While viewing your videos, viewers can leave inline comments at specific points and even reply to other’s comments if you’ve set the video security to allow comments to be viewed and interacted with by everyone.

Users can write private notes as they move through the video and download these along with any attached slides or other content you set to be downloadable. 

Yuja Mobile App 

The free Yuja mobile app will be available for employees and students to login to VIUTube and upload or view videos on VIUTube directly on their iOS or Android device. 

Have Questions?

CIEL staff are happy to answer questions you may have about this change and how you can prepare for it. You can contact us by email at learnsupport@viu.ca or call 250-740-6179.   

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