Northern Illinois University's MediaSpace is a robust media portal that offers access to all Kaltura media creation and hosting features, tools for organizing and publishing media, and a front end for sharing featured media published by Colleges, Departments, and other campus units. The creation, hosting, and editing functionality of Kaltura is the same whether accessed via MediaSpace or Blackboard. However, MediaSpace offers some additional functionality for organizing, sharing, and publishing media outside of Blackboard.
Sharing Unlisted Media Links
Unlisted media links are links to media that are not published to any public channel on MediaSpace, but will allow anyone with the link to play the media. This is useful when you want to share media by sending a link or embedding the link in a document or website.
To retrieve an unlisted link for your media:
- Login to MediaSpace.
- Locate the media that you want to modify, click the media title to open its media page.
- Choose the Actions button and Publish.
- Under Publishing Status, choose Unlisted. Now anyone with this link will be able to view the media.
- Click Save and Back.
- Click the Share tab under the media title, then click Link to Media Page and copy the URL.
- Paste this URL in your destination message, document, or website.
Embedding Media
Media embed code will allow media to be embedded in web-based content so that it plays back in that page, rather than linking the user to the Mediaspace media page for that media.
To retrieve the embed code for a media item:
- Login to MediaSpace.
- Locate the media that you want to embed, click the media title to open its media page.
- Follow the steps above to change the Publishing Status to Unlisted. Note: While publishing the video is not strictly necessary to ensure that an embedded video will render, it is a best practice to ensure that it is retained according to the Retention Guidelines.
- Click the Share tab under the media title, then click Embed, modify the embed settings (Start and End Time, Player Size, and responsive sizing) and copy the embed code.
- Paste this embed code in any web-based medium that can render this code.
Creating and Sharing Playlists
Users can create playlists to organize and share a list of media content from their My Media library. Playlists can be published by sharing a link, embedding an embed code, or by publishing to a channel.
To create and share a playlist:
- Login to MediaSpace.
- Click your name in the top right, choose My Playlists.
- Click Create Playlist
- Create a title, description, and tags; click Add
- In the lower right corner, choose Add to Playlist to add media to your playlist, click Save when finished.
- If desired, click Share and Embed to access the Watch Link or embed code for your new playlist. Note: The media in your playlist must be set at least to Unlisted for users to view the Watch Link. Embed codes will make the playlist media playable without respect to their privacy settings.
Creating and Publishing to Channels
Channels are useful for creating and managing a collection of related media. Examples include personal portfolios, collaborative media projects. Channels have several privacy options and collaborative capabilities. Channel managers can create playlists, moderate content submission, and allow comments and subscriptions.
Channels and their permissions can be complex, use caution when configuring options to prevent unauthorized publication of media to your channel. The basic steps for creating and publishing to a channel are provided here, see the video "How to Create a Channel and set its Privacy Settings" for more details.
To create a channel:
- Login to MediaSpace.
- Click your name in the top right; choose My Channels.
- Click Create Channel.
- Provide the channel name, description, and tags.
- Configure the Privacy options (see video for details).
- Enable/disable moderation, comments, and subscriptions.
- Click Save.
- Scroll to the top and click Playlists to create a playlist in the channel, or Users to add users to the channel (as members, contributors, moderators, or managers).
To publish media to a channel (you must have publishing rights to the media and at least contributor rights to the channel):
- Login to MediaSpace.
- Click My Media.
- Locate the media you want to publish, click the title of the media to open its page.
- Choose Actions and then Publish.
- Under Publishing Status, choose Published.
- This will display any channels that you have at least contributor rights to, including your own channels. Click the checkbox next to one or more channels and click Save to publish to that channel.
Publishing to MediaSpace
The public video portal functionality of MediaSpace is essentially a collection of moderated channels. Each public channel (e.g. College of Business - Department of Marketing) has a manager and one or more moderators who determine what media can be published to that channel. These channels are useful for sharing information with faculty, staff, students, and the University community, as well as alumni, potential students, and others.
The Division of Enrollment Management, Marketing, and Communications manages access to these publicly displayed channels. If your department or unit would like a public channel that displays in the navigation of NIU's Mediaspace for the purposes of publicly sharing media content, contact the web team at webcommunications@niu.edu.
Depending on your channel membership or channel permissions, you may be able to publish to a channel that is displayed on MediaSpace.