Panopto Releases Newest Version of Video Platform, Includes New Quizzing Tool

• By Richard Chang
• 01/11/17

Panopto is today releasing the latest edition of its enterprise video platform. The release, Panopto 5.3, continues the platform’s focus on interactive video with the introduction of a new quizzing tool. The quiz maker enables instructors to test comprehension, reinforce key concepts and improve knowledge retention.

Also included in the release are new video editing capabilities, inside-video search for German and Spanish, enhanced webcasting to mobile devices and improvements to video captioning.

For teachers and trainers, quizzes provide instant feedback on learner comprehension and challenging course content. For students, online quizzes have been shown in a Harvard University study to significantly improve engagement, focus and knowledge retention.

With today’s Panopto release, instructors can create an online quiz and add it to a video in less than a minute. The Panopto quiz maker supports multiple choice, checkbox and true/false questions. It supports the ability for students to retake quizzes, review grades and learn more about correct answers. And it enables instructors to access real-time reports of student performance.

“With the introduction of video quizzing, students and employees can absorb new material at their own pace, and then transfer that knowledge to new contexts,” said Eric Burns, co-founder and CEO of Panopto, in a statement.

Additional updates to Panopto include:

• New video editing capabilities: Panopto’s HTML5-based video editor now enables users to create custom preview pages, add slide decks to existing video recordings and synchronize individual slides within the video timeline. In addition, the editor now includes simple camera switching, allowing events to be recorded from multiple angles that can be changed in post-production using the Panopto editor.
• Automatic speech recognition for Spanish and German videos: Panopto’s Smart Search technology now supports two additional languages. This enables businesses and universities to automatically index the speech of German or Spanish-language videos uploaded to their Panopto video library. Users can then find and fast-forward to any word spoken within these videos.
• Webcasting to more mobile devices: Panopto now supports live streaming to Android devices. Building on its existing support for iOS live streaming, Panopto can now reach over 95 percent of the world’s mobile devices with live video, according to a news release.
• More flexible video captioning: Customers can now access Panopto’s automatic speech recognition technology for any recording and correct the machine-generated captions in the video editor. In addition, users can customize the color, position and size of video captions during playback.

All of the updates are available to existing Panopto customers at no additional cost. Prices for the platform start at $25 per full-time enrolled student per year at small institutions, and decrease as the number of students increases, a company salesperson said. A free, 30-day trial is available by filling out this request form. 

For more information on the new release, visit the Panopto blog.

Headquartered in Seattle, Panopto helps business and universities create searchable video libraries of their institutional knowledge. The company also creates video capture software, video content management systems, and inside-video search technology.