Mediasite Update Offers Tools to Improve Hybrid and Virtual Education

Sonic Foundry has updated its Mediasite video platform with a variety of new capabilities aimed at supporting hybrid work and learning. Mediasite 8 boasts a new video engine that allows users to store videos more efficiently and provides better quality playback, according to the company.

Features include:

  • Advanced encoding settings to allow users to best manage and scale their video usage;
  • Higher quality downloadable files for more flexible, portable content;
  • Accessibility updates such as light, dark and high-contrast themes;
  • Bulk content management tools; and
  • Unified publishing options.

In addition, the company announced several features that will be "coming soon":

  • A new video editor with more enhancement tools (such as background colors and images, watermarks and additional video clips);
  • A new video player that loads faster, requires less bandwidth and optimizes uses of screen space; and
  • Integration with Microsoft Teams, allowing users to automatically import, manage, search and access Teams recordings within Mediasite (Zoom integration is already available).

"Over the past year, video communications adoption has taken an unprecedented leap forward. Video is now pervasive, accessible and convenient to everyone worldwide daily. Mediasite has never been more suited to deliver that in this new digital world," commented Sonic Foundry CEO Joe Mozden Jr., in a statement. "The latest release of Mediasite builds upon our strong foundation of simple, reliable and flexible technology. It is the culmination of our efforts to open our platform further to content coming in during the pandemic, expand interoperability with third party platforms and foster customization for our users, and it is only the beginning."

For more information, visit the Mediasite site.

About the Author

Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

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