Video may be embedded within any University webpage.
We recommend videos for staff and students are hosted in the Lecture Capture System (LCS) and videos for an external audience are hosted in YouTube.
- Lecture Capture System (LCS)
- Video hosting services, like YouTube
- The University YouTube channel
- UWA newsrooms
- Accessibility considerations and the law
- Captioning services and tools
- Example video
Lecture Capture System (LCS)
UWA's Lecture Capture System (LCS) is the central place for video content for students and staff, such as lectures.
LCS captures, stores and publish audio and/or video recordings in a variety of streaming and/or download formats. Recording is captured, processed and usually ready within 24 hours, via a website or the Learning Management System (LMS).
Students can access the recordings 24 hours a day, seven days a week at their own convenience.
LCS recordings can be linked to or, with some difficulty, embedded into Matrix web pages.
LCS is always preferred for teaching material – partly because LCS content is streamed locally, attracting low traffic charges.
The Lecture Capture System (LCS) is supported by UWA IT and the Education Enhancement Unit.
Video hosting services, like YouTube
The University YouTube channel is recommended for non-teaching materials aimed at an external audience. YouTube content can be readily embedded in web pages using the YouTube embed code.
Having your video embedded into UWA web pages means the viewer remains within our UWA online environment. This is always preferable to promoting a video in an independent YouTube account and merely linking to that YouTube page. Linking to YouTube means your video will be seen in a generic online environment, surrounded by competing, contradictory or irrelevant content.
All areas of the University should only embed YouTube content that they own and manage – don’t link content in from other users' YouTube accounts.
School/faculty/division YouTube channels
Although you can use 'other than the UWA YouTube channel' do continue to embed your video content into UWA website pages and encourage viewers to see the material in the University context. If visitors are linked away to YouTube itself they're exposed to competitor advertising and other materials that may contradict or bear no relation to the content of your video. Consider making the hosting services links 'not-public', this will help concentrate viewers into the video embedded in the University web page and to enhance strong search engine responses for the content. The University has quality inclusions for search engine optimisation that will increase if the the viewer comes into our web pages compared to entering video hosting services directly.
Some sections of the University have set up YouTube accounts for hosting their own video material. If the material meets the requirements outlined below it may be embedded in University web pages.
Hosting services
There are many free and reliable web hosting services available, any list of services would quickly fall out of currency. YouTube and Vimeo may be the two largest.
At the time of writing Facebook has added an option to auto-caption audio. This service is less accurate than the YouTube automated captions that themselves have improved since first released. It is for these and related reasons that you should ensure that any content representing the University is of the highest possible standards and that the service you use ensures you may meet the highest standard.
If considering less featured services do impute the additional costs or effort required to ensure audio has accessible alternatives.
Audio only
It is interesting to note that the audio streaming service Soundcloud has captioning capabilities. In 2016 making captions live in Soundcloud was considerably more involved than making 'a still video file with audio content' captioned in YouTube.
International requirements and legislation
All videos hosted on YouTube must meet YouTube’s community guidelines.
Captions
For accessibility reasons, long descriptions or transcripts and/or closed captions must be provided for videos.
Privacy
In submitting a video you must ensure that permission was obtained and talent releases were signed by all identifiable people in the video. It is not necessary to obtain permission of people that were filmed in a public space (for example, outside).
In addition, videos must comply with the following University policies and guidelines:
More...
Further detailed guidelines are being developed by the team at Brand, Marketing and Recruitment.
Instructions for hosting material in the University YouTube channel
UWA promotes our services to education and research in the YouTube channel - The University of Western Australia. Requests to add content into the channel should be sent to Digital and Creative at email: [email protected]. You will need to provide:
- a video file in the highest quality possible, preferably a 1080p HD master. Published DVDs will be accepted if they are the highest quality option available, however, a high quality video master file yields the best results
- title
- very short description of what the video is about
- keywords
- transcript. The transcript will appear on the web page as a separate RTF document or within the video as closed captions.
YouTube – supported formats
- WebM files – Vp8 video codec and Vorbis Audio codecs
- .MPEG4, 3GPP and MOV files – typically supporting h264, mpeg4 video codecs, and AAC audio codec
- .AVI – many cameras output this format – typically the video codec is MJPEG and audio is PCM
- .MPEGPS – typically supporting MPEG2 video codec and MP2 audio
- .WMV
- .FLV – Adobe-FLV1 video codec, MP3 audio
Contact
- Contact UWA 'Digital and Creative' about hosting videos on the UWA YouTube channel.
UWA News and newsrooms
To add and edit video content in UWA newsrooms.
If you are a newsroom editor and want to embed videos in individual articles, you have to ensure you are working in raw HTML – the WYSIWYG editor doesn't allow direct embedding in normal rich-text mode.
- Assuming you are already logged in, ensure you have saved the story you are working on, select 'My account' from the left-hand menu, then 'Edit' from the main frame (between 'View' and 'File browser').
- Select TinyMCE rich-text settings. The default setting in the drop-down menu should be 'Enabled'; change this to 'Disabled'.
- Hit 'Save' and return to your story; it will now be rendered in raw HTML. If it is not, refresh the page so the new setting appears.
- Go to your YouTube video, click on the 'Share' icon, then choose 'Embed'. Copy the text from this (it will start with an '<iframe>' tag.
- Go back to your story, enter opening and closing paragraph ('<p>' and '</p>') tags where you want the video to appear, and paste the copied code within those tags.
- Save your story, then return to the 'My account' section and reset the TinyMCE rich-text settings to 'Enabled'.
Accessibility considerations and the law
Reasons for including captions include:
- It is the law. UWA runs a very real risk of complaint under the federal Disability Discrimination Act if accessible alternatives are not provided.
- Web accessibility policy, commenced December 2019, requires that you do.
- Caption/transcript content is searchable; audio is not. Search engine rankings will be improved as lecture recordings are great sources of specialist language.
- Caption/transcript content is more easily translated into alternate languages, by services like Google Chromes 'translate' option and into braille and similar alternatives.
- Federal departments and agencies are now requiring that the University audit and demonstrate that all its online outputs meets accessibility standards. In 2013 the University nearly missed out on a major tender because we didn't 'prove' this.
UWA videos need captions
Captions, a transcript or lecture notes for the uploaded audio and video must be published at the same time as the video.
Auto–caption
Auto–captioning of audio (a feature often provided by the hosting service) may be used, but the captions must be quality–assured and perhaps edited to suit as at first they can be wildly inaccurate. As a rule of thumb, it takes three times the length of a recording to correct automatically created captions. This method allows those with video ownership to save the edited auto caption file into the served video for re-use.
On the fly
In 2017 users may ask for un–captioned video to be auto-captioned on the fly by their browser and video hosting services. The quality of these captions can be so low as to not add meaningfully to the experience. It is expected that with time this will improve. It is not a recommended feature as it is unlikely to meet accessibility standards.
Scripts and transcripts
Where auto-captioning does not work ideally and especially when the video is of a formal speech, we recommend that you obtain a copy of the script or speech and upload that directly into YouTube. Be aware that speakers often deviate slightly from their written speeches, so you will still have to ensure that any verbal asides or changes to the formal document are accounted for once the transcript is uploaded. Question-and-answer audio involving audience members should be captioned if included.
If you do not have a script or speech audio typists are commonly used to transcribe the audio. A 45-minute video will take approximately half a day to transcribe.
Certain characters such as apostrophes, quotation marks and dashes do not always convert properly from plain text to transcript files when uploaded to YouTube. Be sure to check the electronic transcription/captions for unusual characters and correct these. And check the hosting services preferred caption file formats before commencing any captioning work.
Audio only
While this page may be titled "Video" the intention is to encompass in this advice 'video with associated audio content'.
We recognise the use of audio only files and maintain the same accessibility requirements apply as for that under the name 'video'.
Web accessibility at UWA
Copyright
Video submissions should be of original work. If the video was made by someone other than the person submitting the video, UWA requires written permission from the video's creator before it can be published on UWA’s YouTube channel. Make sure that you have permission to use the music, soundtrack and images contained in your video.
YouTube takes measures to ensure that material in breach of copyright (video, images, and music/soundtrack) is removed promptly from its site. A user is flagged and their account privileges can be revoked for repeat copyright violations.
Excellent advice on Making Content Accessible: A Guide to Navigating Australian Copyright Law for Disability Access is available.
Captioning services and tools
Services
Captioning service providers may deliver an array of options to ensure your content is accessible by all. Services include:
- Captioning and audio describing offline or online content
- Live captioning
- Auslan translations either from remote or on-site locations and either live or post-production
- Transcripts
Ai provided live captioning to speakers at the '2017 Festival of the Web' web accessibility sub-conference. The caption writers were on the East coast of Australia with the conference speakers in Perth. The captions seen on-screen were delivered closely behind the presenters speech, by a matter of 3 seconds.
Software
Free software to assist with creating captions and audio descriptions may be sourced from
Free hack - YouTube
Editors wanting to gain the benefit of free, automated captions available out of YouTube but used elsewhere do this:
- Add your video and audio to YouTube and choose "Subtitles"
- near the area where you edit the auto-created captions you have the choice to copy and export the captions
- save these to a file, edit them if needed and use them as captions elsewhere
- keep or delete the YouTube audio/video file
- Google provides these instructions
Example video - captioned
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University information
CRICOS Code: 00126G
