KB1291 - Kaltura Video Player Icons and Issues

Tags video kaltura

This article shows some common features and potential issues you might see when using the default Kaltura video player.
When you publish a video to a Moodle course or a Mediaspace location, your video will play using the default video player.

Norman appearance of Kaltura Player toolbar

The default Kaltura video player will show these icons at the bottom:

  • Play/Pause
  • Sound (Mute/Unmute, Volume)
  • Time / Duration
  • Closed Captions
  • Playback Speed
  • Full Screen
  • Logo

If any of these icons are missing on your video, you may have one of the following issues:

Issues to Watch For

Missing Closed Captions

If your Kaltura video does not show a "cc" icon, then your video does not have Closed Captions:
Kaltura Player toolbar with cc icon missing

Captions are easy to add by using Kaltura's machine-generated captioning feature.
These articles show you how to add captions to your video:

Missing Other Controls

If your video is missing other controls (e.g. Playback Speed, Full Screen, and the Kaltura logo) then there could be an error with the Kaltura player itself.

Kaltura Player with Playback speed, fullscreen icon, and logo missing.
A common cause is that an incorrect PlayerSkin ID number is specified in the Kaltura embed code (an occasional error which was an unfortunate side-effect of VCC's move to a new Kaltura server in 2022).

This problem is easily fixed, in one of the following ways:

Option 1.) Re-embed it yourself
If you own the video, simply re-embed it from your My Media area. If you don't own it, but it's available in your course's Media Gallery, you may also select it for re-embedding from the course Media Gallery.

Option 2.) Edit the resource's HTML source code
Select Edit Settings on the resource, and click the "HTML source" icon in Moodle's Editor.
Edit the item's HTML to replace the PlayerID number or PlayerSkin attribute. It is an 8 digit number that will appear right after the parameter called "PlayerSkin" or "PlayerID".

In HTML mode, you can edit the number directly.
For example, if you see a PlayerSkin number of 23449558 this is an old, defunct PlayerSkin ID.

The correct "default" PlayerSkin number should be 23449452

  • Replace the old number with the new one, leaving no extra blank spaces.
  • Click the "HTML" icon in the toolbar to flip the display back to regular mode. If you've done it correctly, you should now see your video with a full set of controls in its player.
  • Click "Save" to save your changes.

Option 3.) Ask eLearning Support to do one of the above options for you.
VCC Faculty and Staff can use eLSupport's online Help Request form.

Customized Video Players for Other Purposes

There are a few different types of Kaltura Video Player in use at VCC, specialized for certain purposes:

Related Resources:

 

Print Article

Related Articles (6)

How to select the Transcript-capable video player to display transcripts underneath your Kaltura videos.
How to use a custom Kaltura video player to remove certain video playback controls (e.g. rewind, fast-forward).
How to create closed captions automatically, using Kaltura's built-in machine-captioning service.