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It's convenient and easy to add someone else's YouTube video in your course content, but that convenience comes with a small risk that the remote video could become unavailable, unexpectedly.
Why can YouTube videos disappear?
Sometimes, a YouTube video will disappear from its URL because it was taken offline, deleted, or made "Private" by its owner. You will never get any warning of this.
For example, this YouTube clip from "Dead Poet's Society" was taken offline because Disney Corp. made a copyright claim on it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wey8nauEyA4
Instead of showing the video clip, it shows the error message "Video unavailable. It was blocked due to the claimed content by Disney."
Basically, Disney told YouTube that whomever posted this "Dead Poet's" clip wasn't legally allowed to use it, and had breached Disney's copyright.
YouTube (wanting to avoid liability) always honours those claims and takes the offending video offline.
How to fix the missing YouTube video
To fix a broken YouTube video, you can use a different YouTube video that can act as a replacement. (YouTube entries in Kaltura still rely on the video being in its expected location in YouTube, so this is just a fix until the next video you select gets moved or removed.)
Let's say your original YouTube video was originally at this URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wey8nauEyA4
Luckily, you found a suitable replacement at this YouTube URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsfZDBVByek
As the owner (or co-Editor) of the entry in Kaltura, you can search for the video in your "My Media" area, by searching for its name or Kaltura EntryID.
Above, you can see that we've searched for a keyword from the title, and our video was found as the first entry in the list below.
From there, click on the title or image of the video to see its details:
Select "Edit" from the three dots menu, to edit the properties of the Kaltura entry.
You will see a series of tabs under the video entry (Details, Publish, etc.).
Click on the "Replace Video" tab, and you'll see this page:
The "Video page link" field contains the YouTube reference ID that you saw in the YouTube URL.
Replace that with the equivalent ID for the new YouTube video you want to use, and click the "Replace" button.
e.g. If your new working video has the YouTube URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsfZDBVByek, then you should paste the characters KsfZDBVByek into the YouTube video page link field.
Advantages of hosting YouTube videos in Kaltura
Adding your YouTube video links to Kaltura has some distinct advantages:
- Any replacements or edits to your Kaltura entry will be almost immediately seen anywhere else you have embedded or linked to the video. If your video is used in fifty Moodle course shells at VCC, they will all show the latest version of your entry.
- Analytics on the number of impressions or plays on your media (whether from YouTube, a direct upload, or a screen capture) are always easily available to you from your My Media area.(See the three dots menu > Analytics)
- The Kaltura video player itself can be updated or get new features added by eLSupport in the background, without any re-embeds to your media.
- You're not reliant on someone remembering their YouTube login and password. eLSupport can help you find who owns a video, and if necessary, reassign it to a new owner or add co-Editors for better visibility.