Adding your hosted YouTube videos to Canvas

If you would like to share your own video recordings in Canvas refer to the table of video hosting services 🔗 to help you choose.

Why YouTube Videos

YouTube is part of your Google Apps account and allows you to upload videos such as camera recordings and screencasts that can be shared publicly or with a private link (unlisted). Once your video is uploaded in YouTube, it is easy to add the video in Canvas including the option to embed YouTube playlists.

Compress the videos before hosting!

Depending on the recording device (e.g. smartphone, video camera), quality, and length of your video, the file size can be large (e.g. 500MB or more). Large video files can take a long time to upload and even more to be prepared by Google Drive servers to prepare the video for playback (also known as rendering). Finally, large videos can take longer to load and play for your students so compress them!

Follow these steps to compress videos with HandBrake . Handbrake can be downloaded for free for Mac or Windows.

Register with YouTube in your school’s domain

  • Log on to your Gmail @elmira.edu account and go to youtube.com Links to an external site.
  • If you have not done so already and if prompted, click Sign in to register your account with YouTube

Sign to register YouTube in your domain 

  • Click Create a Channel

Create a YouTube Channel

  • Confirm by clicking Create Channel

Click the Create Channel button to confirm

  • Review your YouTube Home Page

Review parts of YouTube home page

  • Click the Video Manager button
  • In Video Manager click the Upload button

 Use Video Manager to upload your video

  • Choose Unlisted to keep the video URL private, though anyone with the link can share.
  • Drag your videos to upload them.

Upload as Unlisted

Wait until the processing is complete, which can several minutes or more depending on how long the video is. However, processing is much faster than the Google Drive video rendering engine.

Edit the title as needed, enter a description, and add tags to organize the videos as your collection grows. You can also change Unlisted to Public. Private is not recommended because it requires manually inviting users one-by-one. 

title_description_tags.png

  • Click Done when finished.
  • Click the video thumbnail to open URL to copy

Click the thumbnail image to bring up URL

  • Copy the URL. For a clean URL copy just the address before &feature=youtu.be, which is used for tracking.

 url_copy.png