Kaltura – Enable Video Comments and Moderation

At times, instructors may want students to add comments to a video. For example, ask your students to upload a video into a Canvas course and make comments along the video timeline to highlight key points made within the video.

Videos that are located in the Media Gallery can support user comments. This is a good way you or your students can point out specific details within a video.

Using the Kaltura Media Gallery, instructors and students in that class can upload and/or publish files to the Media Gallery, as well as add comments to the media file. If needed, instructors can disable commenting and turn on a moderation feature, which then requires files to be approved by an instructor before they are visible to the entire class.

  1. Make sure your Canvas course Kaltura Media Gallery is activated.  If the Media Gallery is not visible in your Canvas navigation menu, an instructor will need to add it via Settings > Navigation. For more details, see How to Activate Kaltura in Canvas.
  2. In the course navigation menu of your Canvas course, click  Media Gallery.
  3. Click the Media Gallery edit icon to edit the gallery name, description and settings. See Media Gallery icon.
If you want students in this Canvas class to contribute video comments, click the Enable Comments in Media Gallery box.

You can add any media that you’ve uploaded to My Media to a course Media Gallery. To add media to the Media Gallery:

  1. On the Media Gallery page, click Add Media.
  2. On the “Add Media” screen, use the sort, filter, and search options at the top of the screen to locate the item(s) you want to add to the current gallery.
  3. Select each item you want to add by checking the box to the left of the thumbnail. After selecting all the items you want, click +Publish. A blue progress bar will display. When all items have been added, you will be returned to the main “Media Gallery” page.
Note: After the video has uploaded, it will take additional time for Kaltura to process the video. Normally, this takes about 10 minutes but may take longer if the video is exceptionally long.

If moderation is enabled in your Media Gallery, student contributions to the Gallery must be approved by an instructor or TA. To approve pending files:

  1. On the “Media Gallery” screen, check the information immediately beneath the page title. If you see a pending link (e.g., 2 Pending, Browse Pending), there are pending files to moderate. Click the pending link:
    Kaltura: Media Gallery tool pending link
  2. On the moderation page, click each thumbnail to view the file. Click Approve to add the file to the Media Gallery or Reject to reject and remove it. You can also remove or reject files in bulk by checking the boxes to the left of each thumbnail and then clicking Approve or Reject at the top of the screen.
For additional information, see the Kaltura Video App for Canvas User Guide.