Video On Demand: Pre-recorded room video mode

On Demand, also known as Video On Demand (VOD), allows viewers to watch the selected videos whenever at their schedule's convenience. With this option, viewers can pause, play, fast-forward, rewind, and re-watch the videos On-Demand as much as they would like.

Room video modes

If you are having online activities, once you activate your virtual room, you will be asked to choose your Room Video Mode.

This article intends to teach you how to enable and use the Pre-recorded room video mode to have On-Demand content in your online activities. If you wish to learn more about the other room video modes offered by InEvent, check this article.

The room video modes that are available to you will depend on the plan you have purchased. Click here to check which features are available in each plan.

Choosing Pre-recorded as your room video mode

If you have chosen pre-recorded as your room video mode, you have many options to choose from. You can paste a link to a web-based video, upload a video of your own or upload a file.

To do so, go to Agenda > Activities > select an activity > press Edit. Next, scroll down until you see Room video mode and select Pre-recorded. Then, press End in the upper right corner to save the changes.

Choosing pre-recorded mode

Now that you have selected Pre-recorded as the room video mode, there are three options for you to define which video will be available on-demand: you can either use a web-based video via web URL or you can upload a video from your computer.

To replace your video stream with a web-based video or a browsable website simply select Use a link, and paste the video or website link into the text box.

Pre-Recorded Link
  • The option Treat pre-recorded video as an embed frame will be automatically selected. This is how participants will see a website link in the virtual room:
Embed Frame

This is how participants will see the selected an embedded video when accessing your virtual room:

User Looks
  1. Upload video

You can use this option if you want to set your Pre-recorded video as a Simulated Live Stream. To upload your own video file, select Upload video, and click on the green upload button to find this file on your computer.

The accepted video file format is .MP4.

Upload Pre-Recorded Video

You can upload videos up to 1GB in size. If you attempt to upload a video over 1GB, you'll see the error message depicted below:

To upload videos up to 10GB in size, you need to enable the Large Files tool.
Error message when uploading a video above 100 MB with the Large files tool disabled

  • If you upload a video, participants who accessed the virtual room will be able to play and stop the video and increase or decrease the playback speed. They will also see a time slider on top of the bottom bar on the entire video player.
Thumbnail scrubbing, which allows you find specific parts in a video by navigating through thumbnail visuals, is only available for videos sourced from Mux.
Front End upload video looks

By selecting this option to upload a video from your computer, you will also find a Download video button, that can be very useful when uploading a large video to the platform and then sharing a downloadable link with other admins.

Download button
To make this process even faster, you can upload a video to the Files tab within the activity >  copy the generated link > select Use Link under the Details tab >  paste the generated link. However, when following these steps, you will not be able to treat your Pre-recorded video as a Simulated Live Stream.
faster video upload use link
Video Trim Mode

The Video Trim tool allows you to trim your videos when uploading them as On-Demand content. The feature provides an interactive UI to select your video's best start and end times.

When uploading a pre-recorded video from the backend, you can follow these steps to use the tool:

  1. Go to Pre-recorded video.
  2. Select the Upload video option.
  3. Click on Add video and choose your video file.
  4. Toggle the button under your video preview to activate the Trim mode.
  5. Move the markers to set the start and end times. You can manually insert your Start and End times using the time boxes below the marker.
  6. Click Upload to save your trimmed video.
Trimmed Video on demand
The Video trim tool is only available when you select the option Upload video.
Since this process is executed on the server side, videos will still retain their original sizes when trimmed.
Setting your Pre-recorded video as a Simulated Live Stream

This option is only available if you select the Upload video option, you can not choose the Use link option when treating the video as a simulated live stream.

To make sure you deliver the best experience for your participants, make sure you choose a video with the standard aspect ratio 16:9. Click here if you wish to resize your video.
16:9
A 16:9 ratio is typically seen as optimal because it is capable of the highest resolution. It is easy to capture this aspect ratio on almost all devices. It is also considered the international standard format for television, cinema, and major online streaming setups and platforms.

If you want to simulate a live stream, click on Treat pre-recorded video as simulated live stream. Click here to learn more about it.

Treat pre recorded video as livestream
  1. Upload file

You can use this option to upload files as PNG, JPEG and PDF, as well as videos also. Click on the red bar and choose the file you want to upload.

Upload File

You can upload files up to 100MB in size. If you attempt to upload a file over 100MB, you'll see the error message depicted below:

To upload files up to 10GB in size, you need to enable the Large Files tool
Error message when uploading files larger than 100 MB without enabling the Large files tool

When uploading a file, the platform will automatically convert the media file to be hosted as a link and treat it as an Embed frame.
Embed link video

  • And this is what the browsable PDF file will look like for your event's participants:
Document File Uploaded

On-Demand Chapters

It is possible to add On-Demand chapters to your videos when using pre-recorded as your room video mode. To learn how to do it, check this article.

Setting the pre-recorded video on loop

You can loop pre-recorded videos so that they repeat automatically once they end. This will appear to viewers in the activity session.

To have access to the loop video option, ensure that you have uploaded a pre-recorded video using one of the following methods: Use a link, Upload video or Upload file.

After adding your video, tick the Loop video checkbox:

Loop Video
If you choose to treat the pre-recorded video as a simulated live stream, the Loop video option will disappear.
You can also loop welcome cover videos. To learn more about this, click here.

Uploading captions and subtitles

The platform provides you the option to upload captions and subtitles to your pre-recorded videos using WebVTT files. To do this:

First, set up your pre-recorded video by choosing Pre-recorded as your room video mode and uploading a video.

After setting up your video, complete the following steps to upload subtitles:

  1. Click on the Edit button at the top right corner.
  2. Scroll down and tick the Closed captions & subtitles checkbox.
  3. Click on the red folder icon beside Upload closed captions / subtitles file (WebVTT format).
  4. Upload a file and choose the language of your file.
  5. Click on End to save your changes.
Subtitle WebVTT

You have the option to upload multiple WebVTT files, with each file containing captions in a different language. This allows you to display captions in various languages for your activity.

How to remove a closed caption/subtitle

To remove a subtitle, click on the red trash icon. A confirmation box will appear, press Remove after confirmation.

Removing Subtitle

Closed captions and subtitles inside the Virtual Lobby

Once you have configured closed captions and subtitles for your pre-recorded activity on the backend, you can enable them in the activity room: Click on the CC icon at the bottom of the video player and choose the captions/subtitles in the language you configured.

Besides being able to activate captions/subtitles, you can also configure the aesthetics of the text in captions settings.

To turn off the captions, simply click on captions off.

CC and subtitles inside VL

How to use attendance tracking in a pre-recorded session?

  1. First, you need to add the credit units to the Attendance menu to learn how to do this, click here
  2. Create a pre-recorded activity as shown above
  3. Click on Edit and scroll down until you find the Attendance tracking option
  4. Now select the attendance tracking unit you created on the drop-down menu and click on Add.
    Press End to save all the changes made.
Your event can also work as a simulated Live Stream. Click here to learn more about it.

Below you can see how the attendance tracking pop-up works in simulated and on demand session:

Live Simulation stream

How to set a recorded live stream as pre-recorded session?

  1. The first step before your live activity begins, is to enable room recording in the activity details tab. Click here for more instructions.
  2. After your activity is finished, go to the recordings tab of your activity and click 'Set as pre-recorded'. Click here for more details.
Recorded livestream as pre-recorded
When selecting 'set as pre-recorded' in the Recording tab, the Room video mode will automatically change to 'pre-recorded' but other settings, such as 'Attendance tracking' will remain the same.

What can each permission level do in the Pre-recorded room video mode?

Choosing the level of access your attendees will have on the platform means that they will have different permission levels throughout your event. Here is what each permission level can do in the Pre-recorded room video mode:

Permission level

To learn more about the permission levels, click here.


How Did We Do?