Kaltura - Known Issue - Limited Number of Courses, Channels, or Categories for a Kaltura Video [UW-Madison]

A Kaltura video may display an "Access Denied" message for anyone other than the video owner if it's previously been inserted in 32 (or sometimes fewer) Canvas courses, Kaltura MediaSpace channels, or categories.

This issue stems from the interaction of three Kaltura features:

  1. Embedding a Kaltura video in a Canvas course using the rich text editor adds a "Category" to the metadata of that video. This is how Kaltura gives course participants permission to view the video. A video can also be added to a channel in Kaltura MediaSpace which also counts as a category.
  2. Each Kaltura video can be associated with 32 categories at most. This is a hard limit in Kaltura. 
  3. The owner of a video always has permission to view it, so they might not realize that there's an error when embedding a video in a course.

Affects

This affects specific Kaltura videos which have already been embedded in enough Canvas courses or MediaSpace channels to reach 32 categories.

Students and visitors in courses after the 32nd will see an "Access Denied" message instead of the video. To the instructor who embedded the video, the video will display normally.

Workarounds

Instructors can use the Student View feature to check if their Kaltura videos display correctly in Canvas courses.

Instructors who plan on using a Kaltura video in dozens of courses can copy embed code following Kaltura - How to Get a Link or Embed Code to a Video in MediaSpace [UW-Madison]  and insert it into anywhere Canvas allows the rich content editor by following Instructure's guide "How do I embed a video in a page in a course?" and the section "Insert Using Embed Code." Contact the DoIT Help Desk and request a consultation with a Learn@UW-Madison consultant if you would like assistance with this.

Instructors who plan on using a Kaltura video in dozens of courses can also use Kaltura's editing feature (Canvas > Account > My Media > [Media] > Edit > Launch Editor) to create multiple copies of a video. Each copy can have up to 32 categories.