Kaltura is a video platform built into many schools’ Canvas LMS that lets instructors and students upload, record, share, and embed video directly within their courses. If you’ve spotted a “My Media” link or an “Embed Kaltura Media” button inside Canvas, that’s Kaltura at work. It functions as the video backbone for course content, recorded lectures, student assignments, and interactive quizzes.
How Kaltura Fits Inside Canvas
Kaltura isn’t a separate website you need to log into. It lives inside Canvas as an integrated tool, so you access it through your normal course navigation. You’ll encounter it in three main places: the My Media area (your personal video library), the Media Gallery (a shared space within each course), and the Rich Content Editor whenever you’re creating assignments, discussions, or pages and want to drop in a video.
Because it’s embedded directly in Canvas, videos you record or upload through Kaltura can be graded, shared with classmates, or kept private, all without leaving the LMS.
My Media vs. Media Gallery
These two areas look similar but serve different purposes, and understanding the distinction saves confusion.
My Media is your personal media storage. It shows every video you’ve uploaded or created over time, and the same list follows you across all your courses. Items in My Media are private to you until you publish them somewhere. You can publish a single video to multiple courses, and you can add other users as collaborators on your media from within this area.
Media Gallery is tied to one specific course. Everyone enrolled in that course can see what’s published there. Depending on how the instructor configured the course, multiple people (not just the instructor) can contribute videos to the Media Gallery. Think of My Media as your personal hard drive and Media Gallery as a shared class folder.
When you embed a video into a Canvas page, discussion, or assignment, you’re typically choosing it from My Media or the course’s Media Gallery. In most cases the video comes from your My Media list unless you specifically select something from the Gallery or another source like a shared repository.
Recording Video With Kaltura Capture
Kaltura Capture is a lightweight desktop recording tool that instructors and students can use to create videos without any outside software. It can record your screen, your webcam, and your microphone, or any combination of those inputs. Want a screen recording with no face? Disable the camera. Want a talking-head video with no screen share? Disable the screen. You pick your video and audio sources from drop-down menus before hitting record.
One limitation worth knowing: if you’re on macOS, Capture cannot record audio playing from your computer. So if you’re screen-recording a video or a presentation with sound, the system audio won’t be picked up. You’d need a third-party workaround for that on a Mac. Windows users don’t face this restriction.
Once you finish recording, the video uploads to your My Media library automatically, where you can trim it, add captions, or publish it to a course.
Submitting a Video Assignment
Many instructors use Kaltura for video-based assignments, asking students to record a presentation, a lab demonstration, or a response to a prompt. The submission process works like this:
- Go to your Canvas course and open the Assignments tab. Find the assignment and click Start Assignment.
- In the submission text editor, click the Embed Kaltura Media button. Its exact location may vary depending on your school’s setup.
- A window opens showing your My Media library. Click Embed next to the video you want to submit. You can search or filter if you have a lot of videos.
- A pop-up asks if you’d like to submit this media as an assignment. Confirm by clicking “Yes, please,” and the video appears in the text editor.
- Fill in any remaining details and click Submit Assignment.
If you haven’t recorded your video yet, you can do so through My Media first, wait for it to finish processing, and then come back to the assignment page to embed it.
Interactive Video Quizzes
One of Kaltura’s more useful features for instructors is the video quiz tool. It lets you embed interactive questions directly into a video at specific timestamps. When a student reaches a question during playback, the video pauses and the question appears on screen. The student answers before the video continues.
Three question types are available: multiple choice, true/false, and open-ended. Instructors can control whether viewers are allowed to skip questions, replay sections, see hints or correct answers, and retake the quiz. When a video quiz is assigned through Canvas, grades sync automatically to the Canvas gradebook once the student submits.
One constraint to be aware of: a single video can’t include both a quiz and hotspots (clickable interactive elements) at the same time. If you need both features, you’d need to use separate videos.
Who Uses It and Why It’s There
Kaltura shows up in Canvas because your institution has licensed it as its video management platform. It handles hosting, streaming, storage, and access control so that instructors don’t have to rely on YouTube or other public platforms where privacy and student data could be a concern. Videos hosted in Kaltura stay within the institution’s ecosystem, and access is governed by Canvas enrollment.
Instructors use it to post lecture recordings, create flipped-classroom content, and build video-based assessments. Students use it to record and submit video assignments, participate in video discussions, and watch course media. If your school uses Kaltura, you don’t need to install anything extra for basic playback. Kaltura Capture requires a small desktop download only if you want to record screen and webcam video outside of a browser.