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New Features Show up in Stream Browser Client
The migration period for Stream classic to Stream on SharePoint finished on April 15, 2024. Given that Stream no longer has a management client because everything’s handled by SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, it’s possible that Stream slipped down the list of tenant administrator priorities once the migration finished. Development continues on the Stream browser client (but Microsoft plans to retire the Stream mobile client on 1 July 2024), and three recent advances deserve some attention.
Copilot for Stream
Message center notification MC765809 (2 April 2024, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 188616) announces the arrival of Copilot for Stream. This only matters if a tenant has Copilot for Microsoft 365, but I think its arrival underscores the importance of transcripts.
Most people are familiar with Teams recording transcripts and know that the transcript is basis for Copilot party tricks like extracting a list of action items or summarizing what happens during a meeting. At one time, Microsoft stopped creating transcripts for videos uploaded to Stream, possibly because the transcripts complicated the migration process. However, this point passed and Microsoft resumed the generation of transcripts following the upload of video files in mid-2023. If a video doesn’t have a transcript, it’s easy to generate one.
Once a transcript is available, Copilot for Stream can use it to do much the same thing as it does for Teams meeting recordings:
- Summarize what happens during the video.
- Create a list of action items.
- Ask questions about who said what.
- Ask if specific topics are discussed in a video.
Figure 1 shows Copilot for Stream after generating a list of actions from a video (which happens to be a Teams meeting recording featuring the awesome talent of the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook author team).
Video Trimming
The old Stream client could trim content from the start and end of videos. However, this meant regenerating video files, and that took some time. Today, Stream uses a different approach. Instead of removing parts of a video from the start, end, or middle, Stream hides content based on time codes. For example, you can tell Stream to hide the first fifteen seconds of a Teams meeting recording to avoid viewers having to watch the Teams recording introduction screen. Trimming a video in this manner avoids the need to regenerate an edited video without the trimmed sections. When the time comes to play the video, Stream simply ignores the trimmed sections.
Hidden content is always available to video owners and others with full access. The trimmed sections are viewable if someone downloads and plays a copy of the video. In addition, trimming doesn’t affect the transcript and although Stream doesn’t display the parts of the transcript for trimmed section, the full text is available for eDiscovery and for Copilot to process. For these reasons, if you want a video where it is impossible for viewers to access removed content, use a tool like Clipchamp to regenerate a new version of the video after removing the parts you don’t want people to see. Stream should then produce a transcript for the new video that reflects the edited content.
Video Interactivity
The interactivity feature of the Stream player supports the addition of elements at specific time codes within a video. You can add:
- Forms. Insert a link to a Microsoft form (created beforehand) for display to viewers starting at a timecode. A form can conduct a survey, poll viewers, or quiz the viewers about the content of the video.
- Callouts. Add a text or hyperlink callout to display to viewers between two timecodes. This function can be used to highlight important points in a video with a couple of lines of text. The callout editor is rudimentary and supports the selection of a limited range of colors. You can insert multiple callouts in a video.
The ability to add forms to a video is covered in MC688632 (3 April 2024, Microsoft 365 roadmap 180796), while callouts are covered in MC688631 (last updated 4 April 2024, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 180795)
During my testing, I discovered that adding a callout to a video often caused Stream to become unresponsive to a point where I had to kill the page. Do not attempt to add a callout (or form) when playing a video! Make sure that it’s stopped, else a high chance of something going wrong happens. Maybe I’m just unfortunate or the problem was with the Edge browser. In any case, Figure 2 shows what a callout (with text and a hyperlink) added to a video looks like.
As noted above, Stream displays a callout for a defined period. This could be the complete video or just specific sections.
Keep an Eye on Stream
I confess it had been a while since I took a detailed look at the Stream client to acquaint myself with recent developments and new features. As is the norm within a Microsoft 365 tenant, other things had demanded attention and stole time, or maybe it was just that I now expect the Stream client to work without me having to think too much about what’s going on. In any case, the new features are welcome, even if you don’t have Copilot.
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