Panopto Procedures & Guidelines

Guidelines for using Panopto at TU.

Accessing the Panopto System

All Towson University faculty, staff and students will have access to Panopto. Their account will be created the first time they log into Panopto or access Panopto content through Blackboard.
Faculty, staff and students will use their TU email address to access Panopto.
Guest accounts are not necessary for Panopto, as sharing settings allows videos to be viewable by non-TU users.

Instructors can create folders for their Blackboard course through the Blackboard/Panopto integration.
Folders created through Blackboard will carry the same name as the Blackboard course.
Instructors can reuse videos from an old folder by creating a copy in the new course’s folder.
Access to a Panopto folder created through Blackboard is based off the Blackboard enrollments. Instructors and Teaching Assistants will be listed as creators on the folders, and students will be listed as viewers.

Users can request folders to be created for departmental or project needs. These requests are sent to the Blackboard/Panopto team on campus and the folder is created.
The user who requests the folder will be the contact for the folder and will be in charge of controlling access to the folder.

Each user has their own space on Panopto called “My Folder”. This area is like their OneDrive through Microsoft.
The “My Folder” area cannot be shared. Individual videos can be shared with users, but only the user who owns the folder can have access to the entire folder.
The “Everything” folder lists all videos on the system that a user’s account has access to. This does not mean that they will see all videos on the system. If a video is listed in the “Everything” folder for a user, it means that either they created the video, they are enrolled in a folder where the video is located, or the video was made public to all TU account holders.

Video retention will be based on a video’s last access date, not the recording date.
Videos will be listed as unavailable after one year of not being viewed, archived after two years of not being viewed, and deleted after two and a half years of not being viewed.
If a video is listed as unavailable, the owner of the video and administrators will still be able to search for, locate, and watch the video.
If the video is archived, an administrator will need to restore the video prior to it being available to watch. This process can take 24 - 48 hours.
Once a video has been deleted, there is no ability to recover a video.
If a video is watched during the year-long period between being made unavailable and archival, or is restored after archival, the video retention policy will reset.
Videos will be deleted after two years of not being viewed.
This retention policy applies to all recorded Zoom lectures and meetings that have been automatically uploaded to Panopto.

When a user requests access to a video without an owner, the access request is sent to Panopto administrators.
At this time, the administrator will go into Blackboard and attempt to locate the course and video. Once located, a ticket will be created for the instructor with the requesting student(s) added to the CC line for the ticket. The ticket will contain instructions on how to make the video available to students.

If a faculty/staff member intends to reuse recordings where the image, voice or materials of students are captured, the Instructional Lecture Capture Release Form (auto-download) must be used.

Accommodations requested for students through the Accessibility and Disability Services (ADS) office will be paid for through the captioning budget. Chargebacks will be issued for the initial money provided in the contract, then any additional money is paid for up front by ADS.
Requests are made by the ADS coordinator to the Blackboard team, and they will work together to determine the best course of action.

If a user requests captioning for a video, they or their department must pay for it. A chargeback will be issued after the video is captioned.

Last updated Feb. 26, 2026