Cornell’s vendor for the Video on Demand service will be making changes during summer 2024 that will impact videos managed by Cornell content owners and videos posted on other sites using Video on Demand embed codes.

Media Retention Policy Enforcement

Later this year, Cornell’s Video on Demand service will begin enforcing policies to limit how long unviewed media is retained on the platform.

Any media that has not been viewed over the last two (2) years will have its “flavors” removed. (Flavors are versions of the video stored in the system to allow smoother streaming of the content at different resolutions and bandwidths.) Removing these flavors can noticeably affect the media’s performance—and may prevent playback altogether.

Further, any media unwatched for four (4) years will be removed completely from the platform.

To head off these actions, it is recommended that content owners go to the Video on Demand website and briefly view any content they wish to keep current. Playing a video for about 10 seconds should update it as having been viewed.

For information about playing Video on Demand hosted content, visit Play Hosted Media.

IT staff will follow up in the coming months with contingency plans that will help the handling of aging-out content and possibly also allow the restoration of transcode flavors easier for Video on Demand content owners. 

Video on Demand Video Player Upgrade

At the end of September 2024, the media player version previously used on the Cornell Video on Demand platform will no longer be supported. This has some implications for content viewed directly on the Video on Demand platform, but even more so for media embedded in other websites, such as Cornell blogs and unit or organization sites.

As a first step toward addressing the upcoming change, Cornell has updated the video player that supports embedded Video on Demand media. Website content managers who have previously used embed codes from Video on Demand to place video content on their webpages should plan to replace the embed codes with newly generated codes.

While the end-of support date does not mean the existing embedded video will suddenly stop playing at the end of September, it is expected that video with old embed codes will eventually stop working properly at some later date, due to changes to browser or platform updates that prove to be incompatible with the older codes.

For details about generating embed codes for your blog or other website page, visit Embed Video in a Blog.

Finally, later this year, when IT staff upgrade the media player for content played directly from the Video on Demand platform, it is not expected that the change will affect playback of content. Users will see minor user interface and feature changes.

To learn more about Cornell's Video on Demand service, visit Video on Demand.