Panopto Releases Focus 3.1 with Blackboard Course Management Integration, Video Podcast Embedding and Boosted Screen Capture Performance

PITTSBURGH, January 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

- Release Improves Rich Media Video Capture and Search Experience for Educational Institutions, Corporations, Healthcare and Government Services

Panopto, Inc., a leading provider of multimedia knowledge capture and search solutions for corporations and educational institutions, today announced the release of Panopto Focus 3.1, an update to its software solution. Panopto Focus is the award winning software that allows anyone from anywhere to capture knowledge and make it universally accessible and searchable.

"We're extremely excited to extend a technology that was developed for and proven in education with functionality that addresses universal pain points in knowledge-intensive industries," said Eric Burns, founder and Chief Technology Officer. "High frame-rate screen capture of product demonstrations, complex animations and on-screen video now makes Panopto the ideal tool for capturing demanding presentations and creating immersive, engaging content. Combined with Panopto's new picture-in-picture format for smartphones, tablets and embedded web video, Panopto Focus 3.1 is a seamless and easy-to-use platform that helps your employees create, share and discover dynamic video in more ways and on more devices than ever before."

The release provides time saving benefits to Blackboard Angel and Blackboard Campus Edition customers, who with Focus 3.1, will have integrated single sign on, provisioning and publishing. "As Panopto's strategic partner supporting the higher education community, Focus 3.1's new functionality helps administrators and faculty more seamlessly integrate Panopto into their campus environments," said Sarah Martin, director of marketing for Macmillan's new venture group. "We are happy to be able to respond to our customer's needs with Panopto's easy-to-use and affordable solution."

Enhancements have also been made to the video creation and viewing experience. Content creators can now embed videos into blogs and web pages. These videos, along with all the video and audio in a Panopto library, are searchable and playable as picture-in-picture or full screen on all desktop browsers and on mobile Safari (iOS). In addition, Focus 3.1 provides a huge boost to screen capture performance, now recording on-screen video at up to 30 frames per second.

Other new features of Focus 3.1 include:

    
    - Active Directory Group support
    - Editor enhancements based on customer feedback
    - System disk space usage monitoring and filtering lists by date range
    - Mac Snow Leopard support

"The release contains stand-out features," said Graham Robinson, Learning Resources Technician at University of Southampton. "The new editor is now very easy to use and includes the ability to add events and bookmarks into even non-PowerPoint presentations and searchable keywords into any presentation. This should mean that students can find a specific part of any presentation from hundreds of hours of lectures. As an IT administrator, the second great addition is the usage screen. This overview of disc usage, recording hours and lists of creators and their individual usage gives us great information on who are our power users and who we need to help or gain feedback from."

Focus 3.1 is now available worldwide. All Panopto hosted customers were upgraded to Focus 3.1 on January 17. Customers with a local installation will receive instructions on obtaining installation files. A free webinar, open to all customers, will be held on January 26 at 1PM Eastern Standard Time.

About Panopto

Panopto, Inc. is a leading provider of media-rich knowledge casting and management solutions for the corporate, education, government and healthcare markets. Founded in 2007 by professors at Carnegie Mellon University, Panopto's innovative solutions are the result of years of advanced research in scalable media systems that harness the advantages of today's video, capture, stream, search and archival technologies. Its flagship product, Panopto Focus, is used by thousands of students across the globe, while its Panopto Hosted solutions provide users with a cost-effective option for streaming and recorded video capture. For additional information about Panopto and its comprehensive suite of video capture solutions, please visit http://www.panopto.com