Stream Classic is the legacy version of Microsoft Stream. It is being retired to make way for Stream (on SharePoint), which offers enhanced features and better integration within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The retirement allows for a more unified and seamless video management solution.  

Stream Classic is a standalone app that is not connected with the Microsoft 365 experience. Stream (on SharePoint) seamlessly integrates with apps across Microsoft 365, so you get the same experience no matter where you add or engage with video content. 

For an overview of how Stream Classic and Stream (on SharePoint) differ, please review this article from Microsoft: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/stream/streamnew/new-stream/. 

If you have videos stored in Stream Classic, you need to move any videos you want to keep before August 29 to make sure you have uninterrupted access to your videos. 

When it comes to moving your videos, you have two options: download your videos manually or requesting a video migration. The option you choose will be determined by factors such as the number of videos you have and the number of videos you want to keep. For an overview of your options, see Decide where your Stream Classic videos will go.

No, you should only download the videos you want to keep. 

There are a limited number of videos in Stream Classic that have no owner associated with them because the video owner has left the University. In some cases, community members may still require access to an abandoned video: for example, a TA who is no longer with the University may have uploaded a lecture recording that the course instructor still needs to use. If you require access to a video that no longer has an owner, please email stream.support@utoronto.ca for support.

Yes, we can assign inherited permissions from Stream Classic 

You could set up a new library in a SharePoint site for your department, or request a new SharePoint site through this form: https://uoft.me/getsite. If you are new to using SharePoint sites, get it touch with our SharePoint support team through their website: https://uoft.me/sharepoint. 

In Stream Classic, the “group” tab shows you videos sorted into their corresponding Microsoft Teams team/channel. The videos you see here will often be meeting recordings and/or videos where a team has been added as an additional owner. The group tab will not be available in Stream on SharePoint, but your videos will still be associated with the team/channel they were associated with in Stream Classic, and you can group your videos into folders and libraries. If you want to display the videos associated with a specific team/channel with Stream on SharePoint, you have a few options. You can read more here                                                          

No. MyMedia is a separate video hosting service maintained by the University of Toronto Libraries. It will not be impacted by the Stream Classic retirement. 

Stream on SharePoint offers the same features as Stream Classic with many improvements. However, at this time the ability to add embedded polls to Stream videos is not currently available in Stream on SharePoint. Microsoft has included this feature in their roadmap and has indicated that it is in development. We will update the community re: release date as we know more. Improved auto-transcription is available in Stream on SharePoint. 

You can see a full comparison list of features here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/stream/streamnew/features-new-version-stream#detailed-feature-comparison-to-stream-classic. 

By default, each SharePoint site has a limit of 250 GB. However, you can request more storage space with justification. Visit https://uoft.me/sharepoint for SharePoint support.  

Yes, in Stream (on SharePoint) you have the “block download” option which you can turn on when generating a sharing a link with people.  

Yes, In Stream (on SharePoint) you can share your videos with anyone in your organization and external users* as well. You can take the embed code and use it with any website. You can also have a SharePoint site and feature your videos.  

*External links expire after 30 days. External sharing is off by default for SharePoint sites. Please speak with the SharePoint team if you require this to be turned on. If you only need your video to be viewed by internal users (e.g. a class), we recommend using the “People in University of Toronto” share setting. This is equivalent to the “visible to organization” setting in Stream Classic. 

You will continue to have a range of video storage options: with Stream (on SharePoint) you can still use OneDrive or SharePoint to upload and share your video files with others. Just follow the same steps as you would for any other Microsoft file type. Your videos will be stored securely and accessible from any device. 

For academic activities, you can also look at other institutionally supported video storage tools such as MyMedia.

You have two options for moving videos over to Stream (on SharePoint): downloading your videos manually and uploading them or requesting a video migration. The option you choose will be determined by factors such as the number of videos you have and the number of videos you want to keep. For an overview of your options, please reference the information on this page.

Microsoft has created a tool that central IT support can use to migrate larger volumes of videos. If you have a larger number of videos (>30), read this overview for instructions on how to request a migration: Requesting a Stream Classic video migration. Due to the high volume of migration requests, we appreciate your patience and understanding as we process them in the order they are received.

While Microsoft has created a tool to assist in video migrations, preparing a video library for migration takes time for our support team: it includes an intake process, library review and validation, a scheduled migration and client follow up. 

We currently offer video migrations for users with Stream Classic video libraries of more than 30 videos. With thousands of Stream Classic users at the University, this number helps us to make sure we can provide the best level of support to those who need to migrate a high volume of content – there are many users who have hundreds of videos! 

Queuing up your videos for download only takes a couple of minutes. For example, a user with twenty videos in Stream Classic will be able to start the download on all videos in about one minute. Once downloaded, uploading the videos from your device to OneDrive or a SharePoint site of your choice will only take minutes. 

While downloading videos from your Stream Classic library is a fairly quick process, there may be instances where you have close to 30 videos and a use case that lends itself to using the migration tool instead, such as embedded links in Quercus or a high volume of custom caption files. In these cases, please reach out to our support team and we will advise you of the best approach. 

The Stream Migration process is designed to transfer all your videos and associated metadata from Stream Classic to the new Stream. This includes video titles, descriptions, transcripts, captions, comments, likes, views and permissions. For a full list of metadata that will be moved with your videos, please see this overview from Microsoft.

Note: If you are downloading videos manually, this will not automatically download metadata such as captions and video descriptions. You must download these items separately.

No. If you have custom captions associated with your videos you must download them separately. Please note that this is only necessary for custom captions – you can generate new captions after uploading the video to OneDrive or SharePoint. For instructions on downloading video captions from Stream Classic, see Downloading videos from Stream Classic.

Yes, we can assign inherited permissions from Stream Classic 

There are many considerations when choosing between OneDrive and SharePoint for your video storage. OneDrive is your personal storage space for the work you do with the University, and SharePoint is generally used when you are working in a group setting with colleagues who all need full access to the same files/recordings. For a full overview of these considerations from an information management perspective, see this page from our SharePoint team: https://utoronto.sharepoint.com/sites/SPLearn/SitePages/Information-Management-and-Office-365.aspx 

Stream (on SharePoint) is moving away from the concept of a central video portal to make videos more integrated with other Microsoft 365 applications. This means the community will have opportunities to create news ways to share and display videos, including playlists and video galleries. 

SharePoint is rolling out an enhanced video gallery view that lets users create pages where they can display videos of their choice. This feature will be rolled out mid-July. We will provide instructions once they are available, and you can keep track of the feature development here: Microsoft has announced playlists and new Stream Web part. 

Microsoft Lists will be releasing a new feature that allows users to organize their video and audio files into playlists for easy organization, sharing and playback. Users can add any video and audio files to a playlist that they have edit access to. People with access to the playlist and to the files in the playlist can view the videos in order or skip back and forth between items in the playlist. This new feature is coming soon, and we will update the community and this page when it is available. 

Downloaded videos: If you decide to download your Stream Classic videos and upload them to a Microsoft video storage service like OneDrive or SharePoint, or an alternative video storage service like MyMedia, the links in Quercus will no longer work after August 28. You should update your video links in Quercus to point to the new storage location. 

Migrated videos: If you requested a video migration through our support team, the Stream Classic links on your Quercus page will automatically redirect to the new video location. However, it is important to be aware of the following limitations: 

• The redirects only work for the destination folder of your migrated videos. If you move the files to a different location the redirect links will cease to work. 
• Microsoft has indicated that the redirect links will only work until February 2025. 

We recommend that all users with Stream Classic video links update them in Quercus as soon as possible. If you have a large volume of links embedded in Quercus, please reach out to our support team. 

The embedded poll feature is not yet available in Stream (on SharePoint). However, it is important to note that you will not lose access to any existing polls after Stream Classic is retired: polls attached to Stream Classic videos will continue to be available via the Microsoft 365 Forms app as they are stored separately. We will update the community if/when this feature becomes available for Stream (on SharePoint). Alternative solutions at this time could include: 

• Pasting a link to the poll in the video’s description on Stream Classic. 
• Adding a video to a Forms poll using these instructions. 
• Creating a SharePoint page to show a video and a poll side-by-side. Please reach out to the University’s SharePoint team via uoft.me/sharepoint for more information.