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Try, Install and Use Opencast |
These information helps you to get started! |
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Want to try Opencast for yourself? We host a free, fully functional demonstration system with pre-processed media so you can experience the Opencast user interface as both an administrator and end-user without having to download, install, or configure Opencast yourself. Feel free to upload your own media as well, because the system is reset and rebuilt nightly. The credentials for an admin user are admin / opencast.
Administrative user interface
Media Module / end user interface
Want to run Opencast locally? Opencast runs on Linux or MacOS servers. There are repositories with binaries available for CentOS (RPM) and Debian (DEB) like distributions. There are also Docker images available. If none of this works for you, you also download the raw binaries, or use our detailed guide on how to build Opencast from source yourself.
Interested in adopting Opencast? Whether you've only tried the demo system and have questions, or need detailed assistance settings up Opencast, there are community and commercial resources available help you.
|If you are...|Try this|
|Faculty member
Instructional designer
IT staffer
Member of a selection committee|Try Opencast
Anyone can try Opencast using the links above.
Explore how others are using Opencast
Browse our User stories or watch some of our Conference recordings to see what others are doing with Opencast in production.
Contact the community
Our large community is always happy to talk about both high level and detailed internals of Opencast. Join the mailing lists and see for yourself.
Attend a community event
Our conferences are hosted annually in January or February, and are the perfect place to meet community memebers running Opencast in production. All of our adopters are welcome to present, meaning you will see everything from tiny institutions with a one or two rooms, to large 100+ room environemnts.
Run an Opencast pilot
Work with the community, or a commercial support partner to set up a low-risk Opencast pilot. Opencast can even be run in parallel with any legacy lecture capture platform you have installed. Go hands-on to see how well Opencast works with your institution.
Take look at the documentation
All of our documentation lives here, and is split into three parts.
- The Administration documentation explains on how to install, setup and configure Opencast.
- The User documentation explains the UI and processes of Opencast.
- The Developer contains the general development process and the technologies used in Opencast.|
|System administrator
Technical contributor
Developer|All of the above, plus
Download and install Opencast
Opencast is open source software, so it's easy to get hands-on with it. Download your free copy, and install it wherever you like. If you have questions, post them to the users email list, the community and developers are always happy to help.
File pull requests
Notice an issue? File a pull request! We are always happy to work with new people.
Consider joining the Opencast Committers
Once your institution has committed to Opencast, it only makes sense to become a committer. Our committer group has the final say in technical decisions, and joining it is the best way to get your opinions heard in the project!
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|Institutional leadership
IT leadership
Capture selection committee leadership|Try multiple platforms including Opencast
Encourage your institution to try Opencast and other lecture capture options to help determine which provide the best fit for your needs, strategy, and future direction. There is no substitute for hands-on experience, so download the software and run a pilot for your campus.
Invest sufficient time and attention to the evaluation process
Give your staff the resources and time necessary to explore your lecture capture options. Short-changing this evaluation process often leads to sub-optimal solutions.
Engage with the Opencast community during your evaluation process
You are not the first to go through this process, and other institutions who have engaged with Opencast have experienced more successful deployments in their final selections. Both our community, and our commercial partners are here to help you get started, and keep going when you experience issues.
Explore our user stories
Our best advertisements are our users, many of whom have significantly reduced both their licensing, and operational costs using Opencast. Take a look at our user stories to see how Opencast is being used successfully all over the globe.|
Opencast is highly scalable, and is deployed at both small, and massive scale around the world. Opencast is also highly flexible: You can deploy Opencast on premesis, or in the cloud, or even create a hybrid system with both. There are no licensing costs, so starting small and extending your installation is very common within the community. Opencast has many deployment models, including:
- Deploy and support Opencast yourself: Deploy Opencast on your own and draw on the support of our active community.
- Deploy Opencast yourself and purchase commercial support: Install and deploy Opencast on your own and contract with one of our commercial support providers.
- Deploy Opencast with commercial support: Contract with a commercial support provider to help you install and deploy Opencast.
Because Opencast has no license code, Opencast requires a different approach compared to other, proprietary solutions. Extending Opencast to more of your users does not incur any incremental licensing costs.
Adopting institutions must plan for in-room hardware and other infrastructure costs, as well as the staff, and time required to set up and maintain Opencast, whether these things are handled in-house, or by an external provider. Adopter institutions are also encouraged to join the Apereo Foundation and contribute modest annual membership fees to sustain the Opencast project. These fees provide for technical and community coordination and enable Apereo to be a safe haven for open source software and licensing.