Pittsburgh Innovates

Who says the most riveting university lectures should only be seen by the students who can cram into the classroom or lecture hall?

Pittsburgh-based Panopto has capitalized on the era of video on-demand with the launch of creative software for the high-end quality capture of lectures and presentations. Its latest product, CourseCast 2.0, introduces several new features for educational institutions and corporate training departments that makes it easy for the most IT challenged individual to use an industrial strength system with success.

“This is really the future of education,” explains Eric Burns, co-founder and chief technology officer. “YouTube has really brought to the masses the idea that it should be simple to record a video and put it online. I believe we're the most elegant solution to the problem of how to record content that consists of multiple streams - video, slides, screen, etc. The recording application is lightweight and easy to use."

A Carnegie Mellon University spinout, Panopto was incorporated in the spring of 2007 by inventors Burns and Bill Scherlis. Since then the company has opened a second office in Seattle, a West Coast tech hub, and has developed the technology with the support of the Pittsburgh education community.

Panopto also offers the Socrates Project, a unique program that provides free CourseCast software to academic institutions and secondary schools across the country in exchange for product feedback and marketing support.

All videos created with CourseCast are automatically made searchable and available online. Large producers have the option of keeping videos on Panopto’s server for access-controlled viewing by students. With offices in the Birmingham Towers on the South Side, Panopto employs six here and four in Seattle and plans to hire as customer needs increase.