YouTube is a popular source for hosting multimedia content. Instructors can use unlisted or private playlists in order to deliver multimedia content to students in a course, without exposing that content to the public. With different privacy settings, sensitive content can be delivered to a specific audience through a very public domain.
Unlisted vs. private privacy settings
Video and playlist privacy works the same way, by restricting the video's audience.
- Unlisted: The link to your video can be shared to an audience, but the video will only be accessible through that link (in other words, not searchable). This is suitable when instructors want to easily share content with students, but not with the general public. Note that your students could share the link with individuals not enrolled in your course.
- Private: The video cannot be shared to an audience and is only viewable to email accounts that you identify when uploading a video to the playlist. Individuals can only access the file from the email message sent from YouTube when you identify the video as private.
NOTE: YouTube videos are governed by very strict copyright policies; unlisted and private videos allow for a certain extent of copyrighted material (for instance, music) to be on YouTube without being blocked.
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Upload unlisted/private videos and put them in a playlist
NOTE: YouTube does not allow users to create a playlist without having an existing or uploaded video.
- Start the upload of a video by clicking the Upload button on the top right corner.
- In the upload page, choose a privacy setting for your video and select the video file.
- Once the upload starts, you can still adjust the privacy setting of your video.
- At this point you can add the video to a playlist. If you do not have a playlist:
- Select Add to Playlist, then Create New Playlist.
- Type a playlist name and adjust privacy settings. Then, click Create.
- Additional videos that are uploaded can be added to the playlist.
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Manage a playlist
- In the side panel, navigate to your playlist.
- Once you click into the playlist, click Edit.
- This allows you to change playlist settings, add or remove videos, reorder the videos (by dragging on the bar on the left of video number when hovering with a cursor) or share the playlist.
NOTE: A public video can be in an unlisted or private playlist and vice versa, an unlisted or private video can be in a public playlist. However, an unlisted video WILL be playable if in a public playlist, while a private video will not.
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