Background

Panopto and Recordings

At UW, many of us use Panopto to record lectures, and then have those lectures available to students/etc.

• You configure Panopto to auto-record your lecture room and whatever is projected to the screen.
• You plug in a USB-C to HDMI adapter to your laptop, and the podium's attached HDMI cable into that adapter.
• You start a slides program like powerpoint.
• You give lecture.
• The recording of whatever was projected (slides) to the screens is available in the recording.

Panopto recordings contain multiple video streams, including cameras from the room and a direct recording of whatever is currently being shown on the projector (usually your slides.)

The Symptom

You check your recordings, and discover that audio/etc. seems fine but your slides were not recorded despite appearing on the screens during class.

The Problem

HDMI includes a digital rights management feature called High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP.) This is designed for things like displaying streaming (licensed) video content on an external monitor and stopping you from just recording that video.

Devices that display content are obligated to refuse to record any content protected under HDCP. Panopto, being a major commercial project, will not record content protected under HDCP.

Powerpoint, and many other applications, will attempt to tell your GPU to protect all of its visual content under HDCP.

The net effect is that, often, your content that is being displayed over HDMI is not going to be recorded by Panopto.

Solutions

Minimal workaround: VGA

VGA doesn't understand HDCP. If you, via any method, can attach a VGA cable to your laptop (most commonly using a usb-c to VGA adapter.) Many lecture podiums have a VGA adapter specifically for this purpose.

There is a major downside, which is that VGA is going to be much lower quality (notably color) and your slide recordings will be significantly darker.

Hardware workaround: HDMI Splitter/HDCP Stripper

By putting an HDMI-HDMI device inline with your connection that either refuses to speak HDCP at all, or removes HDCP protection, you can have an HDMI output and have Panopto record it.

The simplest way to do this is to buy an HDMI splitter (1in 2out) that either intentionally or unintentionally removes HDCP. You then plug a usb-c to HDMI adapter into your laptop, then an HDMI cable from the adapter to the splitter box input, then the podium's HDMI cable into the output of your splitter.

On Amazon, if you search for "HDCP bypass HDMI splitter" you will often get a $15-$25 1in-2out splitter that explicitly advertises that it has "HDCP bypass". I am in the process of getting some of these and testing them. Historically I've had luck with such devices.

I am currently using an HDMI breakout box that works available on Amazon

Driver workaround

There are ways to tell your graphics driver to refuse to speak HDCP. This will stop you from being able to show things like licensed video at all, but will fix the recording problem.

I have not investigated this in detail, and cannot currently give any recommendations. Let me know if you have luck with this approach!

Other notes

I've seen people say that displayport connections can't (even if then connecting to HDMI) negotiate HDCP. If you mess around with this and have success, let me know.