M365 Changelog: Changes to Search in Microsoft Stream (Classic)

MC279467 – You are receiving this message because Microsoft’s reporting indicates that one or more users in your organization are using Microsoft Stream (Classic).

Starting September 20, 2021, and on an ongoing basis, your Microsoft Stream (Classic) users may be unable to view, search, or edit automatically generated transcripts for newly uploaded videos OR videos that were not uploaded, edited, or viewed during the prior six (6) months (three (3) months if you are a customer in the eastern United States data center). Transcripts will be automatically regenerated when a video gets a new view or when a user with owner rights to the video updates the video details to automatically regenerate the transcript (the video will need to have at least 1 new view).

For your reference, this is an update to prior Message center posts:

• MC234079 and MC248965 for eastern United States data center
• MC241595 for northern Europe data center

Note: this does not apply to,

• Automatically generated transcripts that have been edited
• Transcripts that have been manually uploaded to Stream (Classic)
• Videos that have been uploaded, edited, or viewed within the past six months

When this will happen:

Beginning September 20, 2021

How this will affect your organization:

This change affects newly uploaded videos, automatically generated transcripts that are unedited, and videos that were last uploaded, edited, or viewed more than six (6) (or three (3) for eastern United States) months ago, with the six-month (or three-month) period being calculated on a rolling, ongoing basis.

As an example, if a video with auto-generated transcripts goes unwatched in the six (6) months following its upload, the auto-generated transcript will become unavailable. (The video will remain available.) However, a transcript will automatically be regenerated when the video gets a new view, or, when a user with owner rights to the video updates the video details to automatically regenerate the transcript (the video will need to have at least 1 view in this case).

Please note the following points:

• Transcripts that were edited by users, as well as transcripts and subtitle files uploaded by users, will continue to be available.
• Transcripts will be available for download by video owners via the video edit page for all videos.
• Videos will not be removed.
• Users will be able to view closed captions for all videos.
• If a video owner wants others to be able to view, search, or edit transcripts for videos for which the automatically- generated transcript is impacted, the owner may regenerate a transcript by unchecking and rechecking the “Autogenerate captions” option in the update video settings page. Afterwards, the transcript will be displayed again in the player page for viewing, searching, and editing – only if the video has at least 1 view.
• For newly uploaded videos, transcripts won’t be automatically generated. But, transcripts will be automatically generated as soon as a new video gets at least 1 view.

What you need to do to prepare:

Microsoft suggests you notify your users about this change and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

• You may be interested in moving your organization to use the new Microsoft Stream (built on SharePoint), which stores videos in OneDrive for Business.
• Read more about updates to transcript functionality in Microsoft Stream (Classic).

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us via a support ticket.Help and support