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Time to Move to Stream for SharePoint
The formal date for general availability for Stream on SharePoint was October 12, 2022.. According to Microsoft 365 notification MC496849 (12 Jan 2023), Microsoft will retire the original (classic) version of the Stream video app on February 15, 2024. After making the migration tool to move videos to Stream for SharePoint available last October and continuing to roll out features to make Stream on SharePoint functionally equivalent, Microsoft considers that it’s appropriate to start the shutdown clock.
Users won’t be able to upload new content to Stream classic after May 15, 2023, and will lose access to the Stream classic app after October 15, 2023. Microsoft plans to release an update to allow organizations to adjust these dates through the Stream admin center sometime in February. However, nothing will stop the final shutdown happening in February 2024. At that point, Microsoft will block access to Stream classic for everyone and remove any video content that tenants fail to migrate. For more information about Stream migration and the retirement timeline, see this article.
Interestingly, Stream users in all tenants will see a button to allow them to upload videos to Stream on SharePoint from January 18, 2023. This is a small hint to end users that Stream for SharePoint is the future.
Stream Live Events
Stream live events are an exception to the retirement strategy. I’m unsure if this aspect of Streams classic ever got much traction but no doubt some tenants use the functionality. Microsoft is pointing people to Teams live events with external encoder support as the replacement. Microsoft says that they will announce a retirement date for Stream live events sometime in the first quarter of 2023 and allow tenants six months to prepare before terminating the service.
Stream on SharePoint More of a Service than an App
As I have noted before, Stream on SharePoint is fundamentally different to Stream classic. The original Stream followed the template laid down by the Office 365 Video app. Stream classic created the same kind of portal powered by Azure media services and Azure blob storage. Apart from the obvious storage relocation, Stream on SharePoint is much more about delivering video services throughout Microsoft 365 than being a standalone video management app. Deep connections with SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Viva Connections, Yammer, and Teams mark the new Stream approach to making its services for video capture, storage, and replay available throughout Microsoft 365. The new Stream video player (Figure 1) is an example – it’s called to play videos throughout Microsoft 365.
Video is a steadily increasing presence within Microsoft 365. Recent examples include the introduction of video messages (1 minute maximum) in Teams chat and video stories (3 minutes maximum) in the Yammer storyline. Yammer stores its video in user OneDrive for Business accounts, but Teams video chats are not captured in SharePoint (yet). Eventually, I anticipate that all video content created by Microsoft 365 users will be in SharePoint storage. It just makes sense.
Where’s Clipchamp?
The position of Clipchamp in Microsoft 365 is still not as obvious as people perhaps expected it to be following Microsoft’s acquisition of the company in September 2021. Stream includes basic video recording and effects functionality without the sophisticated editing capabilities available in Clipchamp, which proclaims itself to be “the new video editor from Microsoft 365” (personal). However, there’s still no sign of a Clipchamp service plan in any of the Office 365 SKUs.
On to Stream 2.0
Migrations can be painful projects. In the case of Stream classic, the migration tools do a fair job and the overall process appears to be working well. Some might complain about minor losses in functionality (like videos no longer being owned by Microsoft 365 groups), but overall this migration is not difficult. Video is becoming pervasive across Microsoft 365. All we need now is a nice video editor to make everyone as good as they can possibly look.
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Microsoft is extremely quiet about the trimming feature that is missing in Stream 2.0. It existed in Stream classic but is still not available in the new one.
Hi Tony, great work keeping us informed! Did not fully examine it yet, but no Office 365 groups own videos(Some might complain about minor losses in functionality (like videos no longer being owned by Microsoft 365 groups)), you still assign regular sharepoint groups (including office 365 groups) to have full control, am I right? Can you please elaborate on this?
The way things work in the new Stream is that you store videos in SharePoint sites – that’s the equivalent of managing them through Groups.
Fun times! Our company has “only” 1,349 videos in Stream (classic) and we are starting the work now to test the migration process. One interesting discovery is that some videos stored in Stream (classic) cannot be edited or deleted. I am the owner of three of these videos plus I am the admin – yet I don’t have any option to change the permissions, edit the title and description or even delete the video. I can edit permissions on most videos owned by other users including the many “Call with…” recordings. Any idea if these locked videos will get migrated?
I don’t know if locked videos will be migrated. You could try (it won’t hurt). And if they don’t, ask Microsoft Support. They’ll be able to get the engineers involved if all else fails.