Panopto or Zoom?
Which should you use for teaching online?
Zoom and Panopto allow you to create recordings of online meetings, but they have different strengths and meet different needs for online work and teaching.
Panopto was designed mainly for lecture capture, so its features work best for creating a long-term, easy-to-view recording that integrates smoothly with Canvas.
Zoom was designed for online meetings, so its features emphasize interactivity and engagement during the meeting session itself. Zoom is able to record meetings to the Zoom cloud or to your local computer.
Review the feature comparison below to determine how and where to best use each tool. Both tools are available at no cost to UW faculty, students and staff.
Learn more about UW Panopto and UW Zoom
Feature / Tool | Zoom | Panopto |
Join by phone | Yes | No |
Interactive discussions |
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Easy sharing of recordings |
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Playback features |
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Learn more about Panopto playback |
Display control |
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User view | Active speaker view (default)
Gallery view: all meeting participants visible simultaneously |
Users can view two screens. By default, the main screen (PC) / secondary source (Mac) is larger, but users can choose which source is larger, or display a full screen of one source. |
Chat | Each user can post a question or comment during the meeting to everyone in the meeting or to an individual participant. This chat conversation can be saved to the local computer when the meeting ends. |
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Breakout rooms | Yes, meeting host can create. | No. |
Mobile friendly | Yes. Download the Zoom mobile app. | Yes. Panopto is working to improve the mobile experience. |
Recording lifespan | Deleted after 90 days when recording to the Zoom cloud.
Meeting host can also record to local computer. Recording can be downloaded from cloud or local computer. |
Deleted from the Panopto cloud after 5 years. |
Students can schedule and start study sessions | Yes | No |