Bulk Panopto Downloader

Dependencies

It's recommended to create a virtual environment for running this (and, in fact, most python things):

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

Install all dependencies via

pip install -r requirements.txt

Authentication

First, you need to have a Panopto API client. Log into Panopto and from User Settings click on API Clients and then Create a New API Client. My settings for the client are as follows:

Namely, the CORS Origin URL should be set to https://localhost and the Redirect URL to http://localhost:9127/redirect.

It'll then show you the client ID, name, and client secret. Copy these values down to a new JSON file with the following structure:

{
  "name": "<your client name here>",
  "client_id": "...",
  "client_secret": "...",
}

Save the JSON file in a known secure directory. By default, the script will look for this file as ~/.panopto_tokens.

Configuration

All configuration for this script is stored as constants at the top of download.py.

DOWNLOAD_DESTINATION: Location for the downloads. A directory tree mirroring what you have access to in Panopto will be created here. Panopto folders with slashes will be renamed to have dashes instead.

CREDS_FILE: The path to the API client credentials (see above).

SERVER: The domain for the panopto server to download from, excluding protocol (https, etc.)

SKIP_FOLDERS: List of names of any folders you want to skip.

Running

Main entry point is download.py. Run it with

python download.py

No command line arguments are required, as all configuration is via variables in the script.

Debugging

The default log level is INFO, overridable via the init_logger function in download.py. Setting the log level to DEBUG gives you WAY more info on the console, but also disables the actual file downloads. Helpful in case something goes horribly wrong.

Caveats and Notes

• A lot of this script was a number of modifications on top of an example set of scripts I found a while back. My fork of that (included in this repository) has substantially diverged from that, but may still have some crusty bits around the edges.

• The embedded Panopto library contains more than just download, including delete, rename, and more. The downloaded only uses the read-only methods.

• The Panopto API rate limits at 100 / minute (or at least UW's does). The default rate limit in this downloaded is set at 80% of that to provided a little wiggle room. Override this via the REQUESTS_PER_MINUTE constant at the top of panopto/panopto_client.py.

• The downloader makes a crude attempt at determining whether or not to download a given session: if the Content-Length in the session's headers matches the on-disk file size, then the download is skipped. For various reasons, this is not entirely accurate, but does an "okay" job.

• This script is provided AS-IS, and as such the user should assume no support from the author.

Known Bugs

• The local directory tree currently doesn't mirror the hierarchy in Panopto. Local paths are based on the remote folders' names rather than paths.