Use Playlists to create collections of video or audio files in Microsoft 365

We use this template a lot, but there are some significant issues:

Owner column. Not needed and we really do not want our 10,000+ users seeing who created it or last edited anything about it. Have to delete it every time.

Display Order. Would be a great column to include, so we can add a sequence. Have to add it every time.

Description. Should be included and populate from Stream in All Items view.

View Count. I really want to have this as a column if not in the Playlist View. This is a basic metric management wants to see for our videos.

I'd also like to be able to add columns in the list that use the Stream data but I haven't been able to locate that. We have a growing library of videos for learning and we need to easily manage data at the source (Stream) but also track other data about them, without having to constantly fuss with playlists.

Does anyone know where the link to the video is stored in the Playlist?  If I look at the 'All Items' view and hover over the Thumbnail, it has the link to play the video.  However, if you view the details for an item, the Thumbnail column only contains the link to the Thumbnail image.  From what I can tell, the video link doesn't seem to be embedded within that Thumbnail data.  If you copy the thumbnail URL into a browser, it simply downloads the thumbnail image. There's no column or reference to the Video URL there.

For background: I am using the PnP Search web parts to search the playlist and can return items from the list, but the link on the returned item(s) opens the playlist item.  I would like to map a Managed Property to the actual URL to the video so that when a user clicks the link on a returned video, it plays the video (not just opening the item details).  I've mapped all sorts of Crawled Properties that may contain that data (ows_Thumbnail, ows_VideoLink, etc.) and none contain the actual video link.  The video link has to be stored somewhere in the list (and as such should be indexed by search), but I can find nothing...   

Another limitation/bug is that it is impossible to change the column formatting in any way. Even changing the letter "e" in one example of "elmType" to the letter "e" results in the list showing the error: "Something went wrong undefined is not valid JSON". The simplest changes result in this error. Another example, cut all or part of the text in the column formatting box and paste it back unchanged and this error will be the result. If the list is completely empty the error does not appear but as soon as one of more videos are added, the error is shown. So it is not possible to change anything in this templates list formatting. It actually breaks sharepoint as the gear icon at the top of the page will only show "Sharepoint loading" and not any of the normal options like "List settings".

I have tried doing similar things with other Microsoft templates such as "Issue Tracker" and unsurprisingly changing a "{" to "{" or "e" to "e" doesn't break the template. How the Playlist template knows that the letter "e" has been changed to the letter "e" and therefore should not work is a mystery and why anyone at Microsoft should  think this is a necessary feature is also a mystery but there we are.

Thanks for the video. This was really helpful. I have noticed two limitations: you can´t share the recording via a link, only the whole playlist. Furthermore, the recording has to be saved locally. 

We usually used the Stream feature from Microsoft, which was great and exactly what we needed within our company. Unfortunately, this feature is not supported anymore and we can´t upload any recordings into our streams and have to use the playlist feature. Which has too many limitations for us. 

This is very helpful. The thing I like about the idea of using the playlist (if not the reality) is that the user can play the file directly on the page. I like the preview aspect. The list option doesn't seem to allow for this. Anyway, back to work... thank you. Hopefully Stream will continue to be developed so it's easier to use for training purposes.

The videos are stored in a document library ("Recordings") in the same SharePoint site. I created a site column called "Topics" which is a choice column. That's the one pain is that when MS rolls out a new app or product that I might need to train on or blog about, I need to add it to the column's list of choices.

Anyway, that site column is added to the Recordings library as well as Site pages. So, that's where I "tag" the videos and posts. Integrated tagging is one of the Stream "classic" features that isn't baked into Stream on SharePoint (yet). Personally, I found Stream classic to be confusing and generally a pain to use. I much prefer storing the content in SharePoint where I know how to leverage things like permissions and metadata.

Chad_V_Kealey one more question for you: Where are you tagging the video? In Stream? I would like to do that too so that videos are easier to search. Thanks

That's very helpful. Thanks. I looked everywhere for samples for what I want to do so I really appreciate the github share. I tend to avoid lists because they look so... list like. But it's good to see your formatting as there may be more potential than I give them credit for. Thanks too for the screenshot. Again, for me the title and thumbnail with no context doesn't do it but your titles are fairly specific.  know what I'm going to get in a session about Sharepoint versus Office 365 session. The sessions I'm sharing are less obvious (at least to me).

I hear ya...it's not easy. What might work out better for you is starting with a basic SharePoint list and including columns for the description and links to the video and PowerPoint. You could then use some list view formatting to make it look the way you want. There's even a sample out there you could use (or customize): https://github.com/pnp/List-Formatting/tree/master/view-samples/video-gallery

FWIW, I maintain a site for our M365-related trainings. For each workshop, there's a page like the one below that has an overview, link to sign up (through another system), resource links, past session recordings and blog posts. The session recordings are stored in a document library and tagged with the topic (e.g.: SharePoint, Teams, etc.) and type (course recording, tip/trick, etc.) and then I use a Highlighted Content web part that filtered to the page topic. Same thing with the blog posts, but those are "news posts" from the site pages library (also tagged with the topic). It's worked out really well and with the filtered HCWPs, all I need to do is appropriately tag the videos and blog posts as I upload or publish them.

Thank you, Chad. I'm not sure whether to be relieved (that I wasn't completely missing something) or frustrated by this--maybe both. As someone who is trying to create a site of training materials, I want people to be able to access information about a video and not just encounter an overwhelming wealth of videos with no context. Sadly, I'll probably go back to building a text-based catalog in Sharepoint. I also need to share the Powerpoint for each video as this is required for accessibility/inclusion.