Manual migration from Stream to SharePoint

You will have noticed I am currently trying to find out as much as possible about the consequences of the decommissioning of Microsoft Stream.

There is no hurry, as only the Targeted Release has been able to redirect the Stream tile to SharePoint, and the standard release will only be able to do it from July 2022 onwards. When Stream will be disabled, no one knows, but I guess it will at least be a year until that happens.

Still, I like to be prepared and to know what will happen exactly, before I do something that has unpleasant side effects. And I guess you will want to know, too! So, let me save you some time by doing some experiments.

If I would still be working at the mental health care organization (I retired in January) I would have moved my small video collection manually from Stream to SharePoint in the upcoming summer period.
I owned just a few instruction videos, and although I would miss the likes and views that my videos received on Stream, those are not really important.
I can imagine that there are more small pockets in organizations that feel that way.

Migrating manually (Downloading to PC and uploading to SharePoint) will result in some data loss but it may offset the freedom to to this at your own time. Also, it will save the project manager time and complexity.
One of my readers asked what will happen to transcripts, comments and stuff. I have not used the migration tool that Microsoft will provide. But I can check what happens when you do a manual migration.

Hey ho, let’s go! (Hello, former colleague Annica, I hope you are well)

Test setup

1. I have recorded a Teams meeting with a transcript. By default, this video has been stored in my OneDrive. I have also added a comment.
   A recorded Teams meeting may sound like a limited business case but we have created many instruction videos this way.
2. I have downloaded it to my PC and uploaded it to Stream (Classic). There I liked the video, added a comment and a Form.
3. I have downloaded it from Stream and uploaded to a SharePoint library. This will be the scenario for a manual migration.
4. I have copied the OneDrive file to a SharePoint library, just to see if there is any difference.
5. I have also downloaded the file from OneDrive and uploaded it to SharePoint, without the Stream step.

Let’s see what happens with transcripts, number of views, Forms and comments. It is already known that “likes” from Stream (Classic) will not be a feature of Stream (on SharePoint).

1. OneDrive

When I open the video the transcript pops up immediately.

I do not get a signal that there is a comment, but that may be because I added it myself. I can open the comment section and read my comment.

2. OneDrive > download > Stream

When I download the video and upload it to Stream, and open it there, the transcript is shown top right. It has timing next to it. Please note I added comments and the like after this video was uploaded to Stream, as well as a Form.
The comment from OneDrive has disappeared.

3. Stream > download > SharePoint (manual migration scenario)

This leaves you with the plain video – the likes, comment from Stream, transcript and the Form are not migrated. That is strange, as the download from OneDrive to Stream migrated the transcript.

When I enable the transcript, I have the option to generate a new transcript in English, or to upload the transcription file in any language.

When the video-to-be-migrated has a transcript in Stream, you can download that by going to the video, clicking the … underneath the video, selecting “Update video details”, and then you can select to download the captions.

It is a VTT file that you can use to upload in SharePoint. It will provide you with a timed transcript.

I have also generated a new transcript and this looks almost the same as my original transcript, and it is timed, but the times are slightly different. It is nice that it can be done, but it will be extra work, of course.

I have looked at the Library settings to see if I could enable the transcript option by default, but could not find it. Perhaps I need to add a content type Video, but I could not add new content types. Someone with more experience in content types may want to jump in!!!

4. OneDrive > copy > SharePoint

When I do the regular Copy To from my OneDrive to the shared SharePoint library, the transcript (not timed) is copied and opens up when the video starts playing.

And also the comment from OneDrive has been copied.

5. OneDrive > download > SharePoint

Downloading the file removes the transcript and the comment, so this is really not a good idea.

Conclusions

When looking at my proposed manual migration scenario, please be aware of the following:

1. Likes, number of views and comments from Stream will not be migrated when downloaded and uploaded to SharePoint. For Likes this is already known, for views it is obvious, for comments it was a surprise.
2. You can see the number of (new) views in the details pane.
3. Forms will not be migrated – you will have to create a new SharePoint page and add the video and the Form as separate web parts. (Let’s hope better options will be developed)
4. Transcripts will not be migrated to SharePoint and you will have to activate the option after upload of each video.
5. You have two options to create the transcript:
   1. You can create a new transcript in SharePoint automatically when the language is English
   2. You can download the transcript from Stream and then upload it to SharePoint for all other languages.

This scenario will not work for everyone, and perhaps, knowing all this, you now want to use the Microsoft Migration tool even more! No problem, now you can explain why you want this, without having to do the investigations yourself!

Coming up next:

Next time I will show the differences in video creation using Stream, Teams and OneDrive.