Zoom or Panopto?

Comparing Lecture Capture Tools Panopto or Zoom

Which tool 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. Review this side-by-side comparison of Panopto and Zoom to determine which lecture capture tool is right for your online teaching needs.

Panopto was designed for lecture capture

Panopto's features work best for creating long-term, secure recordings that integrate with our Courses LMS.

Zoom was designed for online meetings

Zoom's features emphasize interactivity and engagement during the live meeting sessions. 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 Pepperdine University faculty, students, and staff.

Head-to-Head Comparison

Table of Feature Comparisons between Zoom and Panopto
Feature/Tool	Zoom	Panopto
Join by phone	Yes.	No.
Interactive discussions	Yes. Zoom is designed for interactive discussions. Up to 300 participants. Unlimited meeting duration.	Panopto is not designed for interactive discussions. Viewers can type questions in the Discussion section. Webcasting has a slight time delay and does not include the same interactive features as Zoom.
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.	Users can post questions and make comments via the viewer window during a live broadcast. Viewers can also take public and private notes during a broadcast. Questions, comments, and notes are stored after the broadcast.
Easy sharing of recordings	Zoom recordings can be stored in the cloud and hosts can easily share recordings with participants afterward. Zoom recordings can be shared in Courses via the Zoom Pro tool in class sites.	Panopto recordings can be shared in Courses or Panopto.
Recording retention	Zoom recordings have a six-month (182-day) retention period. Zoom recordings for professors can be set for automatic backup to Panopto.	Panopto recordings have a five-year retention period.
Playback Features	Variable speed playback. Search within recordings. Automated captioning.	Variable speed playback. Search within recordings. Review previous 10 seconds. Add notes. Bookmark a place in the recording. Automate captioning. Learn more about Panopto playback.
Video Quiz	No, but Zoom does offer polling within a live session.	Yes. Panopto video creators can add quiz questions within a video to reinforce learning and promote engagement.
Display control	Presenter's computer screen. Presenter's talking head. View both talking head and computer screen simultaneously.	Presenter's computer screen. Presenter's talking head. View both talking head and computer screen simultaneously.
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.
Breakout rooms	Yes, the meeting host can create and facilitate breakout rooms.	No.
Students can schedule and start study sessions	Yes.	No.

*Adapted with permission from the University of Washington's IT Connect