Getting Started with Sonar

Sonar gives you a clear, real-time picture of how accessible your video libraries actually are. Instead of digging through platforms one by one, Sonar lets you connect your sources once and then does the heavy lifting for you—scanning everything, surfacing the biggest risks, and showing exactly where to focus.

To get started, you first have to connect your video platforms. You can reach this page by selecting 'Sonar' in your main dashboard's sidebar.

You can add YouTube channels using multiple methods:

To connect Panopto, simply enter your Panopto instance URL and authenticate. The 'Save & Sign In' button will take you to Panopto to verify your connection.

Connect your Kaltura account to scan videos hosted there.

Sonar will validate that it has all necessary permissions before continuing.

Once sources are connected, click Scan to analyze your video library. Sonar checks each video for:

Click 'Email me when ready' during the scan to receive a notification when it completes.

You may also 'Rescan' any library or specific channel at any time by clicking the 'Rescan' button in your toolbar in the top right. This button also allows you to set-up weekly auto-scans, so Sonar will keep your data up-to-date in the background.
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After a scan completes, Sonar displays your compliance data across several visualizations in the main page.

The top bar shows key metrics at a glance: total videos scanned, compliance percentage, and videos requiring attention.

A matrix showing videos grouped by issue type and view count. Higher-risk videos (many views, no captions) appear in darker cells.

See the compliance status of your videos grouped by upload date. This chart shows whether recently uploaded videos are more or less compliant than older content, helping you identify if compliance practices are improving or declining over time.

See which folders or channels have the highest concentration of accessibility issues. Larger blocks indicate more videos needing attention.

A ranked list of your highest-impact videos with accessibility problems, prioritized by view count.
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Click the Media Table bar at the bottom of the screen to open the table. It slides up to fill the screen. You can also click any chart element to filter the table to those specific videos for deeper investigation.

The table shows:

Select multiple videos using checkboxes for bulk actions. Click the bar again to collapse the table back to the bottom.

Select videos with issues and click 'Remediate' to send them for professional captioning or audio description. Videos enter your standard processing workflow and return compliant once complete.

For bulk remediation, select multiple videos from the media table. Sonar calculates the total cost based on your organization's pricing.
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For YouTube videos, the checkout dialog shows which videos can auto-publish back to YouTube:

If all selected videos require manual upload, you'll see a warning explaining that auto-publish isn't available, but files will still be generated for manual transfer and made available in your main Dashboard.

Generate professional accessibility reports for stakeholders.

Click Export PDF from the top toolbar. Configure which sections to include:

Every institution has their own goals - the Compliance Policy feature within Sonar allows you to customize what counts as compliant or non-compliant for your organization, personalizing all reports.

Click the Policy button in the top toolbar. Select which issues to penalize:

Toggle issues on or off. Checked issues count as non-compliant in your metrics. Charts and statistics update immediately to reflect your policy.

Clue is an AI assistant that helps you understand your accessibility data. Find Clue in the right column of the Sonar dashboard.
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Type natural language questions about your data:

"How many videos have no captions?"

"Which folder has the most accessibility issues?"

"What should I fix with $500?"

Clue queries your scan data in depth and provides specific answers with video titles and recommendations.

Ask Clue to prioritize videos within a budget. It calculates exactly which videos to remediate based on impact and cost.

When Clue mentions specific videos, ask to see them. Clue opens the media table filtered to those exact videos.

Your conversations with Clue are completely private. The data is not used for training and nobody can see your chat history except you.

Sonar can automatically process videos without manual intervention. Click the Automate button in the top toolbar to access automation features.

Create rules to automatically caption videos that match specific criteria.

Click Automate > Automation Rules to open the automation panel. Click Create Rule to set up a new automation.

Each rule requires:

Available Conditions:

From the automation panel, you can:

Rules run automatically when new videos are detected during daily scans. Matching videos are submitted for captioning without requiring manual selection.

For Kaltura connections, Sonar can automatically re-caption videos when they're edited in the source integration. This can be enabled with the "Redo Edited Entries" toggle in the Automation menu.

When enabled, if a Kaltura entry is edited using the Kaltura video editor (trimming, clipping, etc.), Sonar will automatically resubmit that entry for captioning. This is useful for maintaining caption accuracy when video content is modified after initial captioning. The re-caption ensures captions stay synchronized with the updated video timeline.

Note: This feature only triggers when the edit changes the video duration. Minor metadata edits won't trigger a re-caption.