Help / For instructors and staff
The instructor portal
Everything here happens in a browser. You do not need a headset to do any of it.
One-time setup, about five minutes
- Create your account. Sign up on this site. There is nothing to request and no approval step. You become an instructor by creating a class.
- Create a class.Classes, then Create class. Name it the way your students would recognize it, for example “NUR 210 Spring.”
- Upload a lesson and you are done. Everything else on this page is detail.
Uploading a lesson
- Export as MP4, H.265, web optimized. The encoding guide has the exact settings, and the filming guide covers the reasoning.
- Open your class and choose Upload video.
- The file is checked before the upload starts. If something would not play on a headset, you get a plain description of the problem and how to fix it, at your desk, rather than a broken lesson in class.
- Give it a title and pick monoscopic or 3D. Multi-gigabyte files are normal. The upload resumes by itself if your connection hiccups, so leave the tab open and let it run.
- The lesson publishes automatically when the upload finishes.
Managing a library
- Unpublish hides a lesson without deleting it. Headsets remove the file from disk on their next refresh, which frees space.
- Reorder with the up and down arrows. The order students see is the order you set.
- Replace a video and paired headsets pick up the new version automatically the next time the app is open on Wi-Fi.
- Delete removes it entirely.
Unpublish is the useful one. Turning a lesson off before a unit and back on after it keeps each headset's library small and keeps students pointed at what you are actually teaching.
Getting students in
Most programs should use the cart pattern, and it needs no student accounts at all.
Pair each headset once to your own account, using the six character code the headset shows and the Pair headset page here. That headset now sees every class you own and downloads their lessons on its own. Students pick up a headset, put it on, and the library is there. Nothing to sign into, no join code, no account per student.
This is the right choice for a lab cart, and it is what we recommend. The headset guide covers the mechanics.
When you would want student accounts instead
Only when you need to know which individual watched what, or when students keep a headset of their own. In that case each student signs in to the portal, pairs their headset the same way, and enters your class join code once to enroll. The join code exists for exactly this case and nothing else.
The trade-off is honest: per student accounts give you named watch data, and cost you a few minutes of setup per student. A cart gives you class-level data and costs nothing.
One current limit worth planning around
Pairing attaches a headset to your account, not to a single class. If you teach three courses, a paired headset sees all three libraries and downloads all of them. With one or two classes you will not notice. If you run a cart shared across several courses, keep lessons for the course you are not currently teaching unpublished, which keeps each headset lean. We are working on pairing a headset to a specific class.
Knowing the headsets are ready
Open your class and look at the Headsets panel. Every paired device reports what it actually has on disk, not what it was told to download.
- “Ready, all 4 videos” means that headset is prepared.
- “2/4” tells you exactly which lessons are missing.
- Free space is listed per device.
- Each row shows when the headset last reported in, and which app version it is running.
This is worth checking the afternoon before class. It is the difference between finding out at your desk and finding out with 20 students waiting.
Watch data
Vantura records a watch session when a viewer leaves a video, finishes it, or the headset goes to sleep. Paused time is excluded, so the duration reflects time actually watching. You will see this per video and per student on the class page.
Two honest caveats. Sessions are recorded per account, so on a shared cart account the data tells you the class watched a lesson, not which individual did. And a student who removes the headset mid-lesson banks the time they watched, then the app waits for them rather than playing on.
Storage and what students can see
Students see only the classes they are enrolled in, and only published lessons in those classes. Enrollment is checked on the server every time, not just in the interface.
Each headset works within roughly an 80 GB budget. If a new download needs room, the least-recently-watched files are removed first and re-downloaded later if needed. Large 8K libraries are where you notice this, and unpublishing superseded lessons is the fix.
When something looks wrong
- The upload warned about web optimization or faststart. Re-export with that option on, or run
ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -c copy -movflags +faststart out.mp4. - A student sees an old version of a lesson. Have them open the app on Wi-Fi. Replacements download automatically.
- A headset shows storage full. Unpublish lessons you are no longer teaching.
- A headset is stuck on an old build.The Headsets panel shows each device's app version. If it does not match the others, that headset needs its update from the Meta library.