This original drawing of the Project Cartoon never gets old, and is actually a clever overview of the product lifecycle for any Product Manager, new or old.  There are a few additional versions of this cartoon but this is my favorite.

I keep this as a reminder that the product we’re building must be extremely simple and addresses the gap we’re aiming to fill, even when the comfy sofa chair sounds really appealing.  And, trust me – when you’re working over several months with Flex and HTML 5, desktop and mobile apps, feeds and commentary, it does get easy to drift off course a bit.  Good thing I have this toon where I can see it everyday. :)

I’ve been offline on my blog for a couple of months given that I have taken on a new position at my company, as the Product Manager of a very sexy and successful multimedia platform.  Since joining a team of very sharp and bright folks, the work has been non-stop.  In less than two weeks I wrote over thirty user stories and probably double that many wireframes.  Agile and so organized, our developers are spinning out new requests into our QA environment every few days.  And, I’ve moved to a nice view overlooking Times Square, so I’ve got going for me, which is nice.

Unfortunately, my job has indirect association with our own Online Video Platform in-house, so I have stopped reviewing third-party OVPs for the time being.  It was an important realization when some big OVP providers recently contacted me for help on how different OVPs compare.  Instead, I’ve been pouring everything I’ve got into the next version of our platform, which is due at the beginning of December.  It is sure to wow our customers and its only getting better.

Kaltura: http://corp.kaltura.com

In the jungle of OVPs, Kaltura is one of three open source video platforms according to our trusted resource, VidCompare.com.  Among the experts and journalists in the U.S., Kaltura holds rank among the most popular OVP providers, sharing press with Ooyala, KIT Digital, and Brightcove.  And, you’ll find Kaltura sharing industry insight into hot topics like DRM, mobile, and tablet delivery, as well as being a founding member of the ‘Open Video Alliance’ (www.openvideoalliance.org).

So, what makes Kaltura’s OVP stand out?  Well, from my review of their 30-day trial SaaS offering below, Kaltura offers more flexibility than most OVPs that will likely appeal to the technically saavy user or service provider.  With a role-based content management backend that provides batch processing of media files, content moderation, and insight into content origin, activity and usage, this OVP should be on the short list of anyone who wants more granular control over their content, their contributors, and the software that supports it all.

Getting Started

The SaaS trial is as straight forward quick to set up as other OVP vendors I have tried.  The site, supported by IE, Firefox, and Chrome, requires Flash to load the management interface but no additional plugins to get started.  Kaltura follows the simple-is-beautiful philosophy we have come to know from open source: the user is presented with a very clean dashboard that contains the big five: Upload Conent, Embed Content, Customize Features, Analytics, and Account/Billing.  Let it be known that I admire simplicity in this case and quote Linus Tovalds, as he said, “you should absolutely not dismiss simplicity for something easy. It takes design and good taste to be simple.”1

Getting content onto the platform is step numero uno, and uploading from the desktop is full of options.  Before you upload content, you have the option of choose Default, Source Only, and All Flavors.  Kaltura’s definition of flavor would help before we continue: “A flavor is a single output file with its specific file type, bitrate, GOP size, etc.“  While there is no description of the options I just described, a quick check of the Quickstart Guide reveals that these options are transcoding profiles to use in this upload session.  A separate review of the Kaltura online help guide (click the question mark at the top-right hand corner of any section within Kaltura) told me that the Default Profile, will transcode uploaded files into the flavors selected in the main transcoding Settings page (see manage and publishing below).  Source Only and All Flavors were not described in the online help, but an educated guess and some quick testing in the application confirmed my suspicions: Source Only will only upload the source file, but not transcode it; the All Flavors option, as you might guess, would transcode the video into all flavors available, but that wasn’t the case.  Instead of hunting online for an answer, I selected the Default dropdown with the option of converting to other formats and flavors later.

Once you have chosen your transcoding profile option, you can select multiples of video, audio, and photos in one tab; a second tab allows for capturing video via webcam and uploading directly into the content manager; a third tab allows you to search and retrieve multiple videos from Metacafe.  The Metacafe option, while appreciated, is very limited and may address your needs if you are searching for specific content quickly and easily – see Figure 2 below.  I was searching for specific videos in a series and struggled to find the exact ones I was looking for without titles or descriptions available on the page.  The video’s properties (description, running time, brief summary, etc.) can be revealed my mousing over the thumbnail, and can be overwhelming at times depending on how it is set up in Metacafe.  I recommend you narrow down your search in Metacafe first before searching in the OVP.

Kaltura offers bulk import from remote sites as well.  This option is a shout out to users who probably are tasked with consolidating the large amounts of video content in different locations now that his/her organization has invested in Kaltura.  A comma-delimited file made available from the import page can easily be opened in Google Docs or Microsoft Office as a spreadsheet for editing.  I have provided a sample here.  For the purposes of this trial, I just used the URLs listed in the .csv file and uploaded that specific content.  As the sample file specifies this process accepts HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP sources.  The upload status is monitored through a progress window and eventually a log file and copy of the csv file are made available for troubleshooting or for historical records of uploaded content.  The log file came in handy when I was wondering where my copy of, “Companies to Watch” was not listed in the results.  A quick check of the log file showed there was an error, claiming an, “invalid url” though I could copy and paste the same URL into a browser and retrieve the content multiple times without issue.  By the way, I recommend you avoid the “Humor” video included in Kaltura’s sample batch import file if you plan to demo Kaltura to your colleagues or senior management.

System Settings And Administration

Normally with our SaaS driven OVPs I dive into content straightaway, however I would like to spend a small amount of time reviewing the Settings tab on the far right of the to navigation, where your account, transcoding, and user settings are maintained.  Reviewing these settings first will help you better grasp some of the features and properties associated with managing and publishing your content.

• Account Settings provides info on accounts available in the Account Owner drop-down.  If you’re an Admin, you can review contact information (full name, email, phone), assign content categories, and additional info to fill-out one’s profile like a description of the account/person, whether that account will display adult content, etc.
• Integration Settings provides unique IDs to Kaltura, including your partner ID, which is “your site’s identification and ticket to the Kaltura platform and API, and will enable you to connect to Kaltura, display media, upload media and experience all of Kaltura’s functionality.” 2 
• Access Control, mentioned further down under Managing Your Content, allows you to set Access Control Profiles that limit where and how an account can publish content.
• Transcoding Settings, also mentioned below, helps define your Default transcoding types, or “Flavors” in Kaltura, that will help streamline your encoding quality requirements as you upload more and more content.
• Custom Data “allows you to map your metadata schema into Kaltura.  You can create metadata fields of various types (such as test, date, text select list, and entry ID reference).  For each entry, you can add the relevant values to your metadata fields.” 3
• My User Settings is the info page for your specific account, including your contact info and your role on the system.  For the purposes of the 30-day trial, my role was set to Publisher Administrator with full control over the account and user management functions.

Under Administration, you can edit existing users or add users and assign roles to the account.

Managing Your Content

On the Content tab, under manage, your library is presented in a thumbnail list and clicking on the video will drill into the video name to reveal of the different flavors. On the left-hand navigation are filters to help whittle down your choices based on tags and categories assigned to specific content in your library.  A word of warning though – be careful with filters.  A clear-filters option would be great to restore all content into view, but sadly it does not exist.  Scrolling through the options and unchecking them is the only option I could find.

Click into a specific video and you have options to change the metadata, thumbnails, access controls, scheduling, etc. – see Figure 3 below. Thumbnails has a very intuitive set of options and is actually a thumbnail library.  You can add a thumbnail from an uploaded image which is typical, grab from the chosen video or crop the existing one shown in the content list already.  Kaltura take a simple approach here – the thumbnail can be chosen from the video merely by playing and pausing to the location. For those looking for a perfect frame in the video you will probably need to compromise with the video player’s inability to scrub frame for frame. Once you have chosen your optimal frame, click the little camera icon in the bottom right-hand corner. The thumbnail is saved in the list of other thumbnail images.

Within the Access Control property, you have the option of assigning permissions to entitle certain users to view your content. By default any domain and any country are allowed. Adding a new profile gives you the ability to restrict where the content can appear by setting up blacklists (none of these sites can show my content, but all others can) or whitelists (only these sites can show my content but only the ones I list). For instance, I have set up a whitelist policy where the video content can only appear on chazdavis.com and vidcompare.com. Furthermore, you can restrict by country the same way with over 230 countries to choose from. So though my videos can appear on the two domains I allow, I will only let them be viewed by the United States, Canada, Iceland and Antartica – because I can.  Further down, Advanced Security & Pay-per-view is an option, offering a “higher level of security” for PPV models called, “server side secret (KS)”. Needs looking into. When enabled, you can provide viewers with a free preview of x number of minutes, seconds followed by a prompt to pay for continued viewing.

Flavors provides you with a list of transcoded versions of the source video file.  Its important to upload different breeds of video to test how the encoding of different “flavors” works.  For instance, I recorded a webcam video earlier however the resolution was limited to 640 x 480, so I uploaded an iPhone video at full 1280 x 720 resolution as was able to test encoding for more flavors.  You can input video to Kaltura as FLV, MP4, MOV, 3GP, MKV, AVC, OGG, WMV, ISM/ISMV, and AVI files.  After uploading, you can then serve your content as H.264 and VP6.  I was under the impression VP8 and OGG were also available but not in the trial from what I could see.  For a full list of supported media formats according to Kaltura, you can review their list here.

Other content properties include mixes and custom data, which unfortunately have no brief explanation in the GUI and are blank to start, so its tough to understand what purpose these features serve.  Thankfully, the online help will tell you that the Mixes screen will include a table that displays any and all video mixes of a particular file, whether it be video, audio, or an image.  Custom Data allows you to map your metadata schema into Kaltura, create metadata fields, and add the relevant values to your metadata fields.  Finally, Distribution allows you to create video packages for syndication among Kaltura partners.  By default, YouTube is already shown, and according to the online help, you can include other partners such as Hulu, Comcast, MySpace, and MSN.  Hopefully more partners are readily available as Hulu shops for a buyer and Myspace dies a slow, painful death (even though it just found a buyer).

Moderating Content is pretty self-explanatory in name.  As a curator of your content, you will want to make sure your contributors are providing media that fits your mission and is deemed appropriate.  Content that has been deemed inappropriate by a user or admin will be “flagged for review” and/or “pending moderation” will appear in the filtered pane.   A valuable feature for those who care about their users’ feedback.

Publishing Your Content

Content Playlists allow you to create a manual playlist or a rule-based one. A rule based playlist has so few steps involved it literally confused me for a minute. The filters navigation offers all of the content categories, and you can either add filter names separated by a comma in the field or cntrl+left-click individual categories, and then…thats it – just save and you have built your list. Too simple, and yet so efficient – love it.  The manual playlist is what you would expect – all your videos listed in the entries table (or your can use the filters) and just click the right arrow to pull them over to the playlist, left-arrow to put them back in the entries table – easy.  And finally, the playlist properties page provides not only the total number of entries but also adds up the entries total duration.

The Syndicate content page is fully explained at the top of the page: “Here you can maximize your content’s reach and generate traffic back to your site via external syndication. Through Kaltura’s integration with multiple distribition partners, you can distribute and track your videos on a wide range of search engines, video sharing sites and social networks.”  To get started, you will need to create a new feed and choose from the following four entries, Google, Yahoo!, iTunes, and TubeMogul.  You can choose your content flavor, provide a description, web site name, player design from the Studio option (description is further down), and multiple categories for your entry.

A word of warning though - creating a newsfeed for Google, Yahoo!, and iTunes requires some technical knowledge to leverage the landing page. Leveraging the landing page is a powerful SEO option, however I highly recommend you read Kaltura’s Help article on syndication to learn the necessary code changes on the customer end for the HTTP redirect.  TubeMogul is the only feed type that does not require a landing page and has the fewest number of options to get your content pushed.  By publishing your feed, you are prompted with a detailed explanation that basically says your content feed, and any future additions to the feed, will automatically be distributed to over 20 different portals, however you must have a Kaltura-TubeMogul account to add it to the TubeMogul MRSS Feed Manager.

The Studio tab is where you can design the look and feel of your player.  On the right-hand navigation you have the option of a new player:

• Single video
• Horizontal playlist
• Vertical playlist
• Multiple playlist
• Hovering controllers

See here for more detail on player templates.

I chose a player with a vertical playlist. There are about two dozen main options to customize the player, each with sub-options that really drill into the features and customize the player properties in detail. For instance, I set up a player that offers the viewer the ability to share, rate, and I also created a custom button (with the use of some custom JavaScript) that will send the viewer back to my web site when the custom button is clicked.   I do want to mention that I am disappointed with the sharing options of the trial and hope this is a result of a feature limit.  Jumping ahead to a preview, you can see there are over a dozen social sharing options, which is nice, but not only missing a microblog option for Twitter, but the number of options does not appear to be customizable.  Am I doomed to have Friendster and MySpace displayed on my sharing options permanently?  It appears so, but at least its colorful.

Unlike many OVPs I have tried, Kaltura slides its Ad options into the customization of the player. Enabling this option allows you to choose from the following ad sources: AdapTV, Tremor, Eye Wonder, and Vast. You can also set up custom flash and bumper ads. Each option provides you with an Ad Timeline to show you what content will be integrated with your video. I have to admit here I was lost on the configuration. Consulting the help section for advertising did not turn up answers either. I think here Kaltura expects you to you have prior knowledge to embedding ads or consult their professional services team.

Previewing and embedding your content is very straight forward – you can either choose to embed single videos or playlists. For this review, I have embedded a playlist using my custom player, which I made earlier. The preview screen shows a functional player of your choice from the dropdown (I chose my custom player created in the studio moments ago) and it provides options for content delivery and the final embed code. Regarding the content delivery, I will quote the Kaltura online help which explains this section nicely:

————————————-
To preview and get the embed code for any of the entries on the entries list click the “Preview & Embed” link under the Publish column on the main list of entries. In the new window that opens, you can preview the entry and select the player skin that you would like to use. To add the entry to your site, copy the embed code from the text box under the entry and paste it in your site.
In addition to selecting the player, you can select the delivery method in the flash player:

Progressive Download – Allows the user to pause the video playback and wait for the content to download. Typically used where viewers have very limited bandwidth.

Adaptive Streaming (RTMP) – Allows adaptive bitrate. The player can adjust the video quality on the fly based on network and CPU conditions. Based on RTMP protocol.

Akamai HD Network – Allows adaptive bitrate. The player can adjust the video quality on the fly based on network and CPU conditions. Based on Akamai CDN technology.

For mobile support:

A device that has flash enabled (such as Android) is supported through the flash player.
A device without flash enabled (such as iPhone, iPad) is supported through a native player.

This requires a specific encoding flavor (iPhone, iPad). To transcode a file to this flavor, go to the Edit Entry window’s Flavors tab.
To enable mobile flavors for transcoding, please contact your account manager.
————————————-

To help you choose the best delivery option, I recommend checking out Jan Ozer’s article on Onlinevideo.net for a sample of what he covers in his new book, Video Compression for Flash, App Devices and HTML5.  If you’re still unsure of the delivery type to use, then speak with your video encoding specialist as you will want to choose the best option for your viewers.  Personally, I am a fan of adaptive streaming and feel my readers will benefit from it, so I chose that option for the result below:

Analytics

Kaltura has three categories of analytics:  Bandwidth Usage, Content, and Community.  The Bandwidth Usage Report is the first chart displayed when clicking on the Analytics tab; a simple bar chart that displays total bandwidth used during a specific timeframe.

Content Reports displays four charts:

1. Top Content, a line chart that shows player loads percentage as well as plays, minutes viewed, and number of impressions per video.
2. Content Drop Off is a bar chart shows breakdown of all videos for a category including the number of plays that reached 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the total video’s time.  You can drill into each video and review the specific info.
3. Content Interactions is a line chart that tracks number of plays, edits, shares (social), and reports of abuse (flagged for moderation).
4. Content Contribution reports the origin of content uploaded into the system.  The default view provides a general overview of the contents’ sources and a line chart over the last 30 days.

User and Community Reports displays three charts:

1. Top Contributors provides data on who contributed the most content to the account, with a breakdown by media category (images, video, audio, etc) by username.
2. Geographic breakdown shows a table of regions from where the content was viewed and the drop-off data to show the number of plays that reached 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the total video’s time.
3. Top Syndication – break down from where the content was displayed (indicated as the, “Syndicator”) that includes player loads percentage as well as plays, minutes viewed, and number of impressions per video.

In all Content and Community charts, you can narrow down the timeline and results using dates or date range and category or filter.  For the Content Reports and User & Community Reports you also have the option of exporting the data to a .csv file.

Conclusion

Kaltura’s SaaS offering is indeed one of the most complex OVPs I have reviewed so far.  The complexity was mostly due to the number of questions I raised throughout the review that had me checking and rechecking the online help.  To provide a fair and objective review, I wore two different hats – the techie administrator (the sys admin who knows online video techno jargon) and the non-technical content publisher (the marketer or communications officer who is less interested in technical detail and more concerned about ease of use).  Error files for reporting status of imported content may seem raw and unpolished when it could be incorporated into the interface, but for administrators it may prove to be useful if you plan to do something with the log.  Content with prominently displayed entry IDs, codecs, and Asset IDs will confuse the usual content contributor but an administrator will need that information to manage the content library.  And, there were a couple of times where I did encounter an inexplicable .xml error, instead of a friendly error message, while loading the Content or Analytics tab - the unfriendly error message means something to someone I suppose.  In all cases, while wearing my techie admin hat I was quick to recover from these blips, challenges, or anomalies because I have experience in product support, technical knowledge, and probably spent a good 1.5 hours reading the online help and Quickstart Guide from end to end.

As for cost, I cannot comment on Kaltura’s prices since it is not displayed on their site.  I recommend you ask their Sales reps about Kaltura’s pricing for hosting, support packages, and professional services if you are interested.

Additional Kaltura Resources

• Kaltura Community Edition
  http://www.kaltura.org/project/community_edition_video_platform
• Resources: Wikipedia – Kaltura
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaltura
• Kaltura Exchange
  http://exchange.kaltura.com/
• HTML 5 media library
  http://html5video.org/

The last couple of weeks have been mind-blowing.  Firstly, I have the pleasure of posting my OVP Test Drive reviews on VidCompare.com, thanks to its founder, Kris Drey.  Since then, I have been contacted by a few people in the online video industry, complimenting me on how thorough and in-depth those posts really go.  Thanks to all those who reached out – the encouragement will only result in more reviews, so stay tuned!

Secondly, to my surprise and excitement, I was contacted by Ooyala and had the chance to speak with its co-founder and President of Products, Bismarck Lepe.  During that discussion, Bismarck kindly walked me through a very detailed demo of Backlot and addressed all of the questions I originally raised in my April review of their free trial.  Don’t worry – the results of that demo will be shared on this site before the end of the month.

Finally, after the demo, Bismarck was kind enough to answer some general questions I had about Ooyala.  The following is an exchange that took place by email late last week.

Charlie Davis:

Ooyala clearly has carved out a niche in content monetization. How else is Ooyala differentiating itself from the rest of the pack of 90+ OVPs now and into the future?

Ooyala:

We don’t consider ourselves an OVP. Our video platform, Backlot, is just one of the many products and services we sell. Small to mid-sized companies are fine with a one-size fits all approach to video publishing, monetization and analytics, but the large broadcasters and operators require a lot more flexibility. But to answer your question, the things that differentiate us today are:

+ Flexibility through modularity: A publisher can buy each one of our services separately which makes it easy for large companies to integrate with their own video technology stack. As I mentioned earlier, Bloomberg leverages their own transcoding, their own storage, and their own content management system. We help them with metadata management, analytics, ad serving and player controls and personalization.

+ Scalability: After YouTube, we deliver more streams than any other video technology company in the world – more than Hulu, more than Netflix and more than BBC’s iPlayer. Being able to manage this kind of volume requires the build-out of highly scalable and distributed infrastructure and technology.

+ Viewer insight through real-time analytics: We have the only real-time analytics engine on the market. And unlike ALL analytics systems out there, we provide detailed per-video and per-user reporting for both on-demand and live video streaming. Our analytics system processes information real-time and updates the analytics dashboards every couple of minutes. The breadth of reporting insight we provide allows publishers to maximize revenue, reach and engagement.

+ Comprehensive monetization system: In addition to providing yield management of advertising across multiple data sources – ad networks and 3rd party ad servers – we also have seamless integrations with payment systems for the ability to launch both paid and ad-supported video business models.

+ Subscription management: With personal playback, we’re able to manage first party CRM systems, third party entitlement systems like Adobe PASS and our own subscriber database to authenticate streams across all devices. A person can have a continuous viewing experience for content across all devices.

+ Secure video delivery across all devices: We provide DRM and multiple levels of content protection out of the box for all screens.

Charlie Davis:

Where else does Ooyala see its strengths? Weaknesses?

Ooyala:

Strengths:
+ We also believe that our focus on iterating quickly and launching new products has allowed us to offer technology that helps our publishers deliver a better and more engaging experience for their consumers. We were the first company to launch adaptive bit-rate video delivery in flash, we were the first company to launch video playback on the iPhone, and we’re now launching personalization features that will help publishers create a distinct experience for every single one of their viewers.

+ Another strength is the fact that we are a global company. We have 7 International offices in addition to the 3 offices we have in the US. This allows us to provide local attention to our customers outside of the US. Today, over 60% of our streams come from outside of the US. In Japan, by the end of the year, we will be powering over 50% of video in that country via our customer and partner, Yahoo! Japan.

Weaknesses:
+ In the last 7 months we’ve hired about 80 people. The growth and adoption of online video is driving our aggressive growth strategy. That said, we still need to hire more people and we’re falling behind on our plan.

+ Of the companies that compete for publisher business, we’re still relatively young. Most of the companies have been around 6+ years, while we’ve only been selling for 3 years. So there is still a fair amount of work that needs to be done to build our brand.

Charlie Davis:

How does Ooyala manage customer support and where is the support located?

Ooyala:

+ We have 4 levels of support.

- Consumer Services Group: This team helps scope and launch a customer’s video deployment. They’re also the teams that provide in-person support for live events. (In local markets – CSG EU, CSG NA, CSG JP, CSG APAC)

- Account Management: All professional and enterprise accounts have an account manager assigned to them. The account managers help with day-to-day deployments and optimization questions. (In local markets, UK, FR, US, MX, JP, CN, AUS)

- 24-hour tech support: The 24-hour tech support team are there to respond to questions or issues 24 hours a day. We have three main technical support centers – North America, Europe, Asia.

- Support engineers: We have engineers in every single core engineering team to quickly fix or respond to product issues that may be impacting a particular publisher. By having support engineers, we avoid impacting our core engineering teams that are actively working on delivering on our product roadmap.

Charlie Davis:

How many unique customers does Ooyala currently support?  Of all those customers, which one presented the most unique challenge and how did Ooyala solve it?

Ooyala:

Because Ooyala has a self-serve product, we actually have over 3,000 customers that serve more than 5 hours of content per month. That said, the vast majority of the revenue comes from a couple hundred accounts. Recently, the MVPDs have brought with them unique demands on our products and organization. This is requiring that we work more closely with large system integrators because there are certain things like building our own set-top box, that we will just not do.

Charlie Davis:

Ooyala has had a SEO SDK and Facebook Sharing SDK for some time. Are there any new toys that developers can expect in 2011 or 2012?

Ooyala:

Yes! Expect a lot of really cool tools and services for personalization and multi-device consumer experiences.

Charlie Davis:

One of the biggest hurdles for video is content creation. Does Ooyala have solutions or partnerships with companies that address some of the burden felt by users trying to produce quality content?

Ooyala:

We have people in our consumer services group that work closely with publishers to help them create the right kind of content that will be watched by consumers on connected devices. We’ve also partnered with TurnHere and other videography services to provide this kind of support in places where we don’t have people on the ground.

Charlie Davis:

It has been about five months since the Ooyala partnership with Yahoo! Japan was announced. Have you successfully implemented all of your key objectives in that partnership, and what has Ooyala learned thus far?

Ooyala:

A partnership of this size has an 18-month launch plan. But we’ve already started to deploy on one of Japan’s biggest sites, GyaO! – http://gyao.yahoo.co.jp/dokitere/, and they recently launched Vipo, a co-branded version of our service that they’re selling in that market. So far, it’s been a huge success. Via the reseller relationship, Yahoo! Japan will be making a couple of very large customer acquisition announcements in the coming weeks.

Charlie Davis:

I would imagine before signing Yahoo! Japan, there were some preparations Ooyala undertook to ensure the platform’s availability under heavy traffic. Can you comment on what steps were taken?

Ooyala:

Can’t comment on the specifics. But in order to get ready for this account, we had to build up our presence in Asia.

Charlie Davis:

On the Ooyala web site, it says, “Panasonic has been working closely with Ooyala to transform the connected TV experience”. I also read that Ooyala is working with LG and Philips. Can you elaborate on what these OTT relationships will mean to Ooyala customers and those with connected TVs?

Ooyala:

Our goal is to make it easy for our publishers to deliver incredible video experiences across all devices. This means that we’re doing all the work of seamlessly integrating the device SDKs into our own products so it’s just as easy to push content to connected device app experiences as it is to embed a video embed on a website.

Charlie Davis:

Any comment on the Ooyala + Facebook rumors that surfaced last week?

Ooyala:

We work closely with our publishers to help them leverage the social graph to create incredible experiences on Facebook. Last week, Sephora ran a live event on Facebook, Whole Foods is running original content on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/wholefoods?sk=app_211251575575204) and we’ve powered a lot of live concerts on Facebook. Facebook is an incredible place to build a video business and to leverage video to connect with your audience.

Charlie Davis:

Thank you, Bismarck, for this excellent opportunity and I look forward to speaking with you again in the future.

Many thanks to Kris Drey, the founder of VidCompare.com.  Kris saw value in my in-depth “Test Drive” series on OVPs here on my site, and has reprinted my first review of Ooyala’s Backlot on blog.vidcompare.com with more on the way!  Be sure to check out his site and follow VidCompare on Twitter!

Longtail Video: http://www.longtailvideo.com

From the casual observer to the online video professional, there should be no surprise that the online video platform market has two poles – free-to-use platforms, like YouTube, and popular pay-to-use platforms like Brightcove and Ooyala.  In the former case, you can publish your content but you may be concerned that your branding will suffer if your primary hosting site is also the home of dogs on skateboards and Rebecca Black.  On the other hand, you may not have the budget to spend at least $100/month on just online video alone and require something in between.  In between does exist, and we have almost a hundred OVPs in the market, many of which cost a monthly sum of at least a hundred bucks a month.  In comes Longtail Video, creators of the free and extremely popular the JW Player, who have released their own OVP called Bits On The Run.  They offer a monthly cost starting at under $10 and/or a pay-as-you-go service with no monthly fee.  Their minimum cost per GB – under $6.  Oh yes, even the author is reconsidering his video hosting provider.

To be honest, I had not paid much attention to Longtail Video before this month.  I have known about the JW Player for awhile and have always considered it to be one of the best available (where else can you find a stormtrooper skin for your video player), however I had no idea that Longtail Video acquired the OVP developed by the player’s creator, Jeroen Wijering.  This was an excellent purchase for so many reasons.  Firstly, the JW Player is compatible with HTML5 and Flash embedded video and they make their point clear – just support both and get on with other priorities in your life.  Secondly, they support viewing content on mobile devices including Android and iOS.  Thirdly, they just released a private beta of Longtail.tv, a free service that includes the JW Player, where you can display your own videos or earn money displaying content from their media gallery from premium syndication partners, such as AOL’s 5min Media, as well as YouTube content.  In other words, Longtail has been able to get the good times rolling with a popular player, and should not be ignored if you are a SMB (small or medium sized business), or in the blogging business and trading in your World of Warcraft account for something more productive, and possibly revenue generating like online video.

Getting Started:  The sign up for the free trial is as hassle free as you would you would hope.  The first thing I noticed upon logging in is that Bits on the Run is one of the first platforms I have encountered (in fact, I think it is the only one) that doesn’t no rely on Flash or HTML5 to render its management interface.  That means no plug-ins, no browser checks, and no hassle.  If you are a non-technical user – #winning.  Upon logging in, a very simple dashboard is laid out in front, similar in some aspects to how Ooyala greets its customers: an account status, your credits (in GB) remaining, the most recent news including planned maintenance updates and enhancements.  Small but valuable bonus – you can subscribe to their RSS feed.  A nice touch, as I don’t recall seeing that on the other platforms I have reviewed.  Tutorial videos are also included on the homepage that will give you the basics in under ten minutes.

Managing Your Content: To upload video you can naturally perform this task from the desktop or check out the Bits On The Run Mobile Dashboard app in iTunes.  Now, I can say this is the first OVP I have checked out that does more than just blindly upload video to your account – most OVP apps have the option to only upload video from the camera roll or take the video then upload, without insight into your library or account.  With the BotR dashboard, you can keep track of your account balance from anywhere (this only makes sense since your balance depends on gigabytes viewed), see what videos you have in your library, and then manage the attributes of those video as well.  Hopefully in the near future, the app will include the ability to add credit to the account for those times you’re stuck in traffic and hosting the next big viral hit.  Nevertheless, they have gone farther than the big players so I tip my hat to this app.

An example of the BotR mobile dashboard for the iPhone

Once you have uploaded video you can check the transcoding status and easily see what resolutions you have available.  If you would like to host your video outside of the OVO JW Player, here you have the option of linking to specific transcoded files under the transcoding tab; next to each file is an embed option with a warning:  You can create additional transcodes and grab their publish links. These links are only useful if you do not embed your videos with our players.

Once the transcoding was complete, I immediately noticed the size of the H.264 720p result compared to the original .MOV H.264 – nearly cut in half.  The platform uses FFmpeg (www.ffmpeg.org) and the quality may have suffered in the translation – I need to do more digging.  If you have your own encoding solutions that may help (I can’t say for sure, since I still have’t shelled out for a supported encoder like Final Cut Pro X given its reviews).  According to their site, they also support output from Apple’s Final Cut Pro, Sorenson Squeeze, and Adobe CS.  Here is an example link for Squeeze.

Moving right along, I decided that before I publish my content, I would like to change the player style.  I chose their 16×9 player with the Glow skin, available in the drop-down.  You can also upload your own skin, though a warning message makes it clear, “Only ZIP skins are supported, since they are HTML5 compatible (future-proof).”  In the interest of time, I chose a player readily accessible though I absolutely plan to import the Stormtrooper skin for future videos (readily available at Longtail.tv if you’re interested).

Once you have uploaded more than one video, you have the ability to create and manage playlists.  Your playlist can be based on manual curation of your content, or the playlist can be built dynamically based on rules such as the tags you have assigned.  Your playlist can be set to a hard limit of how many videos you want in the list, and you can sort by date.  Once you have built your playlist, you can also publish it as a RSS feed, containing meta data and links to the videos.  If you have chosen a manual playlist, then you simply drag and drop your videos into the playlist from the playlist properties.  If you have chosen a dynamic playlist, then make sure you have tagged your videos.  Adding tags to the playlist will filter out those videos that do not contain the same tags.  This is a creative approach to filtering content, and very valuable as you start to build up your library with more than a few dozen videos.

Publishing Your Content: When you’re ready to publish your content, just choose the embed option under “Your Videos.”  Now this is where it gets interesting – you have embed choices.  Every OVP, even YouTube, has embed options.  However, the folks at Longtail have explained what each embed code means, and which are strategic (future proof) versus non-strategic (at your own risk of being left out of the mobile and HTML5 parties to come).

A closer look provides three options: JavaScript embed, iFrame Embed, and legacy Embed Tags.

As part of embed process you can also hop to it and broadcast your video through Twitter or Facebook.  After a few minutes of uploading, customizing, and embedding video I received the result below:

As I mentioned above, I could tell some of the quality was lost in the transcoding.  Below is the same video uploaded to YouTube:

If you wish to embed a playlist full of videos instead, then under the playlist tab you have the same embed option to select as if you were embedding a single video.  Publishing playlists in BotR also offers the ability to publish via RSS to iTunes as a podcast and to Boxee.

Analytics: Reporting is one of the toughest parts of being an OVP in my opinion, and you can feel like you only bought half the cow if your reporting is below par or even non-existent.  For what Longtail offers, I gotta say I am impressed with what they give you and how they do it.  For one, the Longtail Video team does not create giant, obnoxious charts.  There are some analytics dashboards that will create pie charts 500 pixels wide and fill the space with a lot of sidebars and knobs so you can rotate and zoom into the results. Eh.  The results here on the other hand are very clean, easy on the eyes, to-the-point, and also able to track player specific qualities.  At a glance, I can see my video views of when someone played the content, page views of when the player was loaded which may or may not include playing the content, and the total number of minutes of content viewed.

The chart in the middle of the page can measure Views, Page Views, and Time Viewed in more detail, charting the results over the last month.  If you want to go deeper, you can check out the engagement data – just click on a video and watch it in the player as the progress line in the chart shows you where viewers may have dropped off.

If you want to export the results, views by day or views by video can be exported to a .csv file.  Finally, if you want to track your results through Google Analytics, there are options found here.  The nice addition to using GA is the visitor demographics (country, region, language) which does not seem to be available in the native BotR analytics.

Conclusion:  If you are a small or medium sized business, then check out Bits On The Run.  The free trial is always recommended and thankfully their pay-as-you-go model ties in nicely with their trial so you can continue onward once your time is nearly up.  Their pricing model is very flexible and should be able to meet any small business budget if that business is interested in more than what YouTube offers.  For comparison, Brightcove’s Express Edition costs start at $99/month for up to 50 videos with 40GB of bandwidth.  For the same cost per month, Bits offers 120GB of bandwidth, with starter packages offering 6GB of bandwidth for less than $10.  With the trial account, you can gauge your volume and bandwidth and find the right package appropriate for your needs.  You may have noticed but this platform does not have immediate access to Longtail Video’s ad solution, therefore I haven’t included it in this review.  You can find more info on their web site and how to stream ads into your content.  Be sure to check their FAQ for details.

Another reason you will want to use the free trial is the encoding quality.  Again, my results were not as crisp as YouTube, and that may be a deal breaker if you encounter the same results.  You can try a few encoders I mentioned earlier that are supported.  Sorenson Squeeze and Adobe Premiere have trial versions at no cost, but the full versions cost more than $500 each.  If you’re shopping on a right budget for a supported encoder, then you may want to check out Final Cut Pro X, which has been chopped to $300 (along with several Pro features apparently).  In any case, give this platform a chance.  It is easy to sway to the OVPs in the market like the ones I have mentioned and review before, but you may be pleasantly surprised if you try before you buy.

Adding subtitles to your video for closed-captioning is not only a way to support your audience with hearing disabilities, but in YouTube it improves your search results when looking for that specific video. As we know, video itself cannot be indexed (yet) so YouTube indexes subtitles, as well as your description, name of the video, comments, etc. for more accurate results through search engine optimization (SEO).  Google provides some direction on how to add subtitles, but they don’t perform a thorough walkthrough and leave much to be assumed if you’re uploading subtitles without time codes.  Here I walkthrough you through the process and provide some examples for your assistance.

Uploading Your Transcript

1.   Log into YouTube and click on your name in the top right-hand corner, then select “Videos.  From your list of uploaded videos, choose the video to where you would like to add subtitles.

2.  You can either click on the video itself from the list, or click on “Insight” and from the drop-down choose, “Captions and Subtitles”. If you clicked on the video, then the top navigation in gray will have an option to “Edit Captions/Subtitles”.

From the “Captions and Subtitles” tab you will be presented with your video on the left and “Available Caption Tracks” on our right. If you’re starting from scratch then there should not be any captions available. Captions are described as text with time codes. For the purposes of this walkthrough we will upload a transcript file, which is a text file without time codes.

I created my transcript file by very patiently typing the speech to text.  If you’re using Dragon or another type of transcription software I’ll be curious to know how it does.  For a <5 minute video the transcription took me about 15 minutes, and resulted in the transcript file found here, which is simply a UTF-8 text file with a .txt extension. Your lines of text must be double spaced and make sure your text isn’t too long otherwise it could crowd out the video or get cut off.  If you’re still unclear, just use my example file for guidance and copy it as best you can.

3.  Once you have your transcription file and you have proofread it (please do), go back to YouTube and under Type choose, “transcript file” and feel free to give it a name for description.  Then choose your file from your local computer and click, “Upload File”.

Processing Your Transcript

The processing time is a bit unclear.  It could have been a bug in Chrome for me but I sat and waited 10 minutes before the subtitles were done processing.  Then I tried it a second time and the spinning icon didn’t clear until I fiddled with the machine caption radio button.  The thing to keep in mind is that this feature is still in beta, so be patient when you’re first getting started.

You Result – A Closed Captioned YouTube Video

When you’re done, you will be available caption tracks in English checked off, with the options of “settings,” “download,” or “remove”.   At this point, your video now has subtitles!  YouTube does an excellent job with its voice-recognition at assigning time codes very close to where they should be.

4.  To view your finished product, view the video as your audience would see it in YouTube – in the “Edit Captions and Subtitles” page there is an option to “View on Video Page” link.

5.  At the bottom of the progress bar next to the resolution choices, there should be a “cc” button.  Clicking the button will enable closed captions and turn the button red.  Highlighting the button will produce more options like language translation, which is also in beta.

Tweaking For Best Results – Editing and Re-Uploading Subtitles

Before we consider this walkthrough a done deal, you may want to consider reviewing the caption file that now has time coding. If YouTube has not timed the text on screen with that of the speech in the video, then you can tweak it by downloading the caption track back at the “Captions and Subtitles” screen where you first uploaded the transcript.

6.  Click download and you are retrieving a .SBV file – a YouTube subtitle file, similar to .SUB and .SRT files used for commercial movie subtitles.  Here’s my captions file.

7.  Open the .SBV file in your text editor and you can edit the start and end time of when the text appears on the screen.

8.  To change the subtitles, there is no edit option so you will need to upload a caption file this time (remember, your transcript did not have time codes – your .SBV is caption file) under a different name.  If you try to upload the caption file without a unique name, then you will see this error:

Here is the result of my efforts – my Brightcove overview video with subtitles to boot!

Since getting my iPhone I’ve enjoyed creating short clips and posting them on my Facebook account, but never really did any editing on the device.  So, I blew some cash in the App Store to try out video editing apps for the iPhone and post my findings here.  Like many, if not most App Store junkies, I download based on positive feedback (no fewer than 3 stars), and secondly, on the screenshots – UI design is very important to me.

With all that in mind, I downloaded five apps that are all very slick and easy to use.  I have categorized these five based on the level of editing and features you may be interested in: Simple (few features, speedy rendering), Intermediate (additional features but not what I would call feature-rich), and Advanced (deep mobile editing, feature rich, offers more tools than the previous two categories).

Simple Editing

Videolicious
Developer: The Talk Market Inc.  Cost: Free
Orientation: Landscape only.

Provides 25 ideas for your video at the default screen, but ideas only in text – no additional content.  All options provide the same interface to choose the video either from your camera roll or video shot on the spot, however you do have options to upload your finished video to several magazine sites in Standard Definition only (the HD option does not present upload options for sites so you’ll need to do that manually if you wish): Lucky Magazine, Martha Stewart, Self Magazine, and ReadyMade Magazine; you also have options to upload to Facebook, YouTube, and email the video.   The end result is pretty slick and the render time is so speedy that you’ll be producing different flashy videos in very little time.  Step One > Choose your shots from camera roll.  You can choose multiple shots highlighting each vid, which includes photos.  Step Two > Tell your story with the front camera (default camera view) or switch to the rear camera.  This story telling provides the background behind your art work and is mandatory.  The thing to keep in mind - recording less than 5 seconds can result in a very short movie, so the longer you record telling your story, the longer your overall video.  Step Three > Choose theme music either from the stock selection provided or your iTunes library on the local device.  Step Four > Process your video and then watch it, share it, or create a new project.  The compiled result is a flashy, quick video that is fun to produce and definitely one of the unique apps for editing video.  If you want to share your masterpiece then you have options to send it to Facebook, YouTube, or Email the video.  Below is a sample of what to expect:

Result from Videolicious:

Video Edit
Developer: Kevin Hnatiuk  Cost: $2.99
Orientation: Portrait and Landscape.

This app is a very linear and simply strings video together.  The key point to remember is that each video must be of the same resolution to be part of the final result.  Therefore, front-facing video and rear-facing video cannot be matched.  There are no features or extensive help, however if you are looking for quick results to combine clips then this app might be for you.  Your result can be rendered to the iPhone, or as an Email attachment, or pushed to Facebook or YouTube.

Result using Video Edit:

Intermediate Editing

iMovie
Developer: Apple.  Cost: $4.99
Orientation: Portrait or Landscape

Apple’s iMovie has been stripped down to the minimum.  You have eight project settings as a presentation for your movie poster.  From the project lobby, you can add theme music, loop background music, fade in/out to black, and record microphone audio.  iMovie help is extremely detailed with step by step instructions.  Once you have compiled your movie you can preview the result before exporting it to the camera roll, YouTube, Facebook, vimeo, CNN iReport, or iTunes.  Interestingly, you also have the option to save the project to your iTunes library, which is a helpful feature if you plan to do much mobile editing over time.  The export option allows for medium 360p, large 540p, and HD 720p resolutions.

Result from iMovie:

Advanced Editing

Splice
Developer: Path 36, LLC. Cost: Free / $1.99  (Ad Free)
Orientation: Landscape only.
Its called Splice, but you can do so much more than just join clips.  Firstly, there are two versions of this app.  The free version with iAds and then the purchased version for $1.99.  Purchasing the app will remove the ads, though personally I don’t think they interfere with the user’s experience -AND- they don’t appear on the exported result – thank you, Path 36.  Now, this app is fairly involved, but thankfully the developers have included an online YouTube video tutorial and a general FAQ.  Starting a new project prompts the user with a choice of High Definition vs Standard Definition, Border options for the video (w/ option to buy more), orientation landscape vs portrait, and a series of transitions like crossfade and slide-left.  A different approach from some of the other apps, but many of the same building blocks nonetheless.

Now comes with the fun – adding video allows you to trim the video, adjust the speed, crop the size, or duplicate the instance video for a second instance in the same project.  In parallel, you can add multiple audio tracks of music from the app’s library, from your iTunes local library, or record your own audio via the microphone.  You can edit tracks to fade audio in or out and trim it to meet the length of your video.  Bonus – audio and video tracks can be dragged on their own respective timelines to align start and stops of clips.  When you’re done, export to medium resolution of 540p or high resolution of 720p.

Result using Splice:

ReelDirector
Developer: Nexvio Inc. Cost: $1.99.
Orientation: Portrait and Landscape

ReelDirector is like Splice in that is has advanced features, so thankfully they too offer a detailed help with a video tutorial.  Unlike the other apps though, ReelDirector offers the option of an opening title and closing credits to make your movie more presentable.   You have the option of adding video, photos, and audio from your local audio library.  You can edits clips, add audio and then align the audio track with the video – as a bonus, you can scrub the video by frame as you drag the audio to find the best location – very nice.  Video clips also have drag and drop for reordering them in your library.  Transitions can be added in-between clips; the feature has a convenient preview screen to illustrate what the transition looks like before you apply it to your project.  Another unique feature missing from the other apps above is subtitles.  Combined with the subtitles, you can create a very sharp video on the fly for presentation, although you may need to be careful because there is nothing to prevent the opening title and the subtitles from overlapping.  To avoid collision, I recommend adding a 3-5 second clip of video at the beginning meant to host the opening title only, then add your other clips of video that would be support the subtitles.  As a result of the subtitles and opening title text, render times were extremely slow though – 10 minutes of render time for a 52 second video.  Nevertheless, I think you will be pleased with the result and forgive the longer than usual wait time.

Result using ReelDirector:

In closing, here is a feature matrix as a summary:

Limelight: http://www.limelightvideoplatform.com

In 2010, Limelight acquired Delve Networks, and with that acquisition came an OVP (now known as their LVP – Limelight Video Platform) whose content manager platform has been described as, “Apple in front, and Google under the hood.”  As I mentioned in my earlier post when covering Streaming Media East, Limelight was certainly one of the sexier, more colorful exhibits because of its flashy platform.  I wasted no time speaking with a Solutions Engineer and we got into talking about Delve, some of its 100+ customers, and how it has kept most of its personality since the $10 million acquisition last summer.

Such an acquisition is a natural fit for a Content Delivery Network such as Limelight, however they still continue to offer Akamai as an alternative CDN provider for their existing customers (couldn’t find out if new customers have Akamai as an option).  They offer many of the standard OVP options like on-demand and live-streaming (though live-streaming is not available for all accounts and needs to be enabled by contacting Limelight), metadata management, customized players, and playlists (also called Channels).  And, like many of their OVP competitors, Limelight offers a 30-day trial of their platform that will give you access to upload, publish, and analyze the results of your video content.  The following is another OVP overview based on the vendor’s 30-day trial.

Getting Started: First and foremost, the interface runs entirely in Flash 10.x and cannot render without it.  Unlike Ooyala, Limelight decided to take a more widely accepted route that can work in different browsers, including IE.  Once loaded, its right to work on the media inventory – no dashboard, no news, summaries or analytics.  For me, Ooyala has a step up by providing analytics summaries upon login, and something I think every OVP should consider or at least offer as a customization or entitlement tweak.

The Apple front-end reference is unmistakably so, as I think everyone can relate to what that means, and even picture in one’s head what the product might look like and do for him/her.  The skin and layout of the application is clearly an iTunes clone, but an effective one since I felt more at home using this content manager than some of the others I have reviewed.  That’s not to say this OVP was easier to use, but it felt like less of a hassle to learn during my first few minutes getting acclimated.  Here’s a video demo of the content manager, though shame on Limelight’s marketing team for not providing a higher resolution video.  The application is actually very sexy and the crappy resolution doesn’t do it justice.

Like iTunes, the 3-pane interface with different features based on Media, Channels, and Analytics:

1. Media

• left: filters, genres, tags
• center: content list
• right: media properties, channel list

2. Channels

• left: channel list, channel groups
• center: content list
• right: channel properties, restrictions

3. Analytics

• left: reports
• center + right: overview

The first thing that struck me about the interface is the overall simplicity, starting with the Media option.  One of Limelight’s customers is pokemon.com who hosts full commercial-free versions of their original TV shows.  The NFL also has an online streaming video site hosted by Limelight’s OVP, displaying footage of their network’s replays and commentary.  In both cases, we’re likely talking about dozens of playlists and possibly hundreds of videos per client.  Therefore, an iTunes layout with easy-to-access filters and search makes total sense for that kind of volume and management.  Other OVPs like Brightcove and Ooyala have media management of course, through not as easy to sort and filter as Limelight in my opinion.  Tagging is particularly helpful and easy to use – when you tag videos those tags show up at the bottom left-hand pane.  The filters, by-the-way are so user friendly and designed to default to “All” if no option is selected.  And, there is drag-and-drop for building playlists - a big win.  Drag-and-drop with a preview of what you’re grabbing.  I’m a big fan of drag-and-drop and wish more tools offered it.  Again, with a large library, the preview can make it easier to determine which version of that video you really want to publish.   Delve and Limelight really spent time on the details to make the user experience as friendly and efficient as possible.  Clearly one of the benefits to the user and the developer when hosting in Flash.

Managing and Editing: Uploading and encoding video for on-demand content is snappy, and some of the fastest encoding wait-times I have yet seen.  A 4MB test video file took about 15 seconds to render in the preview pane and <1.5 minutes to be removed from the “processing” filter on the left-hand pane.  The result is video with bitrates of 160, 354, 504, and 746 Kbps.  Without leaving the Media properties, you can rename the video’s label shown in the content pane, associate it with a genre, tag it, add a description, but most interestingly – set a schedule.  This is a new feature I can’t say I have seen in other OVPs, but here you can select dates a times – very cool idea, and I will explain why once we get to channels and playlists.

Cropping the video is an option, with a nearly hidden button next to the preview at the top right-hand corner; click on the scissors, and it launches a breakout editing window.  I do highly recommend you clip and edit your video before uploading to Limelight, as this clipping tool isn’t helpful for finding the perfect spot, or even a reasonable spot for that matter.  The inability to dynamically scrub through frames of the video would be nice, but it is non-existent.  I struggled with a 30 second video, fighting mostly with the locator to find the right place to start or stop the video, mainly because moving the locator caused the video to rebuffer and automatically play the video again – talk about push sand against the tide.  With the video paused, an ideal editor would allow for the moving of the locator and display the frame while remaining paused.  After a dozen or so attempts I finally felt comfortable clipping the video.  My recommendation is to avoid clipping video in this space if at all possible and use a better editing tool – there are many of out there, especially if you’re a PC user.  For Macs, there’s always iMovie already installed.

The video files in question had to be uploaded manually from my desktop.  As a mobile user, I am disappointed to find there is no iOS app in the App Store to upload video to my Limelight OVP account.  If anything, an entry in the App Support is great publicity to have people check out your platform – I actually stumbled across Ooyala last year because I was looking for an online video app.   Anyway, with the editing completed and my polished clip now encoded, tagged, and labeled, I can now drag and drop the clip into a playlist.  If you don’t have a playlist created, just drag and drop the clip(s) into the channel list pane and the window will automatically swing to the next vertical in the content manager – the Channels page.

Publishing Video:  I love the concept of channels – especially if you can publish a channel and interchange videos within that list.  Curation and organizing videos is fun – so what if I’m a geek.  So, what is a channel according to Limelight?  From their Help page:

A channel is a collection of media that share common channel settings. Channels can be used to:

• Create playlists
• Organize media
• Faciliate and control feeds or podcasts
• Sync media on an external site, such as YouTube

Creating a channel is just like creating a folder that contains your files on your computer – just click the + sign next to Channels and name it, then drag and drop your content into that playlist.  Just make sure you have edited your video content before you send it to the channel, as this channel and everything in it will become live once you click publish.  So, now I’m thinking about the player size and style, because once you have your player designed and properly fitted for your web site, the rest should fall into place, right?  I’m hardly picky when it comes to player styles and colors, though I can only imagine the hurdles that Marketing teams have to jump through (or make their associated teams jump through) to meet important branding details.  But from a general perspective with ease of use in mind, I personally felt quickly publishing my content for the first time took longer than it should.  For one, because I’m terrible with figuring out the fixed height and width dimensions for media – always have been and always will be.  If the width should be X then the height should be…screw it, I’ll cheat and use Photoshop.  And two, because I struggled to find a way to use my new custom player I built in the player builder, so I could finally use the dimensions I needed.  The whole end to end process took me about 30 minutes to sort out as a first time user.   However, if you are a well organized planner and have the time to develop your templates beforehand, then you can reclaim those 30 minutes with subsequent publishings if you use the same templates.

When I am building a player, or just looking to embed a quick video from YouTube, I want predefined options to choose from while also having options for custom width and height made available.  It takes me no time at all to choose a predefined WxH and grab my embed code with YouTube or Brightcove, to name two examples.  In fact, YouTube has a lovely custom option, where the height auto-populates when you type in the width.  Limelight provides a pair of sliders to choose custom width and height but without the pre-defined options, and sadly doesn’t auto-populate one slider when you change the other.   Oh, and if you want to measure the width and height of just the video and not the video+playlist viewer, then you will need to disable the playlist under the player editor properties, scroll all the way down to Playlist and uncheck it.  There is an option to enter “expert mode,” a style editor in text mode, and perform all of this manually, but that requires a search to locate the player dimensions and playlist editor among other styles.

So, now that I have my player built and designed, I would like to add it to my channel mainly because I have strict width requirements.  So, I spent probably 20 minutes trying to figure out how I associate my new customer play with my channel.  Nowhere in the channel properties (or Media properties, though player association shouldn’t be there) could I find any mention of the player to use.  I finally said screw it and decided to generate my embed code and edit the properties manually – that’s when I found the option to choose my player.  Just like the sliders, the placement of the player option is not only inconvenient but also adds steps to management.  If I want to view what channels are using what players, wouldn’t that be part of the channel properties?  You would think so, but sadly it is not.

Nevertheless, I found what I was looking for and I’m ready to move on with my life :)  So here is my result – my first Limelight OVP channel, with one video very seriously discussing my intentions on this post, followed by a second separate video in the playlist poking fun at my sunburn while out in Central Park this past weekend.  My shaky hands strongly suggests my next post involve a tripod.  The output is H.264 encoded video streamed through the Flash player.  Interestingly, I am seeing problems viewing the video in Chrome, where the Flash player will not even load.  Ooyala’s Flash player doesn’t exhibit the same problems.  I have tried web site and blog embed code and both exhibit the same issue.  If anyone else sees the same problem please contribute your findings to the comments section – thanks.

Analytics: Once you have uploaded and published enough content, it takes about 10-15 minutes for your first batch of data to be viewable.  You have options to view

• Overview – a dashboard and general overview of your content’s user traffic
• Audio – analytics specific to your published audio
• Video -  analytics specific to your published video
• Channels – analytics that cover your published channels of media content
• Engagement – how your viewers have interacted with specific media
• Delve Ad Server – activity specific to ads you have incorporated into your media (not covered here)

Starting with the overview screen, you can see how many channels and media instances have been published, as well as the total plays, and total play time.  Media most played is ranked and channels most played is broken down into a pie chart.  Finally there are two panes, one for most shared media instances and top traffic sources (i.e. referrers).  The view is extremely simple to absorb and offers links to drill into each pane’s details, which really takes you to the other links below the overview section.  The image below illustrates the video analytics for the channel published in this blog.

The report is blank at first, but choosing each media type under the details section in the main body produces a time chart and pie chart breakdown of your traffic.  Filters in the left-hand pane can help you drill isolate your results, such as number of plays, avg time played, unique plays, etc.  Personally, I feel like these filters are a bit confusing and could be incorporated into the chart itself for a more engaging and dynamic experience.  Once you have the right display of data you can choose to export the results to a .CSV file; I recommend Limelight look into exporting to .PDF as well – the dashboard is very good looking and the ability to executive summaries would be helpful.

Visitor analytics are missing, sadly.  Unless there is a limitation in the 30-day trial, there is no Geo tagging, map overlay, browser versions, and no data on new and unique viewers.  Brightcove, Ooyala, and several other OVPs offer this data in their basic packages.  So while you can tell how your media is doing once published, you can’t gather data specific to your audience and target locations.

Guides: While tooling around in LVP’s Help section, I stumbled their online support docs:

• Upload Guide: For LVP users wishing to upload video and metadata via FTP or API
• Player Builder Guide: For basic and advanced approach to customizing properties of the LVP player using the player builder.
• Live Streaming Guide: An extensive live-streaming guide that covers the basic requirements to get started and track the results.
• Limelight Ad Server Guide:  A guide for Limelight’s Ad server.
• 3rd Party Ads Guide: An integration guide for use with 3rd party advertising vendors.
• Facebook Sharing Guide: very brief infographic and description of sharing content and tagging through Facebook.

Conclusion: Limelight’s OVP is certainly one of the sexiest OVPs and content managers around.  There is so much to love about the interface, drag and drop, design, style, and colorful reports.  If you are an amateur or advanced video enthousiast and can spend the time getting to know all the nooks and cranies of this platform, then this should be a contender for your short list of OVPs.  It is fast, accessible from multiple browser and versions, and it is easy to import and organize media into channels/playlists.  It is a bit difficult at first with the publishing routine, but can be set up with templates for more streamlined use later.  There is no mobile app for content upload, and I need to do more digging on why I cannot render the published video above on iOS devices - that’s very surprising, so stay tuned.  The time to publish the results in traffic reports seems to be about the same across other OVP analytics.  Analytics are very basic and do not focus on data specific to visitors.   If analytics is a big driver for your business, then I recommend speaking with a LVP sales rep to determine if the 30-day trial is missing those features.

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Updated: June 10th, 2011

It appears that Geo location based analytics is indeed available, per the screenshot here:

http://www.onlinevideo.net/2011/04/limelight-video-offers-live-streaming-and-real-time-analytics/
So, it appears the 30 day trial is limited.  Not to mention the article from Onlinevideo.net speaks of real-time analytics, which was clearly not the case when I used the platform.  Therefore, I recommend you speak with a Limelight rep to make sure those features are available when you check out the OVP.

On Tuesday, May 10th, I happily left work a little early to browse the exhibits at this year’s Streaming Media East event.  If you have never been to the event and you’re into online multimedia then I highly recommend you check out SM West in November 2011.  This year was a little tamer than last year with regards to Online Video Platforms, with some of the larger names like Brightcove, Ooyala, and KIT Digital bowing out this year.  Some of the well-known OVP providers like Kaltura, Limelight, Polycom, Mediaplatform, and Qumu were present, while lesser-known companies with some unique, if not innovative, qualities stood out for me like Magnify.net, Vbrick, Empress, and Ignite.  Later that evening at another Online Video event, Steve Rosenbaum from Magnify.net made a good point about the expo, particularly about Online Video Platforms – when you visit a car dealership, you wouldn’t necessary say, “excuse me, I would like to buy a car, and then drive off the lot in one an hour later.  These days there are trucks, sedans, SUVs, etc.  The same goes with the OVP market.”  I couldn’t agree more, as there can be significant differences in a webcasting platform versus the traditional OVP.  Below are just some examples of what Streaming Media East had to offer.

Streaming Media East 2011

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Mediaplatform: http://www.mediaplatform.com

I spent the most amount of time with a senior product developer for Mediaplatform, as he showcased their Webcaster and PrimeTime offerings on the Blackberry Playbook. Unfortunately, half of that time was spent trying to get the tethering to work properly between the Playbook and his Blackberry phone.  Not sure why we hit this roadblock, as the building had WIFI, but maybe they were in a deadzone?  Either way, the photo below illustrates the clunky double fisting user experience that quickly leads to disappointment, especially when showcasing a product demo. After a few minutes, I just felt bad for the guy as he tried to get a decent signal and decided to stick around for another 5 minutes.

Once we had a signal, we got down to brass tacks.  Mediaplatform, according to the exhibitor, is putting considerable emphasis on Flash media and putting Windows Media in the rearview mirror, which I think makes sense depending on their customer base.  As someone who has been working with multimedia customers for several years, I have seen a few companies that still ban Flash and demand WMV, but those numbers I’ve dealt with are in the single digits per year.  The video is very crisp and made use of the screen real estate.

I was interested in checking out their PrimeTime platform, known as their Youtube-like experience for the Enterprise, however I was already on a tight schedule if I was going to hit the rest of the vendor booths.  I also felt like they needed some better organization to really show off their mobile development – they sent out a press release early that day about a big mobile strategy that also included iOS and Andriod devices, but all I got to see was Playbook content.

Limelight Networks: http://www.limelightvideoplatform.com/

Limelight was an excellent example for other businesses exhibiting at Streaming Media East this year.  For one thing, they had several Senior Sales Engineers on site, not to mention the former CEO of Delve Networks, the company Limelight purchased for its OVP and talent.  Also, they weren’t looking to catapult into a sales pitch but rather draw people in the use of their offering.  When I stopped by, they had a small but very interested crowd observing the Content Manager interface, which looks like a dark-skinned iTunes.  Unfortunately, the photos I took didn’t expose when against the LCD screen, but you can get the hint from their home page.

A senior solutions engineer approached me and we started to discuss the meat and potatoes – no sugar coated sales pitch, just the basics: 1) describe the product 2) where did it come from 3) who is using it.  Firstly, Limelight’s OVP was described as “Apple on the front-end, Google under the hood.”  Fair enough, I think everyone who hears that gets the general idea.  Secondly, it was developed by Delve Networks, and that’s when Alex Castro, the former CEO of Delve, joined the conversation.  Thirdly, they recommended checking out the official Pokemon.com website for an excellent example of how they integrate video with their customers’ web sites.  Once I got home and followed their recommendation, I came to two conclusions 1) the presentation and functionality is very well executed, stylish, and easy to use.  They have created channels within the OVP content manager to organize and publish seasons (I think they are seasons?) of the show.  2) I have no idea what I watched for 10 minutes, or what a Pokemon is exactly, but then again, I’m sure my parents couldn’t figure out Voltron either.  I enjoyed the session with Limelight so I decided to write my next OVP series entry on their solution.

Ignite Technologies: http://www.ignitetech.com

and

Qumu: http://www.qumu.com

Before SM East, I had not heard of Ignite, an internal enterprise-only content and streaming provider.  They do not provide content to the public Internet according to the exhibitor, and focus mainly on internal content delivery for companies such as education, HR, and corp communications to same a few.  These guys leverage P2P (peer-to-peer) streaming to take the pressure off the network.  They too have been influenced by Apple and Google, with content viewing much like the “cover flow” views you’ll see in Apple products and iTunes, as well as a social video app for the iPad that has the look and feel of YouTube.  What I liked most about the app was the on-demand download, similar to those seen in news applications like WSJ and NYT, so you can take your Enterprise video with you in non-connected locations.

Qumu, on the other hand, is a well known competitor in my company’s webcasting sights, so naturally I had heard of them prior to SM East.  An online video streaming and webcasting company, these guys had an interesting break in the road – employee generated content, enterprise LDAP and Sharepoint integration, and extensive APIs and SDK package.  No other exhibitor mentioned the importances of APIs, but that was the first topic discussed when I approached the booth – Qumu’s SDK and APIs as part of a package called, Q-Link, for mobile application development.  Then, I was briefly shown a sample of TIM (not the wizard from Monty Python and the Holy Grail), their Technical Integration Module that allows users to search their Qumu-powered online video library through Sharepoint.  Their mission statement about “Freedom, Power and Control” is consistent with our discussion about giving customers the tools to development, which is rare these days given everything that online video has many different facets.

That covers part 1.  My next post to wrap up my focus at Streaming Media East 2011 will cover the importance of content, and how some online video providers, including one exhibitor at Streaming Media East, are raising awareness on the importance of curation and asset management.