For the last few months I was interested in creating a central iTunes library so my family at home didn’t need to rely on the one computer that contained all of our music.  Moving all of our music and corresponding image art and ratings to our existing Synology file server on our home network would be the best solution for us – it would be centralized, have more than enough space to grow, and have the disk redundancy my laptop lacked.  This solution of centrally locating the library would allow any PC or Mac on our home LAN running iTunes to connect to it and manage it seamlessly as if it were local to the computer.

The one small downside with this configuration is that the laptop would no longer have music stored on it, so that library would be inaccessible outside of my home network, but thats why we have iPhones and iPads.  Anyway, when our laptop containing all 250GB of music recently ran out of space it was the push I needed to figure out exactly how one relocates an entire iTunes library.  The following is a step-by-step walkthrough of what I did to successfully make this all happen.

Step 1.  Create a new directory on the file server, name it Music, and share it.  This shared directory will need guest access allowed so iTunes doesn’t have to prompt to a login every time to access the iTunes library.

Advice: in the new Music directory on the file server, create a new folder and name it NAS.  This will help avoid any confusion while configuring iTunes to change from its mapping on the local Mac or Windows system to the Music directory on the file server.

Step 2.  Copy the iTunes library from the current system (example: /Users/username/Music/iTunes) to the shared directory on the file server (example: //fileservername/Music/iTunes).  Below are the default locations for the iTunes directory on a local system.

• Mac OS X: /Users/username/Music/iTunes/
• Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\
• Windows Vista: C:\Users\username\Music\iTunes\
• Windows 7: C:\Users\username\My Music\iTunes\

Step 3.  Launch iTunes on the Mac or Windows system that runs the library and select iTunes, then Preferences, then select the Advanced tab.  The iTunes Media Folder Location path should be shown at the top of that preferences window.  Click the Change… button.

Step 4.  Select the path on the file server in Step 1 and click Open.  Example: /Volumes/music/iTunes/iTunes Music

Step 5.  A prompt will ask, Would you like to move and rename the files in your new iTunes media folder to match the “Keep iTunes Media folder organized” preference?  Click Yes, then click OK to close the preferences window.

Step 6.  The normal iTunes library will show but the configuration is not completed yet because the iTunes index on the Windows or Mac system is still being used by iTunes.

Step 7.  If you have iTunes open, exit it completely then double-click the iTunes desktop icon while holding down the Option key to access the Choose Your Library property window.  Click Create Library.

Step 8.  In the window that pops up, select the file server directory you created that contains the copy of your iTunes folder, select it (so iTunes can find the index XML file) and name the library, iTunes File Server.   The window will close and iTunes is now remotely accessing the files and index located on the file server.

If you only plan on running iTunes from one computer then you’re all done at this point.  However if you want to run iTunes from multiple computers so they can all access the library on the file server then proceed to Steps 9 and 10.

Step 9.  For other Mac or Windows systems that need to connect to this centrally located iTunes library, repeat Step 7 only this time, when prompted to Choose Your Library, select Choose Library.

Step 10.  In the window that pops up, browse to the iTunes NAS folder that contains the index on the file server and open it.

Keep in mind, only one iTunes instance can make changes to the central library at a time.  So if I’m running iTunes on my Mac, and my wife wants to sync changes from her iPhone with iTunes on a separate Windows laptop, then I need to close my iTunes instance first.  Aside from that one limitation, everything has been working as expected.  I’ve been running this configuration for over a week and it is seamless, including the app, movie, and music syncs with our iOS devices.  Kudos to Apple for allowing this flexibility of using a non-Apple file server and the cross-platform use for both Windows and Mac instances of iTunes.

Dr. Sheldon Cooper, GOG.com, and Kickstarter inspired me to consolidate my old games onto a 20GB Windows XP virtual machine at home for the semi-weekly pleasure of enjoying “Vintage Game Night.”  I’m not sure what Sheldon used to play older games, and despite still owning an IBM x286 and a Dell x386, both running MS-DOS 5 and 6, I went the more practical route.  To start, DOSBox (a x86 DOS emulator) allows many older games to play easily on newer machines.  I choose Windows XP just to avoid any complications with 32-bit vs 64-bit, the need for 256 colors, and Windows 7 in general is still too new to be sure.  I loaded up what I have in my apartment from Sierra Online (how I miss you) and was playing King’s Quest in fewer than 5 minutes.  Just install DOSBox, launch it, and mount your logical drive – easy.

GOG.com has several classics available for under $10 so I was able to fill in the gaps to my own collection.  They also use DOSBox bundled with the software that mounts your drive automatically, so its pretty seamless – just click and play.  Its been years since I played Zork and I never played the Wing Commander series so those are great additions to buy when I’m ready.  I did lay down the cash for the entire Tex Murphy series when I saw it – such a great series that was ahead of its time.  The cool thing about GOG.com is the lack of DRM and the TLC they give these games – maps, manuals, and even wallpapers, where applicable, are itemized in the download section of each game available – sure beats playing $10 for a game on eBay that is likely scratched and missing those needed accessories.

What really motivated me to get back into vintage gaming was the game revival trifecta on Kickstarter:

• Al Lowe is re-introducing Leisure Suit Larry after buying the rights to the series.
• Chris Jones has returned to develop the next Tex Murphy game, Project Fedora.
• Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe from Space Quest fame are introducing their new game, SpaceVenture.

The money I normally would have spent on expensive alcohol and dinner went immediately to these projects.  Thankfully, the first two are fully funded and hopefully by this time tomorrow, SpaceVenture will be kicked off.

Finally, if you’re interested in the Sierra games online for occasional play on your PC for free then check our Sarien.net – its an Activision authorized portal developed by Martin Kool.  His name speaks for itself. :)

The frequency of web sites, e-mail accounts, and domain names getting stolen seems to be increasing among my circle of acquaintances.  These instances have lead to defacement of people’s blogs and, much worse, identity theft.  It’s an ugly business, but a serious one as hacking has become a billion dollar business to cyber criminals that typically starts with exposed targets like your e-mail address.  Social engineering, phishing, and brute force attacks are most common to get your personal account information.  That being said, if you have a presence online you should get familiar with securing the basics for a few minutes, or else risk the hours and days of struggling to reclaim what was stolen.

Below are some tips to provide readers with a clear understanding that, if applied, can make it much harder for online criminals to affect you.

1. SECURE YOUR E-MAIL ACCOUNT

Most hacks that affect your other online accounts, such as banking, social sites, and web sites, start with your e-mail account.  An e-mail address is required to not only verify who you are in many cases but also to reset passwords to those other accounts.  Thankfully some sites require the old password when attempting to reset one’s password, but that’s hardly enough.  Google and Yahoo! offer two-factor authentication – something you know (password) and something you own (typically a physical device you own, like your mobile device) – which isolates your access to specific computers you trust.  If the activity is considered suspicious by Google or Yahoo! then the access can be challenged with additional questions or steps to confirm the user is actually you.

• Google Mail’s 2-step verification
• Yahoo! Mail’s Second Sign-in

Microsoft foolishly doesn’t offer such robust multi-factor verification for Hotmail, but they do have Single-Use Codes which are one time passwords designed to be used on public computers.  One-time passwords won’t help against the kind of intrusions that generally affect people’s e-mail accounts, so if you’re a Hotmail user I recommend switching to Google or Yahoo! Mail.  Hope you’re reading this Microsoft.

2. USE COMPLEX PASSWORDS

There are applications undoubtedly banging on your accounts as you read this.  The question is, can it be deduced by that application almost instantly?  Chances are, yes.  Here’s a fun series of tables to help explain why simple passwords of numbers, letters, or numbers + letters just won’t do.

Yes, I love this scene too, but it has truth to it.  According to security firms in 2010, the most popular password out there is actually 123456 with 12345 being the second most popular – no joke.  To keep this simple, consider something or someone you know well and come up with a crafty password that mixes letters and numbers, both lower and uppercase.  Special characters like asterisks and exclamation marks can help as well if they’re allowed by the site in question. The longer the password, the more secure your password will be. Try for at least eight characters minimum, if possible, like S!ngm3@$ong! which is actually 12 characters, but you get my point.  Dictionary attacks can guess words and assist in the cracking process, so the password example I provided would be extremely difficult to guess, while simulating a phrase that isn’t hard to remember.

 3. USE DIFFERENT PASSWORDS (AND USERNAMES IF POSSIBLE) FOR DIFFERENT SITES

I can’t stress this one enough.  Yes, its a pain to remember a password for each site you visit, but its a necessary evil to help isolate the damage done by a criminal if he/she does manage to get access to, say, your e-mail account containing past emails from your bank provider.  Before you can say oh…shitttt, he/she is already trying to access your Citi Bank account with the same credentials just used moments ago.  To make sure your most critical online sites like your banking services are properly protected, make sure they require a unique username other than your email address, as well as entering your existing password if a password change is requested.

4.  DON’T SHARE YOUR PASSWORD OR PERSONAL INFORMATION

This sounds obvious, but bear with me, because I’m not talking about sharing as if it were your favorite dog photo on Facebook.  I’m talking about phishing scams that attempt to fool you into providing your login info or enough personal information to deduce it.  Typically in the form of an email, fakers posing as administrators on Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Citi Bank, etc. either ask you to reply with your personal information, or in many cases, click on a link to their site.  These sites look just like eBay with fields to log into your account, only these sites are also fake and the login info is sent directly to the scam artists.  I know someone who fell for this and within minutes his eBay login was changed and a $20,000 item was up for sale.  Some of these scams can be very crafty and well done, so if you have a hard time determining the nature of the request, just visit the site manually yourself and/or call customer service for the site and verify the legitimacy.

5. CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS REGULARLY

I know, I know – I hate it too.  You’ve got a grip on all those different passwords for different sites.  This step makes it much harder for someone to deduce your password.  I change my passwords every three months.  Take another look at that fun series of tables I mentioned earlier and you’ll see why changing your passwords every few months is a good idea.

If you’re running a WordPress site, I’ll be writing a follow up on protecting it.  These steps above are related, so if you’re already doing these then you’re off to a good start.

Earlier this week, Walmart announced that they have jumped onto the Ultraviolet wagon, allowing customers to first purchase their DVDs or Blu-Rays, then pay an additional $2-5 fee to provide Digital Rights access.  For those who are not familiar with Digital Rights Management, it is basically a form of access control, allowing or preventing media from being played.  In many cases, DRM is applied on the file, but Ultraviolet is one of the latest DRM creations to surface because its cloud-based, which means it must be able to connect to the Internet to work.   iTunes, Amazon, and Netflix already offer protected online access to movies, and they do it a hell of a lot better.

To be clear, Ultraviolet is not a locker for media, so it doesn’t store your content in the cloud, like recent offerings from Amazon and Apple, nor does UV stream content.  No, Ultraviolet stores just the access control, which is convenient for the movie studios since they don’t need to store hundreds of petabytes just to build a decent library.  If you, the consumer, want to access a movie that is Ultraviolet compatible, then you must use an Ultraviolet approved web site or phone app, like Flixster, to access a copy of the movie, which means you need to sign up to that particular site hosting the movie.  Once successfully registered, “the account holder may register up to 12 devices for streaming and/or downloading for transfer onto physical media (e.g. DVDs, SD cards, flash memory drives). Once downloaded, an UltraViolet file can be played on any UltraViolet player registered to the household account.” (Wikipedia)  And, Walmart shoppers, you can pay a little more on top for this convoluted process, just to jump a couple of registration steps, that is one of the least consumer friendly processes I have ever experienced.  How can backers of Ultraviolet really think this is a solution to their piracy issues?  They tend to say UV’s intentions are good, but consumers need to deal with the bumps to get to a great service.  How about a great service that eliminates the bumps for the consumer?

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.
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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.