Written by Anthony Romero in Company News on
IBM Watson Media has been honored as a leader among video solutions. Today, March 18th, 2020, the customer voice and insights platform TrustRadius announced that IBM’s video streaming solutions was being recognized with a 2020 Top Rated Award in the Video category.
With a trScore of 8.8 out of 10 and over 200 verified reviews, IBM Watson Media’s video streaming services are recognized by the TrustRadius community as valuable players in the video category.
Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on
Live and on-demand video content can be a compelling medium. It can build excitement for product launches, engage employees with corporate communication or educate viewers around specific topics. Managing and updating a company’s video activities can therefore be crucial.
For those leveraging IBM’s video streaming solutions, an on-demand and live video manager dashboard is provided. Accessed online, this allows administrators and managers to quickly go live, edit video assets or control individual access levels.
This interface has been updated at IBM, streamlining management functions while also enhancing the ability to find and locate content channels available.
Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on
IBM Watson Media, an IBM Business would like to announce new enhancements to the IBM Video Streaming service, including to the registration gate feature available through the IBM Video Streaming service, which will allow for users to have more privacy controls.
These include providing the link to a privacy policy along with a feature for users to opt out of the sale of their data when they provide personal information on the video registration gate.
Note: currently the opt-out feature is only available for viewers located in California, USA.
Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on
The use of video inside enterprises is on the rise. This rise is in proportion with the amount of content being created for corporate communications. As companies increasingly embrace video for internal communications, video assets are used more. In fact, at organizations that use video for online events more than 100 times annually 49% of their employees watch online video for business on a daily basis.
This presents an opportunity to engage employees at scale while at the same time breaking down geographic barriers that might have existed in the past in doing so. It also, however, presents a challenge in curating and maintaining this growing volume of content. While AI aspects have been introduced, automating both closed caption generation and fueling content discovery in place of manual metadata, there is still manual work to be done.
To address this, IBM Watson Media has introduced bulk features for account administrators and managers to take advantage of. This includes the ability to bulk video publish and label on-demand video content that has been added to an account among other bulk features.
Written by Anthony Romero in Company News on
In late 2015 and early 2016 respectively, IBM made key acquisitions in the video space. This saw the 100+ year old company acquire both Clearleap and Ustream. The entities were joined to form IBM Cloud Video. This also gave birth to IBM Watson Media, which was founded around creating an ecosystem of video solutions leveraging IBM Watson. As those solutions matured, and were integrated into the end-to-end streaming solutions, the IBM Cloud Video name was dissolved and the entire unit moved to be part IBM Watson Media.
Now IBM Watson Media has a rich history, a combination of activities done both after and before the acquisitions that led to its creation. This article documents this, noting past major events, awards and other occurrences in IBM Watson Media’s past.
Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on
Looking for a method to allow your viewers to slow down or speed up a video? IBM Watson Media is introducing a way for end users to control the playback speed of on-demand videos. This enables viewers to slow down the material, to savor moments or better comprehend segments, or speed up the material, for those looking to breeze through the video.
Read on to understand how users have access to this feature and what it allows them to do for on-demand content.
Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on
Need an accessible HTML5 video player? A player built with compliance in mind to broaden those who can watch video content?
IBM Watson Media has been making improvements to the existing video player around accessibility. This included re-evaluating keyboard controls, visual accessibility like font and indicators, along with many other aspects toward accessibility. As a result, the player now meets the IBM accessibility guidelines, as of version 7.0, along with the W3C WCAG 2.0 standards and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act: Application and Scoping Requirements. This article covers the various advancements and features found in the player toward making it accessible. Note that while it touches on captions, it won’t go into great depth. For more information on that topic, watch this webinar on How to Add Closed Captions Powered by IBM Watson.
Written by Anthony Romero in Tips & Tutorials on
Looking for some tips to perfect your video content? How about 15 streaming tips for live and on-demand content?
This article covers 15 different pieces of advice to improve your live broadcast or on-demand content. There is a larger emphasis for live streaming on this list, as more preparation is involved, although some advice covers aspects after the stream is done that fall into on-demand territory.
If you are a bit more interested in the live studio side of things, it’s recommended to also check out our Video Studio Recommendations white paper. This guide lists not just techniques to use in your studio, but also gives specific gear recommendations from microphones to lighting systems.
Written by Anthony Romero in Tips & Tutorials on
Looking for Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication for online video in order to support your corporate communications strategy?
According to Wainhouse Research, who surveyed over 1,500 executives, 46% see corporate directory integration as a priority influence in choosing a streaming platform. Using SSO authentication as part of your corporate communications strategy offers a way for users to login through familiar credentials. In addition, it can also offer some value ads from both the user and management experience. This article talks about the advantages of SSO for corporate communications and the strategy around tying this to a video portal. This also includes how Watson AI can enhance this experience, leveraging processes to help put the right video in front of authenticated employees.
Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on
IBM Watson Media has updated the player available through the IBM video streaming solutions. This includes enhancements to the UI and improved consistencies in the experience across devices. It also encompasses the removal of Flash as a fallback option.
Some of these features, while not technically new, haven’t been widely available. The best example are the stats for the stream, which can show details like the CDN being used. This helps convey the normally behind the scenes power of the multi-CDN technology that IBM’s video streaming services utilize, which is detailed in this Scaling Video Delivery to Reach Massive Audiences white paper.