Streaming Product Updates & New Features

Live Playlists for Simulated Live Events Are Better Than Ever

Written by Stacy Nawrocki in Product Updates on 12 May 2022

Simulated Live, Simulive or Semi Live – whichever name you prefer, refers to an online digital event that is broadcasted to a live audience watching and interacting in real time, but the video presentations they see are actually pre-recorded.

From the attendee experience, a simulated live event looks just like a live presentation that is scheduled to occur at a set time of day and can be added to their calendar ahead of time like any upcoming live event. If an attendee logs in late or after the presentation has started, they will not be able to rewind to watch the content that they missed from the beginning because the event appears to be happening in real-time – and in some ways it is! In fact, some argue that simulated live events can be more engaging because the speakers can actually focus on actively reaching out with participants continually throughout the event to keep them engaged. And all sessions are automatically archived so attendees who miss any portion will be able to watch again on-demand after the event.

There are many reasons why you might consider pre-recording the video presentations for your upcoming event ranging from cost considerations to risk avoidance to speaker preferences and availability. These include:

Live Monitoring for Virtual Event Organizers

Written by Stacy Nawrocki in Product Updates on 15 April 2022

While an online event is in-motion, most organizers aren’t fully aware of the health of the live stream and are only alerted if there is a massive connection failure. IBM Watson Media’s new Live Monitoring Tool helps event organizers see what’s really happening in granular detail so that proactive measures can be taken at the first sign of any issue, even if it’s only impacting a smaller portion of the audience. The additional analytics insights also help to extract business value. Going beyond what historical analysis offer, this gives organizations the ability to inspect and analyze data in order to quickly respond to enhance performance or “right the ship”.

While IBM Watson Media has long had an impressive array of real-time analytics, the new console allows customers to monitor live streaming events to an incredibly granular degree. This includes tools to investigate issues to support real-time decision making, such as validating how widespread buffering issues might be and check the overall stream health. This use case can help determine if a report of a viewer experiencing buffering issues is an isolated problem associated with the viewer’s connection or if it points to a larger problem possibly due to connection issues at the broadcaster’s side.

Read on to learn more about the real time monitoring features available to all customers and supports multiple channels all broadcasting at the same time.

Live Streaming Meetings from Microsoft Teams

Written by Jenna Burnett in Product Updates on 13 April 2022

This article details how to live stream a meeting from Microsoft Teams to IBM’s video streaming services. As a result, the audience can be greatly expanded as IBM’s delivery infrastructure can support huge audiences. This session will also be automatically archived for later use, with AI-driven processes for automatic closed caption generation and search capabilities.

Virtual Events for Open or Private VIP Only Audiences

Written by Norbert Mocsnik in Product Updates on 7 February 2022

virtual events and online conferences for VIP audiences

Virtual events are a requirement for companies big and small in today’s business culture. While IBM Watson Media has been streaming online conferences for many years, we’ve added several new features to our Enterprise Video Streaming platform to help event managers easily spin up new virtual events (or webcasts) at any time, and customize them for specific audiences.

A Virtual Event has a pre-registration phase, a live phase, and a post-event phase where archive recordings are available. IBM Watson Media makes running frequent events easy across all these phases.

This article explains the virtual event attendee experience and event management features within the IBM Enterprise Video Streaming platform. It discusses utilizing viewer tracking functionality to track who is watching, going over what type of data can be extracted. The piece concludes by reviewing the Q&A module, which adds additional opportunities for employee engagement and valuable organization facing feedback.

Watson Media announces new chat for enhanced engagement

Written by Eric Cuadra in Product Updates on 7 September 2021

Hosting virtual events has become a practice that many event managers have had to adopt in the wake of the world pivoting to support remote engagement. In addition to providing appealing quality content for viewers, it has become exceedingly important to ensure that viewers also have a way to engage and communicate with others to enhance online experiences for those who would otherwise be connecting with people in person.

As a result, IBM Watson Media has redesigned the existing chat functionality to provide a new, reliable and scalable performance while offering highly engaging tools that could make the difference for virtual event participants – all while maintaining the core chat feature set that IBM customers have become accustomed to. Below are highlights of the new chat features that customers can start using today.

Audio-only Playback for Video Streaming

Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on 5 May 2021

Ever dealt with a viewer you had to turn away because their connection speed was simply too slow, even at the lowest quality setting? Audio-only playback for video streaming can be a possible solution. It offers a low bandwidth option for an on demand and live streaming platform that can further broaden accessibility to content.

This feature was recently introduced for IBM Video Streaming and IBM Enterprise Video Streaming.

Video Uploading Through APIs

Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on 19 April 2021

Looking for a faster method to upload videos? Need one that isn’t restricted to accessing the dashboard of a video streaming, enterprise video streaming or virtual events platform account?

IBM is introducing video uploading through APIs. This allows organizations to upload video files into IBM’s video platform programmatically, without requiring access to the account’s dashboard. This opens new opportunities for uploading files while also being a faster approach versus the traditional dashboard uploading.

Replace Video on Video Streaming Platforms

Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on 25 March 2021

Replace Video on Enterprise Video Platform

Have a new version of a video but don’t want to lose analytics or redo embeds?

IBM is introducing a replace video feature for its video streaming and enterprise video platforms. This allows organizations to update outdated videos with newer versions while not having to worry about the logistics around URL links or instances where the video was embed. As a result, it provides a relatively quick method for content to be cycled and remain relevant to target audiences.

OpenID Connect (OIDC) for Enterprise Video

Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on 17 March 2021

Looking to offer your users a single sign-on experience from your video content?

IBM now supports using OpenID Connect (OIDC) based identity providers with its enterprise video platform. This expands the options that organizations have for user authentication to access live and on demand video material.

Server Cluster in Europe for Streaming Video

Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on 16 February 2021

Located in Europe and looking for a video streaming solution that has a server infrastructure also located there? IBM Watson Media is introducing a concentrated, shared server cluster for the Europe region, located in Frankfurt, Germany.

For organizations that elect to use this added service, they will be able to manage and deliver live and on-demand video strictly from a Europe based server cluster. As a result, servers from outside Europe aren’t used for those who elect to use this service. This introduces advantages to Europe based organizations and also the ability to comply with certain regulations.