Product Updates

62% of employees use closed captions for work related video content, for a number of reasons other than hearing accessibility. In fact, only 5% of employees cite a hearing impairment as a reason to use captions. Additional reasons include convenience, watching videos with low or no volume, or non-native speakers needing assistance to understand the language spoken in the video.

Additionally, employees are 80% more likely to watch a video to completion when it is closed captioned. As a result, there is real value behind captioning video content and a driver for organizations looking to increase viewer engagement.

To address this, IBM is offering integrated live closed captioning for enterprises by combining IBM’s video streaming solutions with IBM Watson Captioning Live. Hosted entirely on the IBM Cloud, the integrated solution eliminates the need for hardware on location and makes it easy for businesses to quickly set up. It is security-rich and offers teams full ownership and control over their video content and metadata, as well as any internal usage metrics and training data. In addition, Watson Captioning Live offers secure, scalable, AI-driven live captions to any live stream. The solution, which currently captions for English language content, can be easily trained to recognize industry- and company-specific terminology and seamlessly integrates accurate live captions to live streaming content, connecting employees across the globe through engaging and accessible workplace video.

• How the integration works
• Viewing the live captions
• Importance of accessibility
• AI training
• Watson Captioning Live
• Use cases
• Enabling the integration

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.

• Header: go live and change accounts
• Dashboard navigation
• Channel selector

Want to know how to live stream Cisco Webex video conferences? Looking for ways to improve archiving and content discoverability through AI?

IBM Video Streaming from IBM Watson Media can be integrated into Cisco Webex Meetings. Through this integration, Webex users are able to push out their video conference so it can be broadcasted on a channel page. This channel can be restricted for internal use, or open so that anyone with the link could watch. If you are already using Webex, there is a free trial of this that may be available to you right now. Find our more on this offer.

• Webex integration advantages
• How it works
• Use cases
• Broadcast version delivery
• Live stream device compatibility
• Restricting access to Webex streams
• Automatic archiving for on-demand use

Looking for an Android or iOS mobile video app SDK in order to develop custom applications for your company?

IBM offers the Video Streaming SDKs (software development kits) for Android, iOS, and macOS devices to enable enterprises creating their custom and personalized mobile broadcasting solution.

The SDKs provide features for mobile broadcasting and manage the complexities around video streaming, scaling and security. The solution is deeply integrated into the IBM Enterprise Video Streaming platform, helping companies to focus on their own business instead of dealing with the complexities of mobile broadcasting. 

These documented interfaces allow developers to bring the power of live video broadcasting into their business-specific custom workflows. The resulting applications are then used to enable employees, from executives to managers, to broadcast content internally using their mobile device after authenticating. Audiences can range from all-hands addresses to smaller departments.

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.

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.

• Bulk video publish and unpublish
• Add labels in bulk
• Copy videos in bulk
• Delete videos in bulk

Looking for a mobile live streaming app to do one-to-many broadcasts? Maybe create a live stream to engage an audience, educate colleagues or give a glimpse of an event to coworkers?

IBM Watson Media released a new mobile application for iOS and Android that allows users to broadcast from their device to an IBM Video Streaming channel. This is done through, as noted in the white paper Live Video Delivery System Built for Scalability, a multi-CDN infrastructure that allows for immense scale, having been utilized to support concurrent viewership of over a million, while also bolstering reliability as well.

Read on to learn more about using this app, advantages, use cases and tips for producing better looking video with it.

• Starting the mobile app
• Live streaming with your phone
• Advantages of the mobile live streaming app
• App SDKs
• Use cases
• Tips: steadiness with a tripod or gimbal
• Tips: stable connection and testing
• Tips: consider audio accessories

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.

• Player speed control
• Responsive and mobile compatible
• Speed up video with closed captions
• Keyboard accessible

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.

• Keyboard accessible
• Screen reader support
• Visual accessibility
• Closed captions
• Disabled auto play
• HTML5 and browser accessibility

Need deeper analytics to analyze how your video content is being consumed? Want to validate that individual viewers completed mandatory training?

IBM Enterprise Video Streaming offers individual viewer tracking analytics. These allow organizations to drill down and see not just who accessed certain videos, but how much they watched and look at overall viewing history as well. This feature has been enhanced as well, for increased scalability in the dashboard and the ability to utilize APIs to take this functionality into other applications.

This feature was demoed in our Getting Started with Enterprise Video Management webinar.

• Individual viewer tracking use cases
• How individual viewer tracking works
• What information is tracked?
• Viewing individual user data
• Scale and APIs