Product Updates

79% of executives with video content archives agree that a “frustration of using on-demand video is not being able to quickly find the piece of information I am looking for when I need it.” This data comes from a joint IBM and Wainhouse Research report, which interviewed 1,801 executives. The frustration is a growing challenge, but one that can be addressed while simultaneously adding valuable captions to video content. This is achieved through automatic closed captioning, with support to both edit and search them.

Called Watson Captioning, available as part of IBM Video Streaming and as a stand alone service, the process works by utilizing IBM Watson to generate closed captions, converting video speech to text. Once generated, content owners can modify these for accuracy through a dashboard editor, simplified by confidence levels that will underline words under a certain threshold. Afterwards, these corrected captions are not only accessible in the player but can be searched against as well, empowering viewers to jump to parts in the video where their topic of interest is mentioned.

This article discusses, briefly, the process of generating these captions before detailing the user experience in searching them and how content owners can edit them as well.

• Automatic closed captioning
• Searching captions
• How to edit captions
• Additional editor features

Looking to manage video platform user permissions?

Managing video content is become an increasingly collaborative experience. Furthermore, enterprises are adopting larger video strategies as well. In fact, when surveying brands and retail companies, 53% stated that they are increasing budgets for live content and 51% are increasing budgets for on-demand content. Naturally this increase in budget for video will produce more content, creating an environment where companies need to be more agile in managing assets. Especially as companies are looking to use video both internally, to employees and stakeholders, and externally, for prospects or entertainment purposes.

To address this, IBM is happy to announce the release of an administrator controlled permission system for organizations. This enables organization administrators to manage video platform user permissions, empowering them to control admins and managers for accounts and channels from a dashboard. This enables quick team management for video assets, fostering easier collaboration toward video goals.

• What is an organization?
• Controlling permissions in an organization
• User permission levels
• How to manage user permissions

Need a robust video advertising integration solution for content you own?

IBM Watson Media is expanding the advertising options available to content owners through the addition of custom ad solutions. Tailored for live and on-demand video, these are available as a product offering from IBM Watson Media with additional managed services to best support existing and new ad setups.

This article explains more about using video advertising, the available solutions from IBM Watson Media, use cases and the technology behind it. To learn more about the offered services, contact sales for additional details.

• Live video monetization
• How it works
• Mid-roll and pre-roll video advertising
• Video advertising use cases
• Video ad integration features
• Technology highlights for ad integration

IBM Watson Media is passionate about supporting our customers and their events. We have a thriving, in-house Customer Success team that works closely with content owners to aid them in their live and on-demand streaming. In 2018, IBM Watson Media will continue to invest in our support infrastructure to better assist IBM Watson Media users. This includes launching 24/7 support for Streaming Manager, Streaming Manager for Enterprise, ECDN (Enterprise Content Delivery Network) and Watson Video Enrichment. As a result, content owners get access to in-house experts on these solutions, able to assist them during a live broadcast or event regardless of timing.

These expanded support hours include assistance over phone, chat and email, accessed from inside an account for IBM’s video streaming or enterprise video streaming offerings. In addition, the IBM Watson Media Support Center is also available for guidance with graphic and video tutorials.

Looking to add live polls to your video content? Live audience polling is a powerful tool that can be used to dynamically adapt live content based on feedback. This can alter performances, steering content in a direction viewers it to go, while also gathering valuable information from the audience as well.

This article discusses the benefits of live polling, use cases, tips and also how to create live polls using the IBM’s video streaming and enterprise video streaming offering. If you haven’t used these services before and want to learn more about it first, check out this Getting Started demo.

• The value of live polling
• Live audience polling use cases
• Tips to increase responses to live polling
• Creating polls
• Adding a poll to a live stream

Metadata is a powerful supplement to video content. It enables organizations to more efficiently classify content, using this information for structure, permissions or help develop unique experiences around content types. Metadata can take many forms, from listing a simple description to tying assets to individuals.

To expand on metadata’s growing use, IBM Watson Media has introduced a custom metadata feature. This acts as a video metadata editor for online content, allowing for a huge expansion of metadata fields. As a result, content owners can add fields with criteria such as “multiple choice” or a numeric value to be associated with video content.

This article documents the new feature, along with covering the value of metadata as it relates to video content and its use cases. For more information on the importance of metadata, also please reference our Video Metadata: Management and Tools white paper.

• The value of metadata for videos
• What is custom metadata for videos?
• Use cases for custom metadata
• Custom metadata in dynamic playlists
• Managing custom metadata
• The longterm benefits of metadata
• Using custom metadata for background information

Looking to create video news feeds in a way that caters to mobile viewers?

Many customers have asked how they can recreate a Facebook-like video experience with embedded videos. To address this, IBM Watson Media has developed a player SDK that includes autoplay and pre-buffering functionalities. Due to the pre-buffering logic, video content starts with virtually no delay and will pause automatically when a user scrolls past it. Ultimately this gives viewers a quick, smooth video playback experience comparable with mainstream social networks, but created under your own brand.

To achieve this, developers can use the SDKs to create an app, for Android or iOS, that will present large libraries of content in an easily scrollable, skimmable format for end users.

• Making a news feed app
• Pre-buffered video for automatic play
• Closed caption support
• Adaptive bitrate streaming
• Creating a news feed
• Other player SDK use cases

Closed captions have grown to be an important part of the video experience. While they assist deaf and hard of hearing people in enjoying video content, a study in the UK discovered that 80% of closed caption use was from those with no hearing issues. Not only that, but Facebook found out that adding captions to a video increased view times on their network by 12%. These reasons, along with regulations such as the Americans with Disabilities Act and rules from the FCC, have realized the need to caption video assets. However, caption generation can be time consuming, taking 5-10 times the length of the video asset, or costly if you are paying someone else to create them.

A solution is automatic speech recognition from machine learning, the ability to identify words and phrases in spoken language and convert them to text. This offers content owners a way to quickly and cost effectively provide captions for their videos. To address this, IBM Watson Media is introducing the ability to convert video speech to text through IBM Watson. Called Watson Captioning, this solution is available as part of IBM’s video streaming and enterprise video streaming offerings while also being available as a stand alone solution.

• How it works
• Supported languages
• Caption accuracy
• Steps to convert video speech to text
• Exporting and editing captions
• Additional professional services available for captioning

Looking for ways to simplify managing your video playlists? Need to create playlists that will update themselves? According to Wainhouse Research, almost one in five (19%) organizations report that they add at least 25 hours of video to their corporate libraries each month. These increasing libraries present challenges to improve methods to manage content in a way that promotes accessibility. A dynamic video playlist is part of the solution for this, giving content owners a way to quickly produce playlists that will automatically update with new content. This is done through creating playlists that populate content based on certain criteria, and then will update that playlist as new videos meet the same conditions. Criteria can range from content found in titles and descriptions, but also through using information found in custom metadata fields as well.

This article describes what is a dynamic video playlist, what are the use cases, the user experience and also how you can create them as well.

• What is a dynamic video playlist?
• Dynamic video playlist use cases
• Playlist user experience
• Creating a dynamic video playlist
• Creating playlists with multiple terms
• Custom metadata fields

Are you looking for a service that can provide HLS compatible live and on-demand video output? This article provides details around using IBM Cloud Video for direct HLS video streaming and the associated M3U8 manifest file format. Using this approach bypasses other methods from IBM Cloud Video such as our web based player, API based player offerings and our player SDKs.

To help guide content owners, this article discusses what is HLS and M3U8. It then outlines the benefits and uses cases for this approach, such as using third party players. It then covers what features are and are not available in this approach, letting content owners make an informed decision on their delivery strategy.

• What is HLS?
• M3U8 files
• Third party players
• Creating a Roku channel
• Using HLS as a source for other workflows
• Built-in multiple CDN support
• Analytics
• Provisioning direct HLS video streaming