Product Updates

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 Video Streaming for direct HLS video streaming and the associated M3U8 manifest file format. Using this approach bypasses other methods from IBM Video Streaming 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

Interested in delivering internal video to large, potentially massive audiences? Are you running into delivery issues not at the service level, but due to congestion caused at the ISP level?

IBM’s ECDN was created to address this need. However, large network setups have still seen congestion issues from their video applications due to multiple video distribution servers pulling videos into the enterprise network through a central ISP connection. To address the challenge resulted from hub-and-spoke network architectures IBM Watson Media has introduced a multi-tiered distribution approach for ECDN. This creates a distribution hierarchy to further resolve congestion issues for some setups. In situations like a hub-and-spoke network, where there are central hubs that are gone through for Internet access, users might go through a regional server instead to remove strain that might originally have been placed on the hub.

Read on to learn more about this approach and the hub-and-spoke network setups that will benefit from it.

• ECDN and the need for multi-tiered distribution
• Challenge for a hub-and-spoke network
• Multi-tiered distribution for hub-and-spoke network

Video is shaping the way organizations do business, both internally and with customers. When surveying over 1,500 executives, Wainhouse Research discovered that over 81% describe online video as an effective tool for communicating work-related information. At the same time, dramatic shifts are happening within marketing toward video applications. In fact, by 2014, 93% of marketing professionals were using video content for online marketing.

This creates a situation where video is widely used amongst employees, but also used to drive and engage prospects. IBM created services to address both of these needs, although they exist in separate products. This added additional work and extra coordination from those who might work cross functionality for their companies video needs. To address this, IBM has introduced an organization feature for video platform management. This allows administrators to access both accounts, video streaming and enterprise video streaming, and also quickly switch between them if they need to shift from an internal to external activity. In addition, the organization feature launches with an expansion to the login process through the introduction of SSO (Single Sign-on) administration access. This allows individuals to login and begin managing their accounts using the same login credentials they use for other applications at their job. Ultimately, these changes simplify managing a company’s streaming activities, while also giving an easier, safer way to access

• Video platform management: organization level
• Accessing accounts through an organization
• Organization settings
• SSO admin access
• Organization level use cases

Live streamed video is increasingly popular and useful for enterprises, but it is bandwidth-intensive. As a result, IT executives face the challenge of serving live video feeds to an increasing number of concurrent viewers without causing a network slowdown or outage.

For almost 20 years, many large enterprises, as well as cable and telecom providers, have solved this challenge by using IP multicast because it’s optimal for delivering live video or linear TV to large audiences. While IP unicast sends separate streams to each viewer, IP multicast distributes a single stream of IP packets and it serves all viewers who request the video, regardless of the number of viewers. Bandwidth consumption is minimized at the internet connection point and on the local network.

New options have become available in IP multicast that makes it even more compelling for organizations with an IP multicast-enabled network—or those that could benefit from one. Read on to learn about them, and also be sure to check out our multicast datasheet on this topic as well.

• IBM integrates with Ramp multicast
• Single platform efficiently delivers secured live and on-demand video

More and more organizations are adopting video as part of their overall strategy. This includes video marketing activities to prospects, but also corporate communication. That internal video can be training for a small, core group of viewers, but can also encompass huge events like executive town halls. In fact, 67% of organizations plan to increase their use of video for HR and corporate communications.

While many enterprise structures can support this increase in internal video, some will run into issues due to a large concentration of viewers. For example, an office that has 1,000 employees at it might struggle with delivering content during all-hands meetings without impacting normal connectivity. This is not an isolated concern either. 71% of technology executives see it as very important to distribute video content without harming the corporate network.

This is where solutions like ECDN (Enterprise Content Delivery Network) come in. These hybrid cloud solutions allow for content to be scaled locally, empowering all hands meetings without disrupting or harming the corporate network. This technology is being constantly improved as well. The latest update is the addition of being able to do remote configuration of ECDN server settings. The new feature not only speeds up the process of having to change configurations, but removes much of the manual work involved.

• What is an ECDN?
• Benefits of ECDN
• Changing the configuration of an ECDN edge
• Starting a remote configuration

Looking for fast video upload speeds? Need a bulk video uploader? IBM Watson Media has recently added an Aspera Connect integration. This works over IBM’s video streaming and enterprise video streaming services.

The new integration brings with it a host of benefits that will aid those managing their video assets. These benefits include not just a faster upload speed, but a way to do so without harming other Internet activities like email and web. It also offers a more secure upload process, while taking advantage of being able to upload large file sizes or bulk upload numerous videos.

• Fast video upload speed
• Large file size uploading
• Bulk video uploader
• Enhance uploading encryption
• Using Aspera accelerated uploading

People are watching more and more streaming content, with year-over-year time spent watching streams growing almost 22% on desktops and 48% on mobiles as outlined in our Video Trends to Look for in 2017 webinar. Viewers like to watch more of a good thing too. This can be for education purposes, entertainment or discovering more about a product or topic. Organizing your video assets into easy-to-find video playlists can aid in more content being consumed, and take advantage of this growth in time devoted to streaming content.

To help in navigating video assets, IBM Watson Media has added a playlist feature. This enables content owners to create numerous playlists associated with on-demand videos. These videos can range from professionally edited assets to auto archives of earlier live streams.

• What is a Video Playlist
• Create Video Playlist
• Watching and Interacting with Video Playlists
• Editing a Video Playlist
• Video Playlist Use Cases

Looking to deliver live streaming content with closed captions? Curious on CEA-608 captions and how they differ from CEA-708?

This article describes some of the benefits of closed captioning live content while discuss the CEA-608 and CEA-708 methods. It also briefly touches on execution, with emphasis on IBM’s video streaming offerings which have recently enhanced their delivery to support reaching mobile devices with these captions.

• What are the benefits of closed captions?
• What are CEA-608 captions?
• What are CEA-708 captions and how do they differ from CEA-608?
• Are CEA-708 captions better?
• Encoders: adding CEA-608 captions to a live stream
• Adding CEA-608 captions from other encoders

Looking to broadcast 4k streaming video? 4K presents an opportunity for better, more vivid detail. This can enhance viewing content on larger screen sizes, such as on a big screen in a meeting room. Even downscaling the assets, though, can present an image that is high quality with a higher level details. It also offers an opportunity to focus in on smaller details. Ever do a presentation with a graph that was indecipherable due to size and compression? 4K streaming at an appropriate bitrate can be a solution.

IBM Watson Media has added capabilities to create 4k live streaming video and upload 4k VOD (video on-demand) files over the IBM video streaming services. This article outlines these capabilities and also discusses what is 4K and how to go about broadcasting at that resolution. It also outlines some of the challenges inherent with live streaming 4K content, due to the large demand from both the broadcaster and viewer in terms of a required connection speed. Consequently, before they can begin streaming at this resolution, broadcasters need to reach out to IBM Watson Media’s customer success to discuss their setup.

• What is 4K video?
• Recommend settings for 4K streaming
• Required connection speed to broadcast 4K
• Download speed to watch 4K and adaptive bitrate streaming
• Encoders for 4K live streaming video
• History of 4K video and industry specifications