Product Updates

When asked in relation to video deployment, 58% of IT executives want to be able to monitor network performance. Video delivery is becoming a big part of how companies conduct business, both from a customer facing and employee facing perspective. From an internal point of view, employees and stakeholders are now actively being trained and addressed through video content, ranging from internal technology training to executive town halls. Under certain setups that feature a large, centrally located audience, this presents a challenge to scale without harming the network. An issue that raises that need to monitor network performance by those in IT.

This need is addressed by technology called ECDN, or Enterprise CDN. This article discusses what is an ECDN and how it works. It also covers ways that administrators can monitor them and the benefit of strain reduction to the network. IBM Watson Media has also recently enhanced its monitoring capabilities for its ECDN offering, which are highlighted as well. It also includes data from a joint IBM and Wainhouse Research report, which interviewed 1,512 executives to see what elements they place importance on for their video solutions. The full report can be read here.

• What does ECDN stand for and what is it?
• Benefit of using ECDN
• ECDN performance example
• Monitoring ECDN instance

Looking for a way to segment long form video content? Adding video chapter markers presents a great way to create longer video assets while offering a navigation method to support jumping to topics of relevance for viewers.

IBM Watson Media has recently improved video chapters, including enhanced shareability for end viewers through URL chapter points and integration with cloud trimming.

• What Are Video Chapter Markers
• Setting Up Video Chapters
• URL Chapter Shortcuts
• Support for Cloud Trimming
• Video Chapter Use Cases

Need to add geographic restrictions to your video content? Geo-blocking offers a way to control who is able to access your assets on a per country basis. This can be done through specific channels, allowing content owners to mix different geographic restrictions among their assets.

Recently added as an option inside IBM’s video streaming offerings, geo-blocking works across desktops and mobile devices. This includes if a viewer is trying to watch from an app. It joins a suite of security features, some of them around keeping content internal as highlighted in our Enterprise Video Security Components & Services white paper, to help enterprises keep their video content restricted to intended audiences.

• Geographic Filtering: Enabling Geo-blocking on Channels
• Viewer Experience from Geo-blocking
• Use Cases

Looking to add picture-in-picture video playback to your live broadcasting? Picture-in-picture can be a simple way to liven up presentations, adding live camera footage to decks or demos.

IBM Cloud Video Broadcaster (Ustream Broadcaster) has added support for picture-in-picture playback through its desktop encoder. The encoder is currently available for Mac, with a Windows version coming soon. This article mentions this new feature and touts use cases for the technology as well.

• What is Picture-in-picture?
• Live Streaming with Picture-in-picture
• Source Switching
• Branding the Experience
• Picture-in-picture Video Use Cases
  
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Want to know how to make a new video from content already uploaded to an account? IBM Watson Media is debuting a new feature that makes it easy to create new, edited videos from existing assets. This can be used to create highlight clips or segment content into smaller, logical snippets.

This feature works with both IBM’s video streaming and IBM’s enterprise video streaming offerings.

Need to create a custom page for your streaming content to live on? IBM Watson Media now has customizable channel pages for its video streaming offerings. This enables easy branding or no branding, offering white label video solutions for enterprises. This allows control over navigation and branding on automatically generated pages. These features are toggleable as well, allowing companies to quickly make changes.

• What are channel pages
• New header experience
• No header feature
• Custom header feature
• Use cases for white label video solutions

Looking for an enterprise video chat integration for internal communications? IBM Watson Media are launching a new chat feature for use with IBM Enterprise Video Streaming.

This new feature, which limits access to authorized viewers through either SSO (Single Sign-On) or email authorization, allows for viewers to engage in realtime and participate with one another while watching internal video content. This feature works with both live and on-demand content and is compatible across desktops and mobile devices, including over the IBM Watson Media for Enterprise App.

• Interactivity: Chat Integration
• Moderators
• Chat Module Compatibility
• User Nicknames
• View Chat Participants
• Chat vs. Q&A Use Cases
• Chat History

Looking for a way to manage temporary passwords that could be used for live video encoder access? IBM Watson Media have rolled out a feature that allows account managers to create passwords that can be used by encoding software, encoding hardware and mobile apps for the purpose of broadcasting. These passwords, set permanently or on a temporary basis, are managed directly from the platform by account managers and access can be revoked at any time.

• Creating Temporary Device Passwords
• Setting Access Windows: Valid Dates
• Manage Temporary Passwords: Revoke Access
• Compatible Encoders for Device Passwords
• Use Cases

If you want to learn more about security features to look for in an enterprise solution, be sure to read our Enterprise Video Security Components & Services white paper.

IBM Watson Media has improved its ECDN (Enterprise Content Delivery Network) technology through simplifying the initial deployment and configuration process. This includes a new, friendly UI and also easy ways to export this configuration for VMware® ESXi or Microsoft® Hyper-V™. This article explains the new process and also gives an overview of what an enterprise content delivery network is, ECDN benefits and use cases for the technology.

• What is ECDN?
• ECDN Benefits
• ECDN Deployment Process: Edge Instances
• ECDN Use Cases

Looking for a Slack integration for your internal video channels?

IBM Watson Media has added an integration with Slack to IBM Enterprise Video Streaming channels. This feature allows it so notification messages are pushed to select Slack channels related to activity, such as an executive townhall going live.

• What is Slack?
• Slack notifications for video channels
• Setting up the Slack integration