Tips & Tutorials

Video streaming and delivery is a resource intensive process. This is attributed to the various networks a video stream must pass through as well as the quality of the video, as higher bitrates and resolutions require more information related to that stream to be sent to the end viewer. As a result of this requirement, it’s not recommended to broadcast video using your own server. For companies, this can result in bottlenecks from the servers hosting or unnecessary costs to scale a server infrastructure.

One solution to avoid both, though, is through utilizing a CDN (content delivery network). This article talks about the basics of delivering content over the Internet before why it’s important to have a CDN when streaming video content.

• The delivery process
• Latency
• The streaming video process and the delivery hurdle
• The solution: content delivery networks (CDNs)
• What is a CDN?
• Going beyond a CDN

If you are already familiar with CDNs and would rather learn more about how IBM Watson Media offers a more robust solution for video streaming, read our live video scalability white paper.

Looking for a white label video player solution? Broadcasters can spend hundreds if not thousands on their setups, from top of the line cameras to hardware encoders that can allow for camera switching, only to have the end product touting another company’s brand which can cheapen the viewer experience.

IBM Watson Media offers a wealth of features to help customize and allow content owners to control a viewer’s experience. This is presented as part of a white label video platform and an enterprise video platform, allowing the removal of the IBM branding and also allowing content owners to insert their own. This article covers these features in more depth. It looks at where and how content owners can remove IBM branding and insert their own and also how content access can be restricted. This includes insight into how content owners can manage elements of the video player, embedding, viewer access, and also the channel page experience.

• White label video player: branding
• Social sharing: player
• Limiting access: restricting embed URLs
• Customize channel page
• Disable channel page
• IBM Enterprise Video Streaming portal branding

Transcribing audio can be a slow process. For those looking for a solution to scale or speed up video transcription, a solution is automated audio to text. This takes AI (artificial intelligence) and uses it to transcribe speech through combining information about grammar and language structure. Using this technology, content owners can start generating transcripts through simply uploading a file.

Note: some of these topics were covered in our Simplify Your Corporate Video Strategy webinar, with the archived version available for immediate viewing.

• Automatically transcribing audio
• Benefits of automated video transcription
• Uses for video transcriptions
• Considerations when using automated audio to text
• Variables that lower automated transcription accuracy

Considering AES video encryption for your assets at rest and during delivery? Curious on the merits of AES-256 vs AES-128 for video?

A security audit, a systematic evaluation of the security of an organization’s information system, can measure many things to see how it conforms to established practices and criteria. In relation to video, this can include virtually every state of the content, from data at rest to in transit. This article covers what is video encryption, explains AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) and why it’s discussed about what bit key is ideal to use for video within enterprise video platforms and other use cases.

• What is video encryption?
• What is data at rest?
• What is data in transit?
• AES encryption for video data
• How does AES work?
• AES key sizes
• AES-256 vs AES-128
• AES video encryption at IBM Watson Media
• Encryption and video security

Buffering got you down? Looking for some tips to combat broadcast delays caused from streaming? Plagued by syncing issues and need some help?

Join us as we tackle some of the most common dilemmas our broadcasters face while explaining what leads to delays in a live stream.

If you are looking for more in-depth studio setups, though, please reference our Video Studio Recommendations white paper.

• Broadcast delays from shooting to stream
• Production equipment workflow
• Battling with bandwidth
• Live transcoding and video delivery

Have you transitioned an in-person conference or event recently to an all-digital experience? Before COVID-19, many businesses focused on in-person opportunities to drive engagement. But once event cancellations started happening rapidly due to the need to social distance and related restrictions, businesses across virtually all industries were forced to take a very close look at how they could quickly pivot their efforts to digital.  

This blog outlines some key insights from the last few months of activity in creating digital events. It details how IBM Watson Media has been able to help many clients with these efforts to live stream conferences, including our own IBM Think Digital event, providing considerations for your own virtual conference. 

• New normal for conferences and events
• It’s hard to predict audience size for digital events 
• Registration, authentication and tracking options can be confusing
• How to get sponsors excited about your digital event 
• Interactivity and networking in a virtual event space 
• Choosing between pre-recorded, live, and semi-live sessions 
• Presenter training and ease of use 
• Highly customized digital experiences 
• What to look for during the event to prevent things from going wrong
• Delivering a post-event digital experience on-demand 
• Video streaming for digital events: IBM offerings

Looking to stream to a large audience but want to use a familiar program? Are you looking to have event presenters use Webex from home? Have you exceeded your limit on the number of people who can connect to your Webex session?

Through an integration between IBM and Cisco, Webex Meetings or Events can be used to reliably live stream to massive audiences. This includes a host of benefits, from ease-of-use to AI-driven features, and is currently part of an extended free access trial due to the current global crisis.

• Live streaming Webex Meetings to large audiences
• Beginning a live stream
• Automatic recordings
• AI-driven benefits: captions and search
• Enabling the live streaming integration
• Best practices before presenting

This article details how to live stream a meeting from Zoom 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 caption generation and search capabilities.

Note: this requires the host to have a Zoom license and version 4.0.x of the Zoom client.

If you conduct your meetings over Webex, IBM also has a direct integration to Live Stream Cisco Webex Video Conferences.

• Enabling at the admin level
• Configuration: live streaming a meeting
• IBM broadcast settings
• Initiating a live stream inside Zoom

Planning to live stream? Considering using your mobile device to do it?

With a smartphone in your pocket, you’ll always have a video ready device close at hand. However, capturing great video for a live stream isn’t always as simple as pointing and shooting. Here are some tips to avoid subpar video quality and a guide on how to live stream from your smartphone or tablet.

• Framing and stabilizing
• Lighting
• Audio
• Connection and hotspots
• Testing
• Power usage and external batteries
• Enable “Do Not Disturb” mode
• Live broadcasting app

Wondering how to improve live streaming video audience engagement? Facebook and Twitter, texts, email, Slack, real-life meetings – just some of the many distractions that can lure viewers away from streaming video presentations such as training sessions and corporate town hall meetings.

It’s hard enough ensuring that viewers pay attention when they’re sitting around a conference table or seated in an auditorium. But if they’re not even in the same room as the presenters, how can you attract their attention over the course of the video stream?

So how do you engage employees with corporate communications? Well it can help to take a page from video marketing, where dollars are directly on the line to prove ROI. Where engaging video content is not something that is just stumbled upon, but carefully orchestrated. So we’ve interviewed communicators and video experts, ranging from those in video marketing to video production, to give you pointers on successfully engaging your employees with live content until the very end.