Streaming Blog: Industry News, Trends & Tips

Individual Viewer Tracking Analytics

Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on 21 July 2020

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.

Continue Watching Video on Demand

Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on 15 July 2020

Looking to introduce a way for viewers to return to the exact moment they stopped watching a video?

IBM Watson Media has released a feature that saves the playback position of videos on a per viewer, per browser level. This allows viewers to continue watching video on demand content from the moment they stopped viewing.

Courtroom Streaming: A California Superior Court Case Study

Written by Anthony Romero in Customer Stories on 8 July 2020

COVID-19 disrupted normal life. It forced organizations to pivot and adhere to guidelines related to the pandemic. The effect has been widespread, impacting private companies and government entities. This includes the judicial system in the United States, which is now faced with continuing day-to-day activities, but virtually.

This case study outlines how a superior court in California utilized IBM Video Streaming to broadcast court hearings live and was able to pivot from in-person to virtual in just two weeks. This not only satisfied a legal obligation to allow public access but resulted in giving the court a future proof solution that may be utilized even after things return to normal.

Live Video Streaming Statistics: Internal Communication in Numbers

Written by András Balogh in Video Trends & Studies on 18 June 2020

As the COVID-19 pandemic developed, and with it the need to social distance, our IBM Enterprise Video Streaming customers moved more and more of their communication online. As a video streaming provider focused on helping customers share communications securely, IBM was at the forefront of these changes. We provide a solution for remote communication needs, such as training classes, company-wide broadcasts, executive town halls, digital events and virtual conferences. For example, we provided the streaming solution for the extremely successful two-day IBM Think 2020 Digital conference, leveraging the security rich aspects of the platform.

The need to social distance, work remotely and the cancellation of many in-person events has impacted how video streaming is being used today. For this report we gathered live video streaming statistics on how our clients use the IBM Enterprise Video Streaming solution for internal communication (i.e., employee communication). This covers data points like the frequency of live streaming, content length and information around viewership. The data is intended to help you formulate your own plan relating to your corporate communications.

Note: to avoid test broadcasts from being factored into the results, live streams with less than 10 viewers were removed from this study. Also, this data only focuses on live authenticated viewers and does not account for additional viewership or time spent on content from on-demand viewing of the same session.

MER Conference™ Case Study: Rapid Pivot to Digital Event

Written by Stacy Nawrocki in Customer Stories on 11 June 2020

What do you do when you are on track for over 300 people registering to attend, 10 sponsors setup to exhibit, nearly 100 speakers committed to present… and 6 weeks before the event you learn all of these people now can’t leave their homes?

For the MER Conference, the solution was to quickly pivot to a digital experience; one that could engage audiences remotely while placing them in front of experts and thought leaders. This case study outlines their transitional story, of shifting the conference, in just 6 weeks, to the new format. In the end, the team executed a seamless digital event experience and achieved an increase in year over year registrations by about 45%. Here’s how they did it.

Live Stream Conferences: Digital Events and Hybrid Event Models

Written by Stacy Nawrocki in Tips & Tutorials on 8 June 2020

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.

Permalinks: Creating Vanity URLs for Videos

Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on 2 June 2020

Looking to customize your video URLs? Want to setup a static link that can be updated with new videos without having to notify others or replace embed codes?

This article walks through creating vanity URLs for videos through a new permalink feature for IBM Video Streaming. When setup, a custom ending for the URL is created, featuring the name of the content or any other desired name. In addition, content creators and organizations can use this feature to swap videos tied to a permalink. This will automatically swap the video content featured across embed codes and shared links that use that permalink.

Digital Hub Logistics Hamburg Case Study

Written by Anthony Romero in Customer Stories on 27 May 2020

Pivoting in-person events to digital experiences in three weeks time

COVID-19 caused companies to pivot toward new digital solutions to do business. These practices are ones that must stand up to remote working and restrictions on travel and lockdown facilities.

What do you do, though, when your organization focuses on community and building a strong network of companies through in-person events?

For Digital Hub Logistics Hamburg, they innovated by adopting a digital strategy through technology from IBM. This was done with an eye on speed: quickly being able to introduce video streaming to their community to keep them engaged from earlier events while reaping success through greatly expanding their reach.

WebVTT Captioning & Subtitle Support

Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on 26 May 2020

Looking to add closed captions or subtitles to your video content? Need WebVTT captioning support?

While closed captions can be associated with aiding the deaf and those hard of hearing, their benefit goes beyond this for video creators. In this article, learn about captions, why you should be investing in them and how viewing habits are changing in a way that increases their use. Also learn about the WebVTT format for subtitles and caption, how to create them and convert other subtitle formats to them as well. This is topped off with discussing how to add captions to your videos on IBM’s video streaming and enterprise video platform.

Convert Video Speech to Text with Watson

Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on 22 May 2020

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. This the ability to identify words and phrases in spoken language and convert them to text. The process offers content owners a way to quickly and cost effectively provide captions for their videos. To address this, IBM introduced the ability to convert video speech to text through IBM Watson. This was added to IBM’s video streaming solutions in late 2017 for VODs (video on-demand). It has recently been expanded to recognize additional languages.

Integrated live captioning for enterprises is also available, although differs in several ways from the VOD feature talked about here.

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