Streaming Blog: Industry News, Trends & Tips

Integrated Live Closed Captioning for Enterprises

Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on 8 April 2020

62% of employees use closed captions for work related video content, for a number of reasons other than hearing accessibility. In fact, only 5% of employees cite a hearing impairment as a reason to use captions. Additional reasons include convenience, watching videos with low or no volume, or non-native speakers needing assistance to understand the language spoken in the video.

Additionally, employees are 80% more likely to watch a video to completion when it is closed captioned. As a result, there is real value behind captioning video content and a driver for organizations looking to increase viewer engagement.

To address this, IBM is offering integrated live closed captioning for enterprises by combining IBM’s video streaming solutions with IBM Watson Captioning Live. Hosted entirely on the IBM Cloud, the integrated closed captioning software solution eliminates the need for hardware on location and makes it easy for businesses to quickly set up. It is security-rich and offers teams full ownership and control over their video content and metadata, as well as any internal usage metrics and training data. In addition, Watson Captioning Live offers secure, scalable, AI-driven live captions to any live stream. The solution, which currently captions for English language content, can be easily trained to recognize industry- and company-specific terminology and seamlessly integrates accurate live captions to live streaming content, connecting employees across the globe through engaging and accessible workplace video.

Q&A with Nick Barber, Sr. Analyst with Forrester Research on Employee Experience

Written by Stacy Nawrocki in Video Trends & Studies on 1 April 2020

We were given a chance to ask a few questions to Nick Barber, senior analyst with Forrester Research, on video and how it relates to the employee experience. Here’s what Nick had to say based on his research around enterprise video technology.

Live Streaming Meetings from Zoom

Written by Anthony Romero in Tips & Tutorials on 26 March 2020

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.

How to Live Stream from Your Smartphone or Tablet

Written by Anthony Romero in Tips & Tutorials on 20 March 2020

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.

IBM Watson Media Earns a 2020 Top Rated Award From TrustRadius

Written by Anthony Romero in Company News on 18 March 2020

IBM Watson Media has been honored as a leader among video solutions. Today, March 18th, 2020, the customer voice and insights platform TrustRadius announced that IBM’s video streaming solutions was being recognized with a 2020 Top Rated Award in the Video category.

With a trScore of 8.8 out of 10 and over 200 verified reviews, IBM Watson Media’s video streaming services are recognized by the TrustRadius community as valuable players in the video category.

Live Video Manager Dashboard: Update

Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on 12 March 2020

Live and on-demand video content can be a compelling medium. It can build excitement for product launches, engage employees with corporate communication or educate viewers around specific topics. Managing and updating a company’s video activities can therefore be crucial.

For those leveraging IBM’s video streaming solutions, an on-demand and live video manager dashboard is provided. Accessed online, this allows administrators and managers to quickly go live, edit video assets or control individual access levels.

This interface has been updated at IBM, streamlining management functions while also enhancing the ability to find and locate content channels available.

Salesforce Case Study: CIO Priorities

Written by Stacy Nawrocki in Customer Stories on 28 February 2020

Salesforce was ranked by Fortune in 2019 as the number one best place to work among large companies¹ and was recently named in Forbes’ 2020 World’s Most Admired Companies,² so it’s no wonder they are growing at a rapid clip. But, as more employees join the Salesforce team of Trailblazers, the demands of communicating effectively across the organization, and making employees feel valued increase. Jo-ann Olsovsky, Executive Vice President and CIO at Salesforce, and her team are tasked with providing effective and reliable ways to connect people across the organization and make sure they continue to feel a part of the team regardless of where they are located around the world.

IBM and Salesforce have partnered together on live video streaming projects for many years, most notably to extend the reach of Dreamforce sessions to customers and interested parties that can’t make it to the event in San Francisco each year. In 2019, Salesforce decided to expand its video streaming work with IBM to include internal employee communications as well. Being able to continue to grow and scale communications and do it in a way that doesn’t impact other applications running on the corporate network is a significant priority. In this video story, Jo-ann talks about the importance of video, the impact on Salesforce employees and company culture…the “Salesforce Ohana³,” and where she sees video technology headed in the future.

New Privacy Features for IBM Video Streaming Service

Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on 23 January 2020

IBM Watson Media, an IBM Business would like to announce new enhancements to the IBM Video Streaming service, including to the registration gate feature available through the IBM Video Streaming service, which will allow for users to have more privacy controls.

These include providing the link to a privacy policy along with a feature for users to opt out of the sale of their data when they provide personal information on the video registration gate.

Note: currently the opt-out feature is only available for viewers located in California, USA.

Video Content Management System: Bulk Video Publish and Label

Written by Anthony Romero in Product Updates on 30 December 2019

The use of video inside enterprises is on the rise. This rise is in proportion with the amount of content being created for corporate communications. As companies increasingly embrace video for internal communications, video assets are used more. In fact, at organizations that use video for online events more than 100 times annually 49% of their employees watch online video for business on a daily basis.

This presents an opportunity to engage employees at scale while at the same time breaking down geographic barriers that might have existed in the past in doing so. It also, however, presents a challenge in curating and maintaining this growing volume of content. While AI aspects have been introduced, automating both closed caption generation and fueling content discovery in place of manual metadata, there is still manual work to be done.

To address this, IBM Watson Media has introduced bulk features for account administrators and managers to take advantage of. This includes the ability to bulk video publish and label on-demand video content that has been added to an account among other bulk features.

History of IBM Watson Media

Written by Anthony Romero in Company News on 10 December 2019

In late 2015 and early 2016 respectively, IBM made key acquisitions in the video space. This saw the 100+ year old company acquire both Clearleap and Ustream. The entities were joined to form IBM Cloud Video. This also gave birth to IBM Watson Media, which was founded around creating an ecosystem of video solutions leveraging IBM Watson. As those solutions matured, and were integrated into the end-to-end streaming solutions, the IBM Cloud Video name was dissolved and the entire unit moved to be part IBM Watson Media.

Now IBM Watson Media has a rich history, a combination of activities done both after and before the acquisitions that led to its creation. This article documents this, noting past major events, awards and other occurrences in IBM Watson Media’s past.

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