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QUALITY MATTERS: VOD IN VIDEO MARKETING

bsp-admin-1 on June 1, 2017

Consumers use a wide range of video-enabled devices to watch more than just movies, TV shows, and funny clips. Video is equally well-suited for a variety of other purposes, such as company and product presentations, application scenarios, explanatory videos, and employer branding campaigns. The key to success lies in producing high-quality videos and addressing the target audience effectively.

Video on demand (VOD) is a versatile medium for delivering such content, and ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) is a common way to finance it. According to the industry association Bitkom, AVOD is growing rapidly. For publishers aiming to keep viewers satisfied across diverse playback devices, maintaining high video quality is crucial. However, “quality” encompasses more than just resolution—it includes multiple dimensions that influence the user experience.

MORE THAN JUST RESOLUTION

When thinking about video quality, resolution or image sharpness is often the first thing that comes to mind. While 4K resolution is considered a high standard, most providers have yet to fully support streaming 4K content due to the significant data volumes required. These volumes can strain current data transmission capabilities, leading to buffering and playback interruptions that degrade the user experience. As such, image sharpness is just one aspect of video quality.

THE EFFECT OF LOADING TIMES

Delays in video loading significantly affect viewer retention. News sites and other services frequently lose users due to buffering during playback. Even major platforms like Netflix have acknowledged this challenge and are experimenting with monetizing loading times through advertising. For AVOD providers, achieving smooth playback alongside high-quality advertising is key to delivering a seamless experience.

SCALABILITY CHALLENGES

Scalability is essential for handling various content formats and delivery methods. Over the years, proprietary streaming formats like RTMP and RSP have largely been replaced by open protocols such as HLS and DASH, which offer the necessary scalability. These formats, supported by initiatives like the Streaming Video Alliance, are expected to become even more widespread. As older formats phase out, the market will continue to consolidate, simplifying operations for content providers.

BATTLING AD BLOCKERS

Ad blockers remain a major challenge for AVOD, significantly impacting revenue. For instance, a Pagefair analysis found that 29% of VoD users in Germany used an ad blocker in 2016. Cloud-based delivery solutions, such as server-side ad insertion (SSAI), allow publishers to bypass ad blockers while simultaneously improving playback quality. SSAI integrates ads seamlessly into video streams, enhancing the viewing experience while maintaining ad revenue.

INVESTING IN QUALITY

Viewers have the right to skip video ads that are intrusive or poorly produced, but publishers also have the right to monetize their content through advertising. Balancing these interests hinges on delivering quality. To make AVOD successful, publishers must prioritize two key elements:

  1. A fast-loading player that ensures smooth streaming, prevents playback interruptions, and fosters viewer engagement.
  2. SSAI technology that shifts advertising decision logic to the server, bypassing ad blockers, and enabling content customization across devices.

ENHANCING THE USER EXPERIENCE

Investments in these areas improve user experience, encourage consumer interaction, and increase revenue for publishers. By leveraging high-quality videos, companies can effectively deliver tailored content to diverse audiences and ensure accessibility across a range of devices. High-quality AVOD is more than just a content delivery method—it’s a way to build lasting connections with viewers while supporting sustainable business models.

HOW TENNIS AUSTRALIA SERVES UP A COMPLETE CONTENT EXPERIENCE

bsp-admin-1 on May 30, 2017

Tennis Australia, the country’s governing body for tennis, is ace at mastering a complete content strategy that puts video front and centre to engage fans year-round. But there’s a lot more to delivering a comprehensive viewing experience than meets the eye.

Creating dynamic, inclusive content is especially crucial in the world of sports. No longer subject to broadcaster scheduling, sporting organizations are leading the charge to extend viewing experiences not just beyond TV, but off the court as well. Tennis Australia is proving itself in this game, keeping fans around the world entertained and in the know, streaming both live broadcasts, as well as replays, post-match speeches, behind-the-scenes moments, press conferences and more. The spread of content is allowing Tennis Australia to create highly personalized, digital connections to fans, anytime and on any device.

The 2017 Australian Open proved a major test for Tennis Australia’s content strategy and delivery, with published content attracting a whopping three million live views and more than eight million views for video on demand (VOD) during the tournament.

  • The Open was a huge success, with online video setting new records, including:
  • Combined audience views of more than 11 million (live streams and VOD)
  • Snackable highlight clips with average completion rates of over 80%
  • 23 countries from around the world tuned in, led by the United States in terms of viewership
  • The highlights from the match between Denis Istomin and Novak Djokovic earned the title of most watched video in the tournament, followed by the match point cliffhanger from the finals match between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal

With those numbers, it’s no wonder Tennis Australia considers live video and VOD the most important parts of its overall content strategy. But victories like these aren’t possible without the right infrastructure and tools behind the scenes. Brightcove’s Video Cloud platform, in partnership with Akamai Technologies, powered Tennis Australia’s content streaming during the tournament, ensuring tennis fans had a seamless online viewing experience when reliving their favorite moments from the Open. During the tournament, Brightcove Video Cloud enabled Tennis Australia to upload, transcode and publish hundreds of video clips daily.

Grand Slam With VOD

Tennis Australia needed to deliver on-demand content, hot shots, and highlights to its hungry viewers in different countries as fast as possible throughout the tournament. Brightcove enabled Tennis Australia to do just this — typically within five minutes of the end of a match — so the organization was often first to market.

Coupled with Akamai’s next generation Content Delivery Network, Tennis Australia was able to deliver a better-than-broadcast-quality online experience at scale across any connected device — mobile, desktop, tablets, connected TVs, game consoles, and more. Akamai supported the delivery and distribution of VOD content, ensuring that despite the high traffic volumes generated by on-demand streaming, fans could see every volley, ace, and point made in high quality, instantly for a superior viewing experience every time.

Tennis Australia was also able to take a more intelligent approach to content distribution through Brightcove, easily customizing video for each social platform or complex broadcast agreement and rapidly sharing it with viewers in their channel of choice.

Lots of Love For Live

Live streaming capabilities meant the organization could take the Australian Open from Melbourne Park to fans in different countries around the world. Using Brightcove Live, Tennis Australia was able to expand brand awareness and reach new audiences in the moment through a bespoke live channel, streaming up to 16 courts and behind-the-scenes content simultaneously. Live content not only promoted the Open, but showcased Tennis Australia’s capabilities and capacity for delivering engaging content at scale. Brightcove gave Tennis Australia the confidence to jump from thousands of views to millions concurrently. Live streaming at this scale traditionally requires extensive on-premise equipment, which cannot only be costly to set up, but cumbersome to operate. But by moving this workflow to Brightcove’s live architecture, Tennis Australia was able to suddenly burst its capacity to enormous scale when required for the tournament, without incurring costs during the off-season.

As more and more broadcasters and media organizations bet big on live video and VOD, the Australian Open serves up a case study for how to get these critical elements of content strategy right in a big way. During the tournament, Tennis Australia was able to maximize its reach, engage with its audience of millions, and highlight online video through a powerful content game plan backed by best-of-breed infrastructure and tools.

HOW VISUALLY APPEALING IS YOUR VIDEO EXPERIENCE?

bsp-admin-1 on May 24, 2017

Streaming online video has come a long way from its infancy when we were excited by the addition of a postage stamp embedded video player on our My Yahoo page. Comparing it to what it’s become today is unfair – like comparing an iPhone to a rotary phone. Today, the experience of delivering 4K and HD online video with adaptive bitrate is generally fantastic. And yet we can still improve this experience a little.

And that’s for the following reasons: For some, online video is the primary alternative to traditional television. For others, it complements traditional television programming. And that last sentence hides what is really important. The same standard is expected of online video as of conventional television: no long waiting times when switching on or channels, no technical faults. This television experience has shaped our experience for more than 50 years – a high standard. Today’s online video experience is convincing, but there is still plenty of room for improvement.

BUILDING BLOCKS: THE ONLINE VIDEO PRIMER

So, let’s explore and understand the functional components we need to focus on when optimizing today’s video experience. These may not be as fun as a classic Schoolhouse Rock explainer, but these vectors reveal where to find the aforementioned room for improvement. Focus on these and you’ll see the impact of your video grow.

How quickly does your video load? Does it take mere milliseconds before playback begins? It should. Player performance and video playback time-to-first-frame are absolutely critical to delivering exceptional video experiences and keeping viewers engaged. Today’s industry-leading video players leverage optimized HTML5 code with minimal cores that load only what is absolutely necessary at runtime. At least as important in today’s video landscape are Media Source Extensions (MSE), which enable optimizations at the lower level for optimal delivery and processing of formats such as HLS.

DO YOU MAKE MOENY FROM YOUR VIDEOS?

Essentially, any efficient ad workflow today must seamlessly integrate player and delivery. Too many ads fragment even the best video experience. And if your pre-roll ad takes longer than 5 seconds to load, even the world’s best player technology won’t keep your viewers tuned in. Side ad insertion (SSAI) represents a fundamental shift in how online video ads are delivered, providing an experience comparable to TV in terms of efficiency, scale and responsiveness.

And online video is even better at one thing: its customizability allows for more targeted and geo-targeted ads that can be delivered to viewers everywhere. This is what advertisers want. At the same time, this is not just a technical hurdle. Those who make money from advertising must not lose sight of the impact of user experience when setting rules for monetization. Delaying playback even a few seconds to improve CPM will ultimately reduce revenue by driving viewers away. The industry needs to establish best practices in this regard, and it needs to significantly reduce ad response times and efficiently measure the impact on the target audience.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR VIEWERS EXPERIENCE?

Is the quality optimal? Do you experience slow-loading streams? Are you suddenly interrupted in your viewing experience? Insights into start times, rebuffering, errors, bitrates, and rendition switches are critical to delivering a great video experience. However, knowing the data is not enough, you also need to know how to use it effectively. Harnessing and using this data to make players and video delivery systems even smarter is critical. Processing this data using machine learning to “magically” optimize your streams and improve viewer experiences (and in some cases reduce costs at the same time) is the next level of optimization in 2017.

DON’T FORGET: VISUAL QUALITY MATTERS

Lately, it seems like everything revolves around 4K. In my opinion, however, using today’s H.264 tools cleverly and creatively is what the late Steve Jobs would have called “practically magical”. I can already hear what I’m going to hear: “You must be out of your mind! Everyone is talking about 4K these days.” Sure, 4K is very exciting. When you see 4K content for the first time, you can’t help but be impressed – just like with the first HD experience. Believe me: I’m a big fan. I have two 4K TVs at home, and what Netflix and Amazon offer in 4K on these devices looks really good. But we still have a long way to go. In my opinion, the “H.264 bone is far from being picked clean.”

Well-produced HD video today can provide a visually equivalent experience, so most viewers will not notice a difference when viewing optimized HD and 4K side-by-side. And when you consider the capital and operational costs of implementing 4K online video and compare them to the optimization options available with H.264, the choice becomes easy. In my opinion, many have already rashly dismissed AVC in favor of a hyped, sexier (4K) alternative without considering the costs and problems caused by the adoption curve of new technology. In particular, before we can profitably offer 4K video to a mass audience, the hardware that supports decoding for HEVC in the mass market must be available. This means that your iPhone, Android smartphone, iPad, Roku and other devices on which you watch content must support this on the chip. And the answer to the question of whether this is already possible is the same as our parents gave us when we were kids and asked, “Are we there yet?” on the way to our summer vacation: namely, “No.”

STREAMLINING VIDEO ACROSS THE ENTERPRISE

bsp-admin-1 on May 22, 2017

Leading organizations are embracing video and becoming smarter about creating, using, and measuring video across the entire enterprise. Whether live streaming town halls, training sales teams, onboarding new employees, or providing customer support; video enables you to remove barriers and helps teams to connect effectively. Why? Because video is one of the most compelling forms of communication the world has ever known.

Companies across all industries recognize this and are tapping video to drive business results– across both sides of their firewall. Whether it’s for a more traditional external marketing and sales use case or internal communications and employee knowledge sharing, video is fast, effective, and easy to measure. To best streamline the video publishing workflow across various business functions, organizations are seeking an online video platform (OVP) that handles multiple use cases and connects seamlessly into their technology stack. With the emergence of simple cloud solutions, organizations are being asked to deliver “borderless” video solutions– online services that serve both external and internal needs. Additionally, these cloud services must cater to a globally decentralized workforce and external audience, all while juggling security and scale.

In response to this crucial and growing industry demand, we released Brightcove Communications Studio. This combination of innovative functionality and key partnerships extends Brightcove’s existing platform to help these groups deliver the benefits of online video to internal audiences. The solution combines mission critical security features such as admin and viewer SSO, network optimization features, internal viewer tracking & analytics, and eCDN capabilities all to our existing feature-rich core platform. Now, corporate communication, HR, training and partner enablement groups can supplement their existing external video initiatives with secure internal video experiences to drive employee alignment, engagement, and education.

While incredibly powerful, it’s important to keep in mind that the underlying technology platform is only one component of a video strategy. Since video is no longer being created by a handful of people on one or two teams, production capabilities and expectations are extending to the entire employee population. After buying into a single video solution, enterprises must produce consistent, brand appropriate, engaging video.

To scale enterprise video efficiently, organizations must:

  • Expand existing workflows to accommodate video production and publishing
  • Establish corporate policy for content contributors and web publishers
  • Develop flexible tech stacks that support both workflows and policies  

Workflow management and process, role-based responsibility, and brand governance are important components of your video strategy that get everyone on the same page and ensure consistency and quality. Below we outline key considerations for an enterprise video strategy.

Why Enterprise-Wide Workflow and Processes Are Crucial

Enterprise technology needs to support the differences between each of your group’s goals, but it can be hard to know how to support video initiatives when each enterprise function has different video objectives and workflows.

Marketing is focused on brand awareness and lead generation. Customer Support wants to use video to reduce call-center calls. Product is concerned with conveying product value to drive adoption. Sales knows video will accelerate and support deal close. HR wants to securely screen candidates and effectively onboard new employees. Lastly, the CEO wants to live steam important messages to a global workforce. A comprehensive enterprise strategy for video can support all of these goals.

Brightcove Enterprise Video Platform Use Cases Diagram

The key is to centralize on an enterprise video solution that allows the technical workflow and KPIs to vary as required by each function. In order to enable cross-functional video workflows, you need to have the organizational processes in place for creating the video content, approving the content, publishing, and promotion.

How to Centralize Video Production Workflow

Start with the following guidelines when developing workflow processes:

  • Create a centralized internal access point where video production guidelines and branded templates are stored.
  • Document workflows for content and brand reviews. Decide how your OVP will connectors into your existing workflow technologies.
  • Upload metadata to all video assets. Configure your hosting mechanism and add the correct connections so adding metadata is simplified process. Metadata is essential to findability of videos across the organization, so have subject matter experts add keyword terms.
  • Add administration levels to control access to your video content. Some restrictions reduce errors, but appropriate OVP administer controls ensure that team members aren’t distracted by content that isn’t relevant them. Leveraging a single enterprise video solution ensures everyone utilizing the asset has the correct version and end-of-life dates- protecting the brand from out-of-date content and ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

What Corporate Video Policies Do for Brand Consistency

While each department or function may have its own objectives for video, brand governance is important to maintain consistent messaging, brand, and quality. A successful enterprise video policy not only addresses Marketing and Sales, but also extends to corporate communication, HR, training, and partner enablement groups. Standards set a solid foundation for video across your enterprise. With these in place, your company can supplement existing external video initiatives with secure internal video experiences to drive employee alignment, engagement, and education.

Critical Questions for Developing a Video Governance Plan:

  • Which viewers and personas should your video makers target? Consider both external and internal audiences.
  • How will each video represent the brand’s voice and tone? Outline these variables as well as look and feel.
  • Which keywords should be used? A metadata strategy ensures your videos are used throughout the company effectively. 
  • Are there messages and topic should be avoided? Outline these with specificity and reference your company code of conduct where applicable.

A video content approval process for each department will help address organizational and function-specific policies. This will also help minimize production and publishing bottlenecks, and again, centralize the assets themselves.

Streamlining Your OVP with Your Tech Stack

Ultimately, your platform enables corporate processes and policies but then provides the capabilities to make video initiatives, realities. Enterprise video initiatives become actionable when your OVP is integrated into the digital tech stack. Critical areas of integration are Identity Management, Digital Asset Management for setting content usage rules/policies, CMS for enabling an efficient publishing workflow, marketing automation (MAP) for campaign measurement down to the individual viewer, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to nurture sales and renewals.

At Brightcove, we have an extensive partner ecosystem of over 200 Technology Partnerships in over 20 ecosystem categories to create an end-to-end enterprise-wide solution that seamlessly integrates video with your existing technology stack.

IN-PAGE EXPERIENCES CREATE IMMERSIVE VIDEO IN MINUTES

bsp-admin-1 on May 22, 2017

Video is a vital presence in our everyday lives. Today, information is everywhere and consumers expect to get your content instantaneously, anywhere they are. Video breaks through the static—it’s engaging, emotive, even interactive. Video replicates the human experience better than any other medium. So, as business use of video surges to meet consumer expectations, how does the savvy enterprise stand apart and utilize video to surprise and delight prospects and customers? It’s the experience you provide.

The most engaging video experiences encourage us to interact, mention, share, recommend or refer. So, businesses are using online video to help create authentic, meaningful relationships with customers, prospects, partners and employees. At Brightcove, our focus is on continually delivering innovations that empower our customers to create video experiences that outperform. In 2017, we announced In-Page Experiences: a feature that enables any business to create immersive video experiences.

Our Gallery product makes it easy for marketers to easily create and deploy video-rich portal experiences, landing page experiences, and live event experiences that are fully customizable to your brand’s specifications within minutes.

In-Page makes it easy to think “outside the box” and experiment with a wide variety of formats like carousels, grids, playlists, and more. Easy to create and designed to perform, these stylish video experiences will transform not just the way you publish video, but the way your audiences connects with it.

Brightcove’s Embeddable Horizontal PlaylistBrightcove’s Embeddable Horizontal Playlist

In a day when business video is demanded, what does it take to be extraordinary? Because In-Page is centered around personalized, contextual, video content, you can create different states for your media- specifically tailoring what the viewer sees before, during, and after play.

Brightcove’s Embeddable Video CarouselBrightcove’s Embeddable Video Carousel

Now what if you could add layer upon layer to your video experience? Allowing your audiences to immerse themselves in your brand’s look, feel, tone, and most importantly, message? Imagine adding to your story with links, panels, and interactive forms, that can be displayed both inside and outside the player itself. You can set these prompts and calls-to-action to appear dynamically at different points in the video. All of this can now be done with simple point-and-click authoring tools, allowing anyone to construct video experiences without programming knowledge or IT support.

Brightcove’s Dynamic and Embeddable Video Experiences Brightcove’s Dynamic and Embeddable Video Experiences

Stylish, immersive, and compelling, In-Page makes it easy for business users to create extraordinary, customized video experiences. No matter your level of tech expertise, you can use In-Page to encourage deeper levels of engagement and build relationships with customers, prospects, partners, and employees.

Video cuts through the noise. It is the most compelling form of digital content for a very simple reason: at it’s core, video is about personal, human connection. Just delivering video is not enough – the experience is what engages your audience and motivates them to take that next step. We can’t wait to see the unique experiences our customers create with In-Page, we know you will “think outside of the box” in ways we never even imagined.

CONTEXT-AWARE ENCODING: IMPROVE VIDEO QUALITY AND CUT COSTS

bsp-admin-1 on May 22, 2017

As streaming services scale up to meet the demand for more content across more screens, the storage and bandwidth costs of delivering video to those screens rises.

Efficiently delivering high-quality video at scale to a vast range of devices is central to what we do at Brightcove. Our Context-Aware Encoding (CAE) feature can drastically reduce the cost of storing and streaming video, while improving playback quality for viewers.

With CAE, the compression settings are tuned for each video using advanced content analysis algorithms. In most cases, this results in smaller video files (and smaller CDN bills) while maintaining visual quality.

Adaptive Bitrate Streaming – How We Got Here

Most video delivered over the internet today uses Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) streaming technologies, such as HLS and MPEG-DASH, to optimize video playback.

An ABR stream contains multiple copies of the same video, called “renditions,” which are encoded at different resolutions and bitrates. When a user presses the play button, the player receives a manifest that lists the renditions available for playback. The player chooses the appropriate rendition to play based on several factors, including the bandwidth currently available, buffer fullness, and the size of the playback window. As these factors change during the course of playback, the player can switch up to a higher-quality rendition or down to a lower-quality one, ensuring that the viewer gets the best possible video quality with minimal buffering.

Streaming services generally create a single encoding configuration for all of their content—a predetermined set of ABR renditions, often called a “ladder,” that is used to encode every piece of content. Deciding on the list of resolutions and bitrates to put into an ABR ladder is an inexact science. In some cases, ABR ladders can be tuned to a specific use case. Animation, for example, can be encoded at lower bitrates as the content is generally less complex.

The Problem With Static ABR

Reaching a wide audience forces streamers into a one-size-fits-all scenario, using a single bitrate ladder to encode a variety of content types for a variety of end-user devices. In most cases, a single ABR ladder is being used to encode HD sports content for TV playback as well as cartoons for playback on phones.

The problem? Using a single bitrate ladder often results in inconsistent quality between different types of content. High-complexity video such as sports content requires more bits to achieve an acceptable viewing experience than animation. For example, if you skew your ABR ladder towards higher bitrates to ensure your sports content looks great, you’re wasting storage and bandwidth when using that same profile to encode animated content. That wasted storage and bandwidth costs real money.

Optimizing ABR Streams With Context-Aware Encoding

That’s where Brightcove’s Context-Aware Encoding technology comes in. Instead of using one ABR ladder for all content, CAE analyzes each source video and intelligently builds a custom bitrate ladder for each piece of content. In addition, CAE takes into account constraints associated with the delivery network and device being used to view the content. It decides how many renditions are needed and what resolutions and bitrates to use for each, while still maintaining a consistent level of quality across all titles. This results in massive savings on storage and bandwidth costs, while improving the playback experience for users.

The chart below illustrates a typical static ABR ladder alongside an example of a context-aware ladder that was generated for a typical news clip.

CAE was able to deliver the same quality as the static ABR ladder using half as many renditions, and using lower bitrates or higher resolutions for each rendition. This has a positive impact on both playback performance and cost efficiency.

Better Playback Performance at Lower Bitrates

Using the static ABR ladder, a mobile 3G user with 1,000kbps of sustained bandwidth would peak at the 360p rendition at 900kbps. CAE determined that it could create a higher resolution 432p rendition at a lower bitrate – 777kbps. This rendition uses 13% fewer bits and actually delivers higher resolution and quality, as you can see in the below comparison.

See the difference? The sharper details of the context-aware clip are noticeable in the text at the bottom, as well as the man’s hair.

Similarly, a user with an economy-priced residential internet plan supplying 3,000kbps of sustained bandwidth would top out at the 720p rendition under the static ABR ladder, while they would be able to stream at full 1080p using CAE, delivering a Full HD experience.

Reduced Storage and Bandwidth Costs

Encoding video to all eight renditions of the static ABR ladder generates a total of 14,750kbps of data. For a one minute video, that’s 885MB. The context-aware ladder on the right generates only 4,950kbps. So for the same one minute video, that’s only 297MB, which represents  a savings of 66% in storage costs.

Since the bandwidth used depends on the number of viewers and the duration of video viewed, bandwidth savings can be even higher than those for storage. Overall, we anticipate up to 50% savings on storage and bandwidth costs. By adjusting the bitrates of the renditions to the lowest rate necessary to maintain visual quality, viewers will generally consume less bandwidth during each viewing session, providing additional savings on bandwidth costs.

UNDERSTAND YOUR VIEWERS’ EXPERIENCE WITH PLAYER ERROR CODES

bsp-admin-1 on May 16, 2017

Version 5.22.0 of the Brightcove Player introduces additional error codes. In the context of our video player, errors are conditions where playback cannot proceed, and getting started again requires some action outside the player itself.

The new error codes will allow you to more easily detect a number of common (and often intentional) situations where playback is blocked. Like all other Brightcove Player errors, you can react to the new error codes by setting up a listener on the player.

// Listen for error events on a player instance:
player.on('error', function() {

  // When your listener is invoked, check the error property on the player for details.
  var error = player.error();

  // Errors have a code and a message
  console.log('Uh-oh...', error.code, error.message);
});

The new error codes provide insight into playback failures due to media restrictions and make some common integration problems a bit easier to debug. Here’s the full list.

CodeDescription
PLAYER_ERR_DOMAIN_RESTRICTEDThe player or default video cannot be run on the current page because of domain restriction.
PLAYER_ERR_IP_RESTRICTEDThe default video is disallowed from this user’s IP address.
PLAYER_ERR_GEO_RESTRICTEDThe default video is not available in this user’s geography.
VIDEO_CLOUD_ERR_ACCOUNT_NOT_FOUNDThe player has been configured with an invalid account ID.
VIDEO_CLOUD_ERR_RESOURCE_NOT_FOUNDThe default playlist ID is invalid.
VIDEO_CLOUD_ERR_VIDEO_NOT_FOUNDThe default video is invalid.

Note that many of the new error codes only appear for the default video or playlist configured with a player. That is, the video or playlist configured using the videoId query parameter or data-playlist-id attribute, for example. If you programmatically fetch videos using the catalog, you will still need to check in the response callback for errors and handle them there.

5.22.0 is available for everyone and is being rolled out for players that receive automatic updates. If you’re collecting and analyzing player errors, we hope the new error codes help you understand your audience’s experience better (and decrease confusion from your end-users if they encounter an issue).

ALL EMPLOYEES REALIZE ONE SHISEIDO. VIDEO IS A COMMUNICATION TOOL THAT ACCELERATES THE SPEED OF INFORMATION TRANSMISSION

bsp-admin-1 on May 11, 2017

“VIDEO HAS A COMMUNICATION POWER THAT GOES BEYOND TEXT AND PHOTOS.”

In 2018, Shiseido achieved record-high sales, operating income, and net income. The driving force behind this was the “PEOPLE FIRST” concept put forward in the medium- to long-term strategy “VISION 2020” through to 2020. In order to be a “global beauty company originating in Japan that can win in the world”, the company is promoting reforms to raise employee awareness with the message that all employees are the driving force behind increasing corporate value.

The internal communication site “WITH” plays a key role in raising employee awareness and unifying the company’s vision. It was launched in 2016 as a portal for the more than 40,000 employees worldwide to experience “One Shiseido” and work together as a team. The site provides management strategies directly from the top management and internal news from around the world in multiple languages, so that all employees in the group can share the content. There was a need to use video content on WITH.

Tetsuomi Maruyama, of the Global Corporate Communications Department, Internal and Digital Communications Group, says, “Video has a communication power that goes beyond text and photos. By conveying the messages of top management in a realistic way, we wanted to reach more employees and give them a real sense of ‘One Shiseido’. Furthermore, we wanted to accelerate the movement of the entire company by sharing information accurately and quickly. We wanted to make WITH into an even more attractive infrastructure by taking advantage of the benefits of video, which are different from text and employees.”

FLEXIBLE BOTTOM LINE SETTINGS TO SUIT USERS' ICT ENVIRONMENTS

The target is all global locations. Beauty consultants working remotely, such as those in department store shops, also access the site. This means that the IT/network environment differs greatly depending on where they are working, and not all viewers are necessarily in an environment where they can watch videos smoothly. There was also a concern that the network load would become too high due to a large number of viewers from within the company. There are also locations in countries where specific video distribution services are blocked, and the employees working there are also part of the One Shiseido family.

The number of accesses to articles with videos tends to be higher than for articles without videos, and as a result, the overall page views for the internal communication site have also increased.

Tetsuomi Maruyama
Global Public Relations Department, Shiseido Company

Global ICT Department Communication Support Group Yuko Ochi says, “In addition to the ease of use when managing videos, the user departments also wanted the simplicity and ease of viewing when embedded in WITH. In addition, the ICT Department thought that a function that could set the bottom line flexibly according to the user’s ICT environment was necessary.

When selecting a video platform, it was necessary to consider these infrastructure aspects in addition to usability and security. And the solution that the company selected to fulfill all of these was Video Cloud.

With the adoption of Video Cloud, it became possible to embed videos, and the content of WITH became richer. Messages from the top management are recorded in both Japanese and English and shared with the world immediately. Press conferences and events are made more realistic with videos, and videos of employees sharing their success stories are also posted. In addition, videos of beauty consultants showing the countries they are dispatched to, their activities, and local beauty consultants are popular.

The beauty consultants themselves take the videos using their smartphones. There is no outsourcing cost at all. By viewing the activities of the Shiseido family around the world through WITH, we can feel that we are all part of the One Shiseido family.

REFLECTING THE RESULTS OF VIEWING ANALYSIS, WE ARE CREATING CONTENT THAT IS MORE LIKELY TO BE VIEWED

Comparing content that is made up of just photos and text with content that incorporates videos, the number of page views has increased. Although traffic has increased as a result of many employees viewing videos at the same time, we have been able to operate the site by setting bandwidth restrictions to reduce the load on the network.

Security is also at a level that can be relied upon. It is not desirable for people to be able to freely download videos or to be able to forward direct links to videos externally via email or SNS. The company’s needs were that they did not need to take thorough measures to prevent information leaks, but they did want to take at least the minimum necessary measures. Therefore, the measures taken were sufficient to hide the link to the video itself by not showing the URL when right-clicking or rolling over the mouse.

We also started using Brightcove Live for live streaming. If we stream live, employees who are not at the venue can watch the event in real time. In the case of an event held in Japan that was streamed in real time to overseas offices, we received feedback from employees overseas that it had raised their motivation. We also conduct viewership analysis. Mr. Maruyama says, “When we analyzed the data, we saw that there were differences in engagement depending on the type of video. We are constantly experimenting with things like adjusting the overall length of the videos, inserting subtitles, and including production techniques that make an impact within the first five seconds. We are working to improve the content so that it is more likely to be watched.”

Further strengthening internal communication. The company is using videos effectively to make OneShiseido even stronger.

BRIGHTCOVE PLAYER VERSION 6 UPDATES OVERVIEW

bsp-admin-1 on April 25, 2017

Brightcove Player V6 is a major step forward to make player development and customization easier. This blog describes some of the benefits of this new version and how you can try it. Version 6 includes:

  • Advanced plugins. An improved plugin API making plugins easier to write and maintain.
  • Dynamic sources. Allows changing video types after player initialization, so you can mix content types across playlists, ads, and better support conditional loading and dynamic page behavior.
  • Accessibility update. Improvements to outline styles and removed nested buttons.
  • Easier UI customization. Simpler CSS model and better tooltips.

Why a Major Version?

While we made significant effort to minimize potentially breaking changes, and to retain compatibility with existing plugins and customizations, we incremented the major version number because a few of the changes we made to simplify the API could break some integration code. The major version number indicates this potential and signifies the need to review customizations and integrations to make sure they still work.

Feature Details

Dynamic Sources

Designed after the popular middleware offerings in web frameworks like Express and Django, Brightcove Player dynamic sources is a simple but powerful feature that allows fine-tuned control over the source selection process and the player timeline.

Advanced Plugins

Brightcove Player V6 now supports both existing plugins and advanced plugins. These offer a number of benefits to plugin authors including lifecycle management (setup/dispose), which helps avoid memory leaks. With this change comes new player methods for detecting which plugins are available and which are currently in use on a player.

Accessibility

We strive to make our player accessible to users with disabilities. Based on feedback from Brightcove Player V5 users, we made it easier to use our player with an accessible web site.

  • The outline styles had been removed from elements making it difficult or impossible to tell which element was focused in the player.
  • There were cases where we had HTML buttons within HTML buttons. This confused screen readers and made it difficult to use the volume controls.

UI Improvements

Based on feedback we made some changes to make it easier to use and customize the player. Specifically, we have combined the captions and subtitles controls into one menu. Also time tooltips in the progress bar are now always contained within the bounds of the player.

Migration Guide

Plugins for version 5 should continue to work with version 6. While most plugins should be compatible, it is important to be aware of the changes and evaluate each plugin since there are some backwards-incompatible changes. The following section explains these changes and how they may affect our customers’ and partners’ code.

Method Chaining Removed

One of the relatively unknown features of Brightcove Player V5 is that many player methods could be chained off of each other, jQuery-style. The problem with this was it made the return values of some functions unpredictable, leading to code that could be hard to debug. Sometimes they would return a value, sometimes the player itself. In version 6 we have removed method chaining support. Where methods previously returned a player, they now return nothing.

The src() Function

In Brightcove Player V5, the src() function returns the source URL being played back in the video element. This can cause problems with certain formats like HLS where it could return a “blob” URL. This is virtually useless to users, who usually wanted to know the source that had been originally set on the player. In version 6, the src() function now returns the source path determined by the new dynamic source selection procedure instead.

Asynchronous Source Setting

In Brightcove Player V5, calling src() and passing in a value would kick off a synchronous source selection algorithm. This meant that any subsequent calls to src() would return the source that was selected by the last call:

player.src({type: ‘video/mp4’, src: ‘foo.mp4’});
videojs.log(player.src().src); // ‘foo.mp4’

However, because the new source selection mechanism has asynchrony baked in—supporting advanced workflows like making server calls for custom source selection—the player can no longer guarantee the above to be the case.

UI and Accessibility Changes

The UI and accessibility changes that were made in Brightcove Player V6 mean that the HTML and CSS may have changed along with them. Components that have changed markup include:

  • Volume controls
  • Combined captions and subtitles menu
  • Progress bar time tooltips

Custom skins with a lot of customization may have to adjust for these changes.

Deprecations

Several methods from Brightcove Player 5 were deprecated. They will log warnings in the browser console with a suggestion as to how to avoid them, if desired. Some of the key method changes are:

  • videojs.plugin() is deprecated, use videojs.registerPlugin() instead.
  • DOM manipulation methods – such as addClass(), hasClass(), createEl(), etc. are being moved to a sub-object: videojs.dom. Each will log an appropriate warning, but continue functioning for the lifetime of Brightcove Player 6.

Get Started

Try the pre-release version of Brightcove Player V6 and let us know what you think.