Hosting for Corporate Video

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By Mike MacNamara

In the rise and rise of online video the attention has been primarily focused on consumer media such as movies, music videos, virals and user-generated content and, to the greatest extent, on the top video-sharing sites. What’s been left out is the growing role of online video in corporate communications, investor relations and training.

Corporate video offers a range of opportunities. It can increase trust and while helping to connect with audiences. It can engender employee and business partner productivity with more effective and accessible training. Whether the goal is to share with clients and investors or improve training and governance across geographically remote employee and partner bases, online videos for businesses have proven to be one of the fastest and most effective ways to communicate a message and engage visitors.

Managing this growing use can be an enormous challenge. With Vyoo’s video hosting, organisations can easily manage and distribute online video. They can also control where and when it can be viewed.

Using Vyoo, organisations can efficiently deliver secure, high-quality business online video. Vyoo makes it simple to implement our hosting services without the need for extensive IT resources or in-house expertise. Users can add captions, advertising and – at a touch – distribute video to PC, iOs and Android devices.

Video is a highly effective way to communicate – when it attract an audiences’ attention. Our customised selection of business online video player templates help users get their content online quickly using players that support their brands and can be rapidly deployed. Adding a file to a playlist is simple and instantaneous.

More advanced customization and playback experiences are made possible through our API. Our HTML5 Players automatically detect the device on which a video is being viewed and deliver the appropriate format. As we develop this service, we can increasingly deliver the experience that was traditionally the preserve of Flash to users across the full range of mobile devices including iPad.

Understanding how users are interacting with content is facilitated through our analytics system which shows viewing frequency, viewer location, and even how much of the total video is viewed. In addition Vyoo integrates with the leading analytics packages to track user-engagement (including Google Analytics).

While the hype will always focus on Youtube, remember that the uses of online video have profound consequences for the business world as well.

You can find out more about some of the global organisations who are already using Vyoo to manage their video in our case studies section. Online video is the future for corporate communications.

HTML5 video player for WordPress

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If you’re looking to get all the benefits of an online video platform working in your WordPress site look no further. Vyoo offers cross platform video delivery with all the benefits you’d expect. In moments you’ll be delivering video to iPad, iPhone, Android and PC within your blog.

As with all other solutions using Vyoo Publisher you can instantaneously add videos to playlists, encode to all the formats you need with one click and use our real time statistics to track engagement.

Our HTML5 player also allows you to insert chapter points to help users navigate content and even insert dynamic subtitling into your videos.

Discover how easy it is to use Vyoo to capitalise on the benefits of online video in WordPress.

Companies continue to ignore iPad and iPhone users

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In July 2011, mobile accounted for a staggering 12.59% of UK web traffic.

The last available detailed breakdown shows that in January 2011:
• 55.2% of mobile traffic came from iPhones
• 15.0% of mobile traffic came from iPads
• 10.6% of mobile traffic came from Android devices
• 6.1% of mobile traffic came from Blackberry devices
(Tecmark Feb 2011)

The exponential increase in the use of mobiles to access the internet means that they will soon threaten to replace desk based machines as users’ preferred access devices.

Why then is it that over 90% of all UK company websites with video do not support these devices?

I contribute to Cancer Research and was kindly sent a video thank you message in an email. As many of their supporters would have done, I received it on my iPhone but could not see the video. I tried my iPad and encountered the same problem.

Having invested what was presumably a great deal in video production and building the email campaign it’s a shame nobody thought to make provision for the growing number of users for whom their smartphone is the device of choice.

iPhone 5 Shocker!!

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Oh dear. The hordes of weeping Apple apostles and acolytes, gnashing their teeth in disbelief, presumably disassembling their tents outside Apple stores the world over. For there is, at least for now, to be no iPhone 5. Merely an iPhone 4S. Whatever that means.

The development team here at Vyoo are all about PC. If you ever meet a developer with a Mac show him the door immediately, for we can guarantee you that your site won’t be tested in Internet Explorer.

In spite of this anti-Apple affinity, we were keeping a close eye on the rumoured launch and secretly hoping that apple would take this opportunity to fix something on the iPhone that’s been bugging us more and more over the last year.

Our HTML5 players work on PC, Mac, Android, iPad and even iPhone but it’s only on the iPhone that we lose control of the player. Let me explain…

Whether we’re using a new browser’s native HTML5 player, a Flash fallback or even the iPad’s ‘in-the-page’ QuickTime we can manipulate it. We can change the look of the controls, add captions, add advertising with click through, allow our users to create chapter points and then magically ‘seek-to’ a point in the video.

On the iPhone the video object automatically opens in a new popup QuickTime player and there’s nothing we can do.

So, to give you but one example of the limitations of this, a client who recently launched a multi-lingual site with over 100 videos on it had to create an individual video for each language with captions to be truly iPhone compatible.

Without the iPhone we’d have just used an XML file and a language code on the page and that would have loaded the captions in dynamically. Instead our unfortunate client had to stump up for the captioning, the rendering and upload of over 500 additional files. And we had to manage the process for them.

So, it shouldn’t just be those rather sad fanatics who are reflecting on a lost opportunity, but us too. Another limp towards standardisation and making this whole online video business a little easier seems further away than we’d hoped.

Video Asset Management

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As video becomes increasingly critical as a communications and marketing tool in the online space, businesses need to address the issue of managing an ever increasing library of assets across an ever increasing range of formats and locations.

We’ve been working for years helping production companies facing these exact challenges. We’ve helped them formulate an intelligent approach to managing video whether that is by indexing, storing, preparing or distributing it. And we’ve helped them and their clients keep on top the growing challenges presented by the diffusion of their video material.

The information around a video – copyright, usage, compliance, approval – is also increasingly critical as it comes to managing its distribution and, of course, its ultimate expiry as useful information.

Recently we’ve revamped one of the first products we built, Exchange. It’s now more customisable and more user friendly and it’s feature-packed. From unlimited storage on Amazon S3 to automatic encoding of signed off files into the full gamut of HTML5 formats to mandatory and customisable fields to get and store critical information on upload – no matter where it’s coming from…

You can find out all about Exchange and how we’re helping production facilities and their clients here. 

HTML5 Video and what to do about it

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HTML5 is on the way. The increased roll-out of HTML5 players on the major video-sharing sites has been possible because of compatibility in IE9 and the new versions of Chrome, Firefix et al. Perhaps the most significant factor is the extraordinary popularity of the iPhone and iPad.

About a year ago we advised our clients to hold tight and not panic. In the intervening months we’ve ‘repurposed’ a lot of our clients’ flash videos into HTML5 friendly formats (mp4, webm, ogg and m3u8 for iOs variable bitrate) but we’ve still recommended that you stick with Flash (and hence a Flash Player) for delivery.

We’re now beginning to see the first real benefits of HTML5 video and we’re taking steps to ensure our clients are in the right place and as future-proofed as can be. However, in the meantime… we’re sticking with Flash.

There’s a range of reasons for this recalcitrance. There is the fact that across our clients’ sites (and those of their partners) there’s a lot of legacy players and video formats. Some are dynamic, some are hard-coded depending on how the sites were built. The fact is the process takes time.

There’s a lot of interactivity and features (particularly around advertising) that we’re slowly rolling out for our HTML5 players – from simple stuff like in-line popups and synchronised slide content to really complex mid-roll ad option that aren’t yet available.

Finally, there’s this pertinent fact. If you want to support HTML5 in browsers at the moment you’ll still need to use Flash as a fallback.

Given that we still support Internet Explorer 6 at the moment (released in 2001) we can’t really speculate when it will be acceptable to drop Flash completely. Another 5 years? Another 10? Will corporate IT manager’s adherence to IE8 (which is to Windows 7 as IE6 is to XP) mean that very important clients will still need to be humoured?

In other words, at the moment 5% of your users are probably coming to your site on iOs devices. That leaves 95% on Flash capable devices. A straw poll of our our Google Analytics suggests that about 40% of these are HTML5 capable.

So, do twice the work, limit the user experience to get that extra 5% OR do half the work, give them what they’re used too and still hit 95% penetration with your flash player and give non-flash users the video only experience?

There’s also the issue of which formats you require. In the search for true accessibility the decision was taken to support ogg over mp4 h.264. Google have gone their own way with webm. Apple insist that apps use variable bitrate to keep 3G suppliers happy.

What we have done is made HTML5 players available and we now encode by default to every format you’ll need. So when the dust settles on the ogg, webm and mp4 issue you’ll be covered regardless of the outcome.

Furthermore, users of our Exchange system will always have their original uploads stored so we can re-encode your files automatically as and when you need them.

If you want to talk about any of this and what it means for your business then give us a call.

 

The end of the final-cut view party?

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I spoke a producer friend yesterday who said that he was entertaining clients in his studio for final-cut sign off. This, to my friend, hadn’t happened for for a long time. Sure he’s sent DVDs, used FTP services and occasionally chucked it up on-line, but this, well from the background noise, it sounded like a party..

And that’s fine if its just you and your client, their friend, and your receptionist and the bloke from the next door office. A crate of beer works wonders..

But what if your client and handfuls of other stakeholders situated in corporate offices all over the world all want their say? And even if you could persuade them all to come to your converted barn in Gloucestershire for this event, would you actually be able to fit them all in and would they be a bit disappointed to see you sitting at a laptop without all the banks of TV studio kit they think makes up an edit suite these days.

So is the final cut meeting in the studio finally dead? If so, how do producers now best manage this sign off process?  And is it important?  Would like hear from you and how you like to manage this.

Mitel TV: Brand Video Channel Case Study

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Using our Brand Channel CMS Vyoo built www.mitel.tvThe Client

Mitel is a publicly owned Canadian based provider of VOIP Telecommunications technologies to enterprise clients and SMEs across North America, LatAm, APAC and EMEA with an annual turnover in excess of $650m.

Mitel were looking for a way to embrace video as part of their marketing strategy to reach and educate their international network of resellers and bring new developments to the attention of end-users.

The Brief

Mitel TV was conceived as a brand TV channel to deliver customer success stories, training and product videos.

The structure of the site needed to support Mitel’s existing taxonomy and ultimately operate as a gateway to sales channels on the company’s .com site.

The site needed to be distinct in its design and layout and feel more like a video sharing channel than a corporate website.

It was also critical that video delivery was truly cross platform embracing mobile delivery.

From the beginning it was essential that the site be supported by an intuitive and simple administration interface. As an outsourced solution there would be no support from Mitel’s IT specialists. The site was built to be managed by Marketing personnel in each of the regions and it was imperative that it could be operated by users with no specialist skills or working knowledge of CMS or site programming.

In addition each region needed to be able upload their own videos and where appropriate share them with other regions.

The Site

Mitel TV now hosts over 120 videos and has numerous iterations in regions across the globe. Each video that is added to the site is presented in its own page and automatically populates the categories in which it sits. Related videos are selected by aggregating market and keyword data to provide the user with the most relevant journey through the site.

The Mitel.TV US Home Page

The Solutions

Sharing Content Globally

To simplify the process of sharing and reviewing content across a global organisation, Vyoo developed a ‘video inbox’.

When a user uploads a video they recommend it for playback in regions other than their own. The manager of each region then gets an email notifying them there is a new video for review. The can preview the file and, if they deem it’s appropriate for their region, publish it.

During this process they can edit the details and links shown on the page, decide whether it should only be available for registered users and determine whether it will be available for the Authorized Partner distribution programme (see below).

Once a video is approved it is available immediately across all relevant sections and categories of the site. Assets like thumbnails and screengrabs (for use in ‘Featured Videos’) are automatically generated during the process.

The gradual roll-out of the site meant that the CMS needed to support development channels which could be set live. A regional administrator can develop and entire country channel and then submit it for release.

Captions

Dynamic subtitling of files means that there’s no need for a video to be downloaded and edited locally with subtitles. Captions can be put into an XML file which can be uploaded and attached to the file. Language settings are defined for each region determining which captions will show.

In addition the entire site consists of placeholders that can be easily edited to meet local needs either in English or local language.

Compliance

It was always intended that the main route in to Mitel.TV would be via Social Media Marketing. A global approach to regional marketing presented its own challenge.

We decided that when a US user clicked on a UK tweet they needed to see more than a blank page with a stern message.

The site works by checking the IP address of the user and determining their location. If there is a US user trying to access an EMEA page the site checks if there is an equivalent US page and, if so, diverts them there.

If there is no equivalent page a polite notice is displayed below the video advising them the solutions may not be relevant. All related videos displayed on the page are however from their region.

SEO

From the very start we followed best practice guidelines for SEO of both text content and video. By submitting a dynamically generated video sitemap to Google we ensure that thumbnail results are returned within organic searches leading to a massive increase in click through. Users are also directed to highly relevant content from ‘long-tail’ search terms. Submissions are updated in real time with no requirement for SEO specialists.

Thumbnailed Search Results in Google

Authorized Partner Distribution System

As well as being a public channel, Mitel TV operates as a platform to distribute video to the company’s resellers. This content ‘trickle-down’ is a fine tuned version of Vyoo’s VideoSmart technology – a platform that is leading the way in the dissemination of training and product videos in the European IT channel.
Mitel.TV Authorized Partner Site

Mitel Partners access a version of the site where each video that is approved for either Embedding or Download (by the regional manager) can be added to a ‘Shopping Basket’ of embed codes or directly downloaded as a High-Definition file for playback or editing.

Each embedded file allows Mitel to track usage and location of the content finding out more about their users engagement with their products. The embedded players can also be updated remotely via Vyoo Publisher meaning that new vides can be added without the reseller having to make any changes to their sites.

Selecting Videos to Embed Mitel.TV Authorized Partner Site

This has been a phenomenal success, giving resellers access to relevant and informative content to include in their own websites and marketing collateral.

Video Technology

Vyoo’s state of the art encoding platform means that we can accept any standard video format and prepare it for delivery to a range of devices. Our standard output is compatible with Flash, HMTL5, Android and iOs (iPad/iPhone).

iPhone Version of Mitel.TV

Adaptive bitrate delivery to iPad and iPhone ensures delivery either over wireless or 3G.

HTTP and RTMP delivery is over Limelight Networks cached servers and Amazon Cloud Front for mobile. Storage of HD originals is on Amazon S3 giving our clients scalable and affordable storage for distribution.

Video Search Engine Optimisation (VSEO) to Drive Google Search Results

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We’re the experts in indexing your video to drive search engine results. Here’s a rough guide to getting your video indexed.

1. Make sure Google knows about your video
Search engines rely on title and other meta-data to determine what content your video actually contains.

With static web content, Google and other search engines utilise crawlers to discover and index pages and text. Unfortunately, they can’t read Flash very well and as a result, most video content is invisible to search crawlers.

Therefore, the best way to get your video into Google’s search results is to submit a Video Sitemap. This is similar to an XML sitemap except it’s formatted specifically for video, and contains information about your video content – the page it appears on, the path to the player, duration, thumbnail file and tags. It is submitted using Google’s Webmaster Tools.

2. Make sure your video content can be found
We also recommed using a <noscript> tag in tandem with your video embed code to held Google find the content on the page.

If you’re using javascript actions to load your videos, Google won’t see it. Making sure that search engine crawlers recognise a video is on the page is essential. Using a <noscript> tag on the page lets you put in an <object> code. This also gives you an additional opportunity to tag the content with relevant terms – for instance a transcript of the video or just a simple description. Once you’ve done this use the ‘Fetch as Googlebot’ function in Webmaster Tools to see the page as crawlers will.

3. Keep it contextual
When ranking videos, Google primarily considers the match between search keywords and the video title.

Google also allows you to submit other meta-data such as description and keywords. For the best results we make sure that the title of the page matches the title of the video. This results in a higher ranking in results.

4. The ‘Long Tail’ argument
Like traditional SEO, you’re much more likely to see results with Video SEO if you target more specific, or longer tail, search terms.

A video titled “Restaurant” is unlikely to produce a first-page ranking, while a video titled “Indian Restaurant, Marylebone, London” will be more likely to score well.

5. What about video sharing?
Submitting your video to YouTube can be a two-edged sword…

We can automatically submit your content to YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, Facebook etc etc but what are the consequences? If you submit the same content you have on your site to these huge and immensely popular sites the odds are they’ll beat you in the search rankings.

If you just want to get your message out there then that’s ok. But if you want to drive clicks to your site is it that helpful? Particularly when your video will probably appear alongside related content potentially from competitors.

We recommend that you do take advantage of the reach of these sites to get your video seen but offer the would-be customer more information and related videos on your site and make sure it’s all tagged correctly. You may even surf to the top of the listings on the back of YouTube’s popularity…

6. Video, video and more video
Again, like traditional SEO, your rankings will improve if you have a sensible and accessible link architecture in place.

When your page and corresponding video are indexed cross-link to related indexed content – this creates an internal matrix of links and original material which search engines love.

With traditional SEO, the number of pages on the site, and the number of links to the site, along with the importance of the places those links originate and the age of a website is an important consideration for Google

In Video SEO, none of this matters. New sites and smaller businesses can still benefit from Video SEO opportunities.

Call us for a consultation….