It works very nicely for our company site because it can easily and seamlessly embed into the site and email HTML pages. It also has picture in picture, sharing, closed captioning (CC) as basic functions. It will also show the time of the video. Because these are short-term-use videos or might get updated frequently and also are just targeting a specific audience, being able to hide or not able to show the number of views or date published (unlike YouTube) actually helps us.
I'm not sure where Ensemble Video would be less appropriate. We've found it to be very effective for our campus-specific use cases. However, the product is very customizable in how a campus could structure their Ensemble instance to match their organization, and how users may be managed.
Ability to easily output a JSON response for requested video data. This makes it easy to work with Brightcove as partner.
The read APIs are very flexible and can the output can be easily customized using cgi args. This provides great customization of the output and sorting and filtering mechanisms to find the videos you're looking for.
The ability to add captions to videos is good, especially with the regulations requiring video captioning. DFXP support works great as long as the player is given the exact XML format it is looking for.
Adapting to user needs. Ensemble Video seems to always be listening to their clients needs and suggestions by implementing effective features in every system update. Communication seems to always indicate that these features are driven by requests that their customers have made to improve the service.
Client Support - I have an IT/support background and have had to deal with many vendors and external support. Ensemble is easily the most responsive and effective vendor when it comes to support. When needing certain solutions, they have sent code that was in development and not officially released so I could achieve my goals with project videos. Support is always personal, prompt and effective.
Customization. New templates, video players, account management, and embed options have allowed us to use Ensemble Video in a much more personalized way. Early versions of the service had an "Ensemble feel" but color schemes and logos are now able to be changed for a better organization feel.
The code for customizing the video player can be made easier, I think it still uses BEML code.
Easily accessible ready made code will help users like me to implement a cool looking player.
I would love to implement Brightcove video cloud on most of the projects that I work on and I see we could use it in so many different ways but pricing is not easily available on the website.
Again if I could work with someone to price for small, medium and large businesses that would be great.
User management. Some features are unique to the entire deployment (like authentication sources). It would be great if multiple authentication options could be used across different Ensemble institutions.
Upgrade processes. Though new versions of Ensemble Video are always better, the installation process is very manual and Ensemble Video must be involved directly. Not a weakness, but it would be nice to be able to perform our own upgrades/patches when needed.
It took quite some time to upload and organize our video library. The amount of time it would require to relocate all this information outweighs any negative aspect I personally have with the experience. They have been pretty good to work with and from speaking with my Brightcove rep, I know some of the issues I have listed are currently being addressed and tested for future releases.
We are notified often of downtime, and I have not heard from a support rep for over a year. It really makes it hard to learn what new things are coming out and how we can take our video to the next level when there is no contact from the team on a regular cadence.
Marketing department favors it because EVERYONE uses YouTube. Overall, YouTube offers decent features and functionality. But Brightcove offers the ability to brand and style players, and control what our users see (and so much more) and YouTube does not. For instance, on YouTube, users are presented with other videos (which could contain competitor videos).
Ensemble Video has succeeded for us where other solutions have failed. It came along exactly when we needed it, for our organization. At the time, we were caught between the push and pull of several different solutions, uploading our videos with the expectation that users would take the time to download and play them, using popular public video streaming services with few settings and options, and forgoing videos altogether. Ensemble Video has taken our myriad needs and provided a platform that addresses all of them.
Ease of user contributed content. The videos that users upload to the system can either be automatically published or they can be reviewed by staff before being added to websites and courses. Instead of all these videos living on different sites (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) we now have a centralized location that we have control over.
LMS Integration - A year ago YouTube changed their policy to not allow direct recording from webcams. This essentially broke the Blackboard Video Everywhere tool that allowed our instructors to post quick comments in class discussions and content areas. While they need to be pre-recorded, the Ensemble Building Block allows our instructors and students to once again upload and post videos, all from directly within the Blackboard content editor.
Flexibility - With the ease of creating user accounts and video libraries, Ensemble Video has become the go to option for Erikson courses, professional development content and project videos. Different departments can have their own account and have control over their libraries without the worry of them viewing or editing other institute content.
