Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Kaltura is an excellent tool IF you have a large library of content. It can be pretty pricey so if you are early in launching an online program you may be better off waiting a few years until you've amassed a large enough catalog to warrant the investment in such a tool. The tool is best purchased by a University or company-wide vs having a single department try to find the budget for it. The unlimited plan pays for itself in most cases if you go this route. Secondly, you must be willing to invest time and resources into on-going training for your faculty and staff, especially for those who wish to create their own media and use the quizzing features.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Very easy to use interface for uploading videos or capturing a screen recording. There are very few clicks required to get the media up and running. The video conversion process that happens on the back-end is fast and provides videos in device agnostic formats. Integrates well with other systems, such as our Moodle LMS. This extends the capabilities of the LMS and also allows us to keep video/multimedia content organized in a central location (the KMC). Kaltura can be connected to various processes within your organization. For example, we have a system in place that allows a video lecture in a classroom to be uploaded to Kaltura in a very easy manner. User/role management is very important as some people on campus have more privileges to publish content than do others. We have Kaltura connected to our Single Sign-On solution for authentication and we can assign roles to specific people within the Kaltura software. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review As it relates to the LMS integration, we would like to see improved workflow. But that may be just as much a Canvas issue as a Kaltura issue. I would like to see the ability to add inline, anchored comments to the video timeline. We are seeing issues with compatibility with certain browsers - especially Chrome. The faster Kaltura can move away from Flash the better. The capture appliance (CaptureSpace Lite) needs to be reconsidered. It's not intutive enough. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review The choice to renew our subscription does not belong to us, though we are able to provide input. We are aware of competitive products who have matured in the past three years, and we are aware now of alternatives to conventional plugin usage (LTI).
Read full review Usability Very usable! I don't see any major flaws
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review The first line support agents seldom are able to diagnose or troubleshoot any problems that we have. These agents simply open support tickets in their system which are escalated to a foreign level 2 support agent which creates at least a day delay between reporting a problem and getting initial feedback. Any back-and-forth questions add at least another day delay.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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).
Read full review Kaltura was the best option given the sheer volume of people we needed to support digitally. Others were better in their own regard, but due to limitations in number of attendees or sessions, Kaltura was the best option
Read full review Return on Investment Again, there has been a huge cost savings which significantly improved our ROI There has also been less time spent on learning new technologies and training additional staff on maintaining a video server. Less time spent on the previous two points has allowed me to focus on other areas within the department that needed improvement. Read full review Managing video content with the KMC has greatly reduced the amount of hours previously needed to manage. User issues ie: uploading video, viewing video has been greatly reduced. Increased user engagement with using video in LMS courses. We currently have 6,929 videos on our system. Last month , 2/1/14, 17,623 videos were viewed at least 75% of the way through. Read full review ScreenShots