Kaltura vs. Niche Private Media Channel (discontinued)

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.

Incentivized

I'm not sure what the average user is looking for, but I can imagine a number of scenarios for which the platform offers a very flexible hosting service for a variety of users, with plenty of bells and whistles, for a reasonable costs that can protect content while offering a good interface between the publisher and their viewers.

• 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.

• Answer the telephone and provide technical support very readily. Stay on the line to make sure your problem is solved.
• Hosting with user payment ability to be handled by their site or my site. Don't have to have different companies for payment and hosting.
• Affordable for small business.
• Ability to organize content in multiple ways. Works well for educational model.
• Allows my own branding. There branding is fairly transparent.

• 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.

Incentivized

• Niche could add a more comprehensive online tutorial.
• The Niche Web RTC program is amazing but it would be great if they had an app that would allow mobile devices to also connect even if they dont have chrome
• It would be great if Niche could add a less comprehensive platform only for healthcare applications

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).

Because 10 is considered the best rating. Niche Video Media gives good service.

Because 10 is the best.

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.

Incentivized

Immediate response from a knowledgeable rep - not a tier 1 automaton reading a script. I can, and have, reached them at all hours by phone, by chat, or by email. Responses are under 24 hours and frequently less than 1. And stuff gets DONE! I see things I request in almost every monthly release.

It was direct and personal, aimed at solving the immediate task at hand while instructing me how the channel as a whole works in the process.

No, the support at Niche Video Media was very helpful during set up.

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

Incentivized

The access controls of who can view, when one can view, how many times one can view, and from where they can view and also the security, and protecting from download [are better]. The review and approval workflow, editing the videos, blue-pen are all not available in Vimeo Pro.

• 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.

• I believe videos for training will be the way of the future. Once the initial cost of producing the videos is accounted for, other than hosting cost all views of the course will be income.
• I believe creating short marketing videos will attract new customers.