Kaltura vs. OBS Studio vs. ScreenFlow

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

From simple streaming to bigger events, OBS has been able to handle all of it with full confidence from us. Have never questioned if it was going to be unreliable in a specific situation, even with minimal training. Software identified the external input source easily and had no issues setting that up (Blackmagic Mini Recorder), and great for pulling in separate audio from the computer input.

Incentivized

When training others to use a software application, I find this is amazingly helpful to accomplish using screenflow. The application allows me to video what I am doing in the application while explaining it in details. There are other uses of course, one that I found was to capture myself talking through students' research papers/thesis and explain where changes need to be made. Of course, MS Word has the tracking changes option and a professor can go through sentence by sentence - the downfall of this is that students #1 - do not always understand what is being suggested as we all cut back on words when typed out versus spoken. #2 - students do not always read the added comments thoroughly. Viewers watch the video and listen to a voice quicker than reading remarks. The viewing and voice, in my opinion, are the greatest part of the end product provided to viewers. This tool can assist anyone's work that trains others...be it industry or educational fields.

Incentivized

• 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.

• RTMP Streaming with customizable bitrate
• Scene Composition and Switching + source control which allows for creators and our customers to move between different types of content they might have (different video feeds, slides etc)
• Audio mixer and audio control - noise gating, a/v syncing, audio source control

Incentivized

• Screenflow easily records your desktop video and/or audio, with functionality that works even across multi-monitor setups.
• The program has really incredible features for basic cutting and editing of the capture within screenflow once it is done.
• The program has an impressive amount of options for expecting different formats of video and audio. I'm most impressed by the lossless audio and uncompressed video formats that give the best possible quality for importing into video projects.

Incentivized

• 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

• OBS can be a little clunky sometimes, the lots of features can be a bit overwhelming
• I can multitask with it, but can't run heavy software like Premiere alongside it
• No way to make adjustments to file after it's done, have to use After Effects or Premiere for that

Incentivized

• Be able to open working projects in other editing software like Premiere. In cases that editors want that flexibility or someone doesn't have access to ScreenFlow but needs to work on projects that use it
• Only available for Macs. Some of our teachers have PC and prefer to work on that or used to it. Only reason we switched to another screen recording application
• Files are huge

Incentivized

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).

Definitely need it for future recordings

Incentivized

Very usable because it is free and has had a lot of people helping to suggest improvements and sponsors have allowed the product to grow in sophistication and suitability across a variety of situations and use needs. It is very logical to use once you get started, although the dashboard can seem intimidating at first.

Incentivized

It's simple to set up and use. The editing features are laid out in an easy to understand way making it the perfect go-to tool for a novice video editor and an advanced one. I will use ScreenFlow at times over other bigger tools like Adobe Premiere because it's quicker to make changes to videos.

Incentivized

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

For a free product, a range of support is available. There are plenty of ways to find out answers to questions, because there are probably thousands of people using the product who are willing to share what they have learned. It usually works as designed, so needs for support are limited.

Incentivized

It works well and fits into my workflow. The tools are much easier and straightforward to work with. Other video editing tools like Adobe Premier or Final Cut Pro are simply too complicated for this type of task.

Incentivized

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

I have also used TinyTake by Mango Apps and I prefer OBS studio because the video quality results are better and OBS allows you to record an unlimited length of the video. OBS also lets you record an entire screen instead of manually having to draw your parameters, which can create oddly sizes videos if you miss by a few pixels.

Incentivized

We looked at things like Loom and all those other screen recorders, but Screenflow is just so much more powerful. It can do everything we want it to and more, even things like Chroma Key (green screen), text on video, transitions, all that. It's a pretty great software for making videos.

Incentivized

• 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.

• It was great to have a platform that is free that I can experiment with without having to use our business capital on.
• It took time to learn, but it helped me understand a lot of things, so it was a great learning experience.
• It was a great balance of cost and time with the high-quality product we got from it.

Incentivized

• This is a low cost license, so the output is almost entirely to the upside
• Years ago, we determined it was essential to have a video representation of our products and services. ScreenFlow has enabled the development of these and many other videos as well as our training programs for employees and clients. All this has been accomplished with a relatively low cost to entry.

Incentivized