Likelihood to Recommend 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 Well Suited Conveying company growth and progress to employees Explaining how products work Explaining how to use products (as a users manual) Introducing employees to new workflows and IT systems Pitching ideas to investors Creating visual portfolio maps and growth paths for departments Less Appropriate Presenting financial figures to shareholders For content that requires a lot of focus on specific details for extended periods of time Read full review Pros 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 It's a great place for anyone who wants to improve their business by appearing very professional. Easy to use and to create astonishing vibes with your clients. Communication is very professional and really, really short response period. For those who are more professional but have no time or ideas about what to make for their own business, inspiration is a place called Renderforest Read full review Cons 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 Uploading video is slow, processing time and rendering video are often jammed. Some templates have more restrictions, such as the number of words in the title, the number of pictures, the size of pictures and so on. Prices for individual users are not very friendly. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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 It was very easy. They have a nice help video to guide you along the way that you can turn off if you chose. But It was a quick process and everything tied together very well. I am very pleased with the final product. I will definitely use them again.
Read full review Performance Renderforest Video has great performance. In all the time I have used it, I haven't ever really had to wait for anything to be done, except for the rendering time. The reason for not giving the product a full 10 out of 10 is that the page load times in the wizard have left me frustrated at times. This, though, is most likely the result of internet service in a 3rd world country, as opposed to a slow server.
Read full review Support Rating 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 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 Renderforest is far superior. More intuitive and has a bunch of helpful templates. I've found that
iMovie lacked in any direction and though there is a lot of freedom, for people who need to make quick and effective media, Renderforest is the better choice. I have really enjoyed my use of it.
Read full review Return on Investment 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 More time can be spent on interviewing clients and researching and development instead of creating quality graphics. The subscription payment option saves money since we know we need them constantly in the future. The quality of the content is superior to the ability of our on-site graphic design team at less than half the cost. Read full review ScreenShots Renderforest Video Screenshots