We use Kaltura for large scale conferences, such as GTC. Typically these events have upwards of 200k+ attendees
Pros
Multiple users
Multiple sessions
Customer support
Host multiple concurrent events
Cons
UX platform
Chat functionality
Back end analytics integration
Likelihood to Recommend
It was great to use for large scale online events however it did have some issues. First the chat functionally was very clunky. Didn’t allow for speakers to send answers to all attendees, so you could have multiple repeat questions. Also wasn’t very easy to use. The backend analytics also was a problem as some data didn’t pass through effectively and required a lot more manual support.
Kaltura is used by our entire institution for almost everything media related:
<ul><li>Embedded in the Learning Management System- Canvas</li><li>Our own Youtube like media space</li><li>For Online Synchronous classes with Kaltura Classroom</li><li>With other enterprise apps</li></ul>
Pros
Kaltura Classroom is one of the best ways to teach online, including the capacity of instructors to record classes directly to the LMS
Integrates very well with enterprise application via strong API system
Cutting edge implementation of emerging technologies like 360 videos
Robust and flexible transcoding profiles
Cons
Tech Support takes a bit longer to reply
Better audio support
Could improve the basic editor
Better analytics from Kaltura Classroom
Likelihood to Recommend
Kaltura's robust API makes it a swiss knife tool for integrating with legacy applications at an institution. For instance, we have integrated Kaltura with WeVideo to support our Digital Storytelling initiative- Where students edit stories and send them to Kaltura inside the Learning Management System (LMS) for grades.
We use Kaltura's platform in order to integrate our platform with our customers who are using Kaltura on their end. It is being used solely by the Research & Development team, and only for such integration purposes. For each customer, we apply a specific integration according to their needs.
Pros
Kaltura's platform let's you manage your video content in the cloud
Kaltura's platform lets you stream your video content and saves you from handling it by yourself
Cons
Kaltura's "Mediaspace" (video portal) is relatively slow and not so intuitive to handle
Kaltura's KMC (management console) is less intuitive when you have multiple accounts to handle
Likelihood to Recommend
If your product requires managing content (mainly videos) and you should host it, manage it, stream it etc. - Kaltura is an excellent solution that saves you time and effort in trying to accomplish all of these by yourself.
In addition, if you need it for integrations with your own customers who use Kaltura - their integrations are great as well.
VU
Verified User
Director in Research & Development (51-200 employees)
Kaltura is being used across the entire organization as the designated video streaming platform. It allows individual users or departments to upload, transcode, and share videos with others within our organization or publicly on the web outside of our organization. Videos are automatically transcoded to be viewable on the widest possible number of devices.
Pros
Transcoding.
Automatic captioning.
Embedding video.
Cons
Admin interface is sometimes difficult to navigate.
Videos ingested sometimes are delayed by hours or days before being available.
Support services often have full-day delays before escalation.
Likelihood to Recommend
Kaltura is great for a department that wants to create and distribute videos by embedding them on their departmental website. It is also fantastic to build a personal video library for individual users. The editing capabilities are basic, but provide users with the tools necessary to crop and trim their videos as needed.
VU
Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
Kaltura solves multiple problems for our organization but our main demand has been sharing professionally produced video content created across all users in a seamless and easily searchable way. Our school has thousands of videos produced for our online graduate program but there was no easy way to share them in our LMS for other end users. Additionally, Kaltura has made it very easy for instructors and students to produce their own ad-hoc videos 'on the fly' from within our LMS (Blackboard).
Pros
The Kapture Space tool has helped instructors create a desktop recording and supplemental lectures such as voice over PPTs with minimal software knowledge.
The in-line quizzing features have made for a more interactive user experience. Students have become far more likely to watch a video all the way through and the tool integrates smoothly with the LMS grade book.
Accessibility is always a primary concern. Kaltura integrates well with other third-party providers such as 3 Play Media or DotSub to create captioning and interactive transcripts.
Cons
The quizzing feature is pretty good but it could use some more options.
An in-line polling feature vs a straight quizzing feature would be helpful.
Likelihood to Recommend
Kaltura is an excellent tool <u><b>IF</b></u> 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.
Kaltura is used as our main video capture program for our University. We are able to provide online classes and lectures to our students because of this product. It provides an easy platform for this use.
Pros
Ease of use.
Screen captures well.
Video with screen capture works well.
Cons
Better clarity of videos, especially when selecting only an area of the screen for recording.
Need quicker upload.
Editing could be simplified.
Likelihood to Recommend
Kaltura is perfect for creating online course materials. It's easy to use and user friendly. Kaltura is not great if you need high quality video.
Kaltura is used to deploy all our rich media assets to our multiple websites within our company.
Pros
We use Kaltura's ability to trans code video asset into multiple file types to make the videos easily accessible on multiple platforms.
Kaltura's accessibility with the use of close captions and great 508 compliant video players.
The ability to customize any player to fit our styles and different audience types with our websites.
Cons
The only feature I believe Kaltura needs is a better way to deliver Audio Descriptive content more easily.
Likelihood to Recommend
Kaltura is a great source for companies that use lots of video content to delver to their audiences. The have versatile players that are easy to customize to fit your company's needs and provide excellent accessibility to its users.
It's being used as a video repository and eventual warehouse for legacy video formats in order to transiiton from analog to digital. It also integrates into Canvas so that students can add their own video assets to assignments.
Pros
Very robust SAAS platform. Lots of options for customization.
Relatively stable and reliable. We did have one recent outage at a critical time.
They continue to build on their feature list. A new video quiz feature was recently added.
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
It's a good data warehouse and repository. It has decent integration with the LMS. It can also be used for digital signage and lecture capture. (Although we would not consider it for lecture capture. Not well developed. There are much better products in that space.)
The university was struggling with video content in the current LMS and began a search for a better alternative. At the time Kaltura was the only system of the ones that were available that supported HTML5 and that was the original reason for choosing Kaltura over the other systems. We currently use a full on-prem install of the Falcon KMC and the most recent Blackboard building block. Our LMS is also fully on-prem. We have also created a Drupal site where one of the colleges can create proffesional developement content and make it available for purchase using Kaltura to ingest and stream the video content. We use virtual servers for all of the applications except for transcoding, we use a physical box for transcoding. We have found that transcoding on a physical machine is much more efficient that virtually. The use of Kaltura as our main video ingestion, transcoding and streaming system in our LMS has been very successful. Our player is branded and different groups have other needs, like making content downloadable or captioning, that Kaltura easily makes available to adjust in the KMC. We do not have the ability to screen record yet and only recently been able to take advantage of recording directly to a webcam by all users including students. This has been extremely effectively used in discussion boards and with distance learning courses.
Pros
Webcam recording directly into a discussion board or as an assignment is a great way to increase student engagement. There are other systems that do this now but we use Kaltura and it works great.
The KMC is very user friendly and makes it very simple to manage the content and system settings.
The "Studio" tab enables admins to customize the player with a long list of features. We have branded our player, changed colors, added different buttons.
The Kaltura metrics is fantastic. Seeing user engagement of specific users or videos is a huge plus. Instructors can even see metrics from their Blackboard course about the students in that course.
Cons
It would be nice to be able to adjust the player features for specific courses in an LMS.
I would like to see a dynamic player in Blackboard.
I would like for instructors to be able to add .srt files to their content so they may caption the video themselves in the LMS.
Likelihood to Recommend
We have our KMC and content fully on-prem. I would not recommend this for all institutions. This makes it difficult for Kaltura support to discover and fix issues, it also leaves our system a bit behind on new features in upgrades. I would like to see a SAAS option where we could house the content on our servers. Since we installed Kaltura in 2011 several other companies have emerged and the competition has become more equal.
Kaltura is used mainly for enhancing online courses, though it is also used in a small percentage for institutional communication. Kaltura is used to address a need for a turnkey streaming media system that can be used within the learning management system by users with low skills/experience.
Pros
Kaltura is reliable, though its core functionalities are a commodity,
Cons
Since Kaltura's core function is a commodity, its value is in the added benefits on easy integration, usability, and features that enhance the learning experience of college students taking online courses. In these areas, however, Kaltura's plugin does meet expectations
It is evidently clear to me in my dealings with Kaltura that their development priorities are allocated elsewhere than where we feel we need better service. Kaltura's response will always be "we are an opensource platform" which implies that if you want anything done, you have to have it done yourself. Given the huge amount of money USNH pays for a cross-institutional account, I don't perceive them as an opensource provider, and their development attention is quite lacking.
I sense that Kaltura never does user testing with their products. Their interface design is clumsy, and often it appears they go about 85% of the way to completing their application development, but never quite finish it. There are a number of illogical omissions in their product capabilities, and methods for configuration that extremely difficult to customize. For example, while Kaltura can stream audio as well as video, no provision is made for creating a customized audio player or audio playlist.
Making modifications to the Moodle plugin is extremely difficult, and the only way to generate the code for preferences is through a barebones, clunky online form that generates code based on inputs.
While the customer service is responsive and timely, the answers to my questions are often unknown or cannot be addressed. I don't feel as though they are working in my best interests.
Likelihood to Recommend
Kaltura may be better suited for an organization that uses Blackboard rather than Moodle. There are features in the Bb version that are not in the Moodle version. Further, the baseline costs are very high for initial entry. There are other systems that do similar things that are worth looking into: Ensemble Video, MediaSite, Panoptico.
UPDATE 12-2014: Nothing has changed. There is a new version of the Kaltura plugin for Moodle that we will be testing in early 2015. There are a number of promising new features. However, it requires signing a work order (at no charge) to setup a Kaltura Administration console internally within Kaltura customer support, and it has been weeks since they have received the agreement (which states they have 90 days to do it). Getting Kaltura to do anything with expedience is often wishful thinking.
