Chris Morrell

This post is a follow-up to my previous post about video platforms.  I didn’t get to check out all of the platforms on my list, but here’s what I did find.  We ended up choosing Ooyala for a number of reasons, which I’ll touch on below.

Quick disclaimer: we had some specific features that were absolute requirements for the platform we chose.  Adaptive bitrate streaming was one of those features.  Another was the ability to control the “social” features of the player (embed, share, similar videos, recent videos, etc) for different classes of videos.  These requirements definitely affected our final decision.

• Brightcove
• Delve Networks
• Entriq
• Magnify
• Maven Networks
• Vidego
• Ooyala
• Permission TV
• The FeedRoom
• thePlatform
• Kaltura

Brightcove

Brightcove has been around for a while, and is one of the biggest players in the small-to-medium sized client space.  Just about every competitor I talked to told me that brightcove customers were switching to them in droves, so either brightcove is practically going out of business, or I found the first 5-6 sales reps who were willing to stretch a truth to make a sale   Regardless of where their business stands right now, brightcove has been around long enough to figure a few things out.  They’ve got one of the most refined (and attractive) default players out there, and their admin interface is equally as comfortable to use (and nice to look at).  That said, the service I received was not so good.  In fact, of the three support requests I filed while using their demo, exactly zero were responded to beyond the “we have received your message” e-mail.  On top of that, my initial request for a demo was sent to an employee who no longer worked there (whose voicemail was still set up and accepting messages).  It took a few phone calls before I decided to try another extension.

When I got a sales rep who actually worked at the company, things started to look up.  I got a demo, and was obviously impressed with it.  If the customer service hadn’t been so bad, my only other concern was that there is no way to control the “top videos” and “most recent videos” features (lists that load at the end of a video, like YouTube).  Basically, all your content is shown in those lists, so if you have any content that needs granular control, you’re out of luck.

Delivery: Brightcove supports adaptive bitrate streaming for all files transcoded through them.  If you upload an encoded FLV, they only use your source file (which is typical of dynamic bitrate delivery).

Pricing: The pricing isn’t too bad.  The entry level is $6,000/year, 1 TB/month transfer, and 120,000 streams/month.  “Pro” level is $24,000/year (and $6,000 setup) with 2.4 million streams/month.  The Pro level is required to get you access to their more advanced APIs as well as more advanced player customizations.

Default Player: By far the best looking default player out there.

Advertising: The basic package only integrates with existing advertising platforms.  If you want to sell your own ads, you must be in the “Pro” tier.

Brightcove

Delve Networks

Delve’s Director of Product Management, Edgardo Nazario, contacted me a day after my initial blog post on video platforms.  I was definitely drawn to the fact that they’re out keeping track of their brand and actively pursuing new clients.  Delve’s claim to fame is the fact that they use text-to-speech to add search capabilities to within your videos.  I like the EveryZing interface for video search better, but my understanding is that EveryZing is just a player, not a full platform, so I’ve excluded it from this list.

I’ve found the user interface a little confusing—I was quite surprised when they mentioned they’ve been voted the easiest to use of all video platforms—but it works fine once you get used to it.  I think that my problem is more that it doesn’t match my way of thinking.  I also found that the transcoding process was excruciatingly slow; it took hours for a 4-5 minute Quicktime file to move from “Processing” to “Ready.”  I’m not sure if there just happened to be a long queue, or if there was a problem with their encoders, or what, but it was quite annoying.

Delivery: Delve supports adaptive bitrate streaming.

Pricing: There is no fixed pricing, but a sales rep told me they have contracts as low as $249/month (but can be in the 10’s of thousands depending on the setup).

Default Player: The default player is a little ugly, but fine.

Advertising: Integrates with ad networks by default.  If you want to sell your own ads, you have to fake it.  The only option is to create playlists with your ad in the position you want (which can be skipped like any other video).

Delve Networks

Entriq

Entriq has a massive end-to-end system with many input and output types, including live broadcasts and iPod/mobile platforms.  The web interface would definitely take some getting used to, but they offer a lot of interesting automation features which mean you wouldn’t have to use the web interface much (if ever).  The one thing that turned me off is that they’re clearly a Windows/Windows Media/DRM shop, but they offer many other formats, such as H.264 and Flash Video.

My sense of Entriq is that they have a much more hands-on model.  Whereas most of the systems we’ve evaluated provide a platform and expect you to use it, Entriq’s approach seems to focus more on customizing a workflow that works for you.  And while this approach is nice, it also means that they are likely to be much more expensive than the other platforms.

Delivery: Most formats/methods, including Windows Media, Flash Video and H.264.

Pricing: At least $2000/month, but can be much higher depending on requirements.  Setup in the $8,000 to $10,000 range.

Default Player: The default player isn’t particularly pretty, but it has a decent amount of customization, and they are willing to work with you to build a custom player.

Advertising: They work with advertising platforms or have an in-house system that caters to small or medium-sized publishers.

Entriq

Magnify

I didn’t get a chance to evaluate Magnify.  Their pricing model didn’t seem like it would work for us, so I didn’t really look into it much further.

Magnify

Maven Networks

Honestly, the first link I clicked on their “featured customers” page linked to a site using brightcove.  The second I clicked on was using Ooyala.  I decided not to go any further than that. Update: Looks like Yahoo is shutting Maven down. Maven.net now redirects to a Yahoo video advertising page.

Maven Networks

Vidego

Their site had a nice sales pitch but didn’t have a whole lot in the way of details.  I spoke briefly with a sales rep, but got turned off by his arrogant attitude so I never investigated them further.  I was contacted by someone who’d read my original post on video platforms, and we traded some info about the companies we’d evaluated.  His general sense was that Vidego wasn’t quite ready for prime-time, but I don’t have any more information to back that claim up with, so take it with a grain of salt.

Vidego

Ooyala (our final choice)

Ooyala contacted me directly within an hour of posting my original summary of video platforms, which impressed me.  My sales rep, Brian Wood, was extremely helpful throughout the whole process, and was able to create a custom package for us that delivered the features that we needed without going over budget. They were also able to migrate over a year’s worth of content to their network in less than a day, and never billed us for the work (I expected a quote, and instead I got an “It’s done” e-mail).

I wasn’t impressed by the whole “ex-Google employees” sales pitch, but I was impressed with their release cycle (major releases monthly, minor weekly) and their willingness to innovate (their new player has a modular structure that’s going to allow for all sorts of interesting things, and he demo’d a few feature ideas that matched our business model perfectly).  The player is very lightweight, and their API makes it quite easy to integrate into existing systems.  The admin interface can be accessed via the web, or alternately you can download an AIR application that is optimized for larger uploads.  It’s nice, but can feel a little sluggish at times.  I really like the analytics dashboard, but I didn’t play too much with analytics on other platforms so I don’t have much to compare it to.  One particularly nice feature is being able to watch a video and see the drop-off rate and video side-by-side.  I also appreciate that Ooyala lets me create as many additional logins (team members) with different permissions no matter what package I’m in.

Delivery: Dynamic bitrate streaming starts in the “director” tier (see below).

Pricing: Ooyala changed their prices in February, so these numbers might not reflect their current offerings. Ooyala has 3 levels of pricing.  Then entry level is $500/month with 2,500 hours of delivery included (they charge by hour, not GB, which is really nice if you do a lot of HD).  The “director” level is $1,500/month, with 15¢/hour for delivery.  The director level includes full API access, as well as dynamic bitrate streaming and more advanced analytics.  The “studio” level is $6,000/month and is 10¢/hour for delivery.  It includes an interactive video editor for advanced video interaction.

Default Player: The default player is probably second to brightcove in terms of looks.  They’re working on a new player that will be smaller (think: faster to load) and allow for custom plug-ins to integrate just about any functionality you’d want.  The player itself allows for all the easy customizations you’d expect (color, logo overlay, etc), and can be customized fully if you’ve got (or can hire) a Flash developer.

Advertising: You can manage your own ads, or integrate with an ad network.

Ooyala

Permission TV

The first thing that came to mind while testing out Permission TV’s interface is, “this is awful.”  While most systems were flash-based, the Permission TV interface felt like a clunky web app built in the early 2000’s.  This was an immediate red flag for me, because how can I expect them to keep up with future technology when they haven’t caught up with current technology.  That said, they had one killer feature, which was as system that could handle just about any advanced interaction you wanted to throw at it.  Need to have a person “clickable” throughout the whole video?  Not a problem.  Need to pop up a quiz after a portion of instruction?  That can be done too.  Because NACHI.TV does a lot of education, this feature was a particular draw, but the lack of adaptive bitrate streaming was a deal-breaker for us.

Delivery: Progressive download or traditional streaming.

Pricing: Starts at $995/month for 500 GB delivery, 25 GB/month storage, and 50,000 total streams/month.  Also includes up to 5 unique logins (for different team members), and 1 configuration (unique setup).  The “standard” package is $2500/month and includes 2 TB delivery, 150 GB storage, and 250,000 streams/month.  The standard package includes 10 unique logins and 2 configurations.

Default Player: The default player’s not very pretty, but enough of their clients have built beautiful interfaces for it that I can’t imagine it’s that hard to reskin completely.

Advertising: I ruled them out because of the lack of adaptive bitrate streaming before I had a chance to look into their advertising capabilities.

Permission TV

The FeedRoom, thePlatform & Kaltura

I didn’t get a chance to evalutate The FeedRoom or thePlatform in any way.  If you use them or have looked into them, please post your experience in the comments. Kaltura was recommended by a commenter, so I’ve added it to the list for completeness’ sake.

The FeedRoom – thePlatform – Kaltura

Conclusion

All-in-all I’m quite happy with our decision.  Ooyala matches our needs perfectly, and I like the fact that they’re a company that is constantly improving their platform and their player.  Their featureset is already impressive and is only growing.

That said, time certainly came into the equation.  We have a deadline, and I needed to make a decision.  If I had more time I probably would have set up demos of the platforms that I didn’t get a chance to evaluate completely.  If you have experience with any of these companies, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.  Also, if you have any particular questions, let me know and I’ll try to update this post to address them.

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