Video content is now integrated with nearly every facet of our daily routines. We’re constantly surrounded by video. In just 20 years, the world has gone from viewing video exclusively on televisions to carrying cell phones capable of broadcasting our own video online for the world to see. This dramatically changes how we communicate with each other in both our personal lives and in business settings.
As companies increasingly explore video’s benefits in internal and external communication, organizations are tasked with searching for new methods to host and share video files without slowing local bandwidth to a standstill. The best way for companies big and small to approach this problem is by using a video content management system, known commonly as video CMS.
So What Exactly Is A Video Content Management System?
A video CMS is a type of software that assists companies with hosting their video content in one centralized location, allowing them to then easily organize content and release it online. Think of it as your own online video library with your own virtual librarian. All that’s needed are the videos and the software will provide a slew of features to curate with at each step of the process:
Creating and editing video: Most video CMS will feature recording options from devices such as a laptop, tablet, webcam, mobile device and even electronic whiteboards. The user can also synch video capture to flow PowerPoint slides seamlessly into the recording. The video can then be edited in the CMS to trim it up, combine with other videos, add graphics such as business logos and introductions, and make further changes to the video’s metadata. The software will also retain an original copy of the raw video for later use.
Uploading content: Despite the enormous size of video files, video CMS comes with batch uploading features so that a set of videos can be uploaded in bulk. Another critical CMS feature is automatic transcoding. In a typical setting, a video would be saved and uploaded as one file type, rendering it unplayable on many devices. Automatic transcoding will import multiple file types (such as .AVI, .MP4, .MKV), then actively convert and deliver them based on the device type and screen size. For some lesser-used devices, manual transcoding may be required. Still, automatic transcoding serves as a user-friendly net to capture the maximum amount of typical playback devices on the market.
Adaptive bitrate streaming extends this net by detecting the viewer’s connection speed and actively adjusting between streaming quality to establish ideal video playback quality with minimal buffering. The video CMS can also be set to automatically integrate and link videos with other CMS systems.
Expanded playback features: Leading video CMS will organize video in a way that users can search for information across video libraries and even within videos. Optional character recognition and automatic speech recognition features give the user the ability to search for specific mentions of a word or phrase, similar to searching for keywords via email. They can then click on the relevant videos and be automatically fast-forwarded to the instance in the video that the word or phrase appears.
Additionally, interactive tools within the video player let the user conduct general playback executions (pause, play, fast-forward, rewind, slow-down or speed-up videos and add subtitles), take notes in a box that can then be saved as a separate file and even rate videos and leave comments.
Analytical tools and security: On the company side, administrators can use video CMS to monitor analytics. This includes statistics on engagement, such as how often users take notes, at what point in videos do they drop-off, and which videos are viewed most frequently. On a deeper level, library-wide analytics can display the frequency of keyword searches to highlight the most-sought concepts.
Most video CMS will also carry a degree of added security to video content and streaming. Communications within the content will be encrypted so clients and users can interact safely. Users will be authorized to access content, and most CMS allows single sign-on options with networks so that users can essentially use their same login from other company software to access the video CMS.
The Advantages of a Video CMS
The benefits of applying a video CMS system to your company are its range of features and scalability.
Size is not an issue in video CMS. To record a single minute of video on a mobile device requires a storage capacity of more than 80 MB. A lot of collaborative team software that would seem to be the go-to for sharing internal video content simply cannot support the size of a video file. Video CMS is designed explicitly to remedy this issue.
For instance, many popular video conferencing tools store recordings in a default .ARF format. Uploading that recording to a team collaborative software may seem like the immediate solution to get the recording out there, but all the team CMS would do is host the video in its original format. Unfortunately, the aforementioned .ARF file would not be viewable on a mobile device or tablet. The administrator would have to manually convert the file and upload it in different formats to cover a range of devices. With a proliferation in company-leased mobile devices and personal devices in the work field, content that can format dynamically is critical to saving time and for organization.
Why Not Use Pre-Existing Systems or Public Video Platforms?
The natural thought might be, “this company already has an internal platform that we use to communicate and share files. Why not just use that for video?” The reality is that typical collaborative tools, such as SharePoint, simply were not created to maximize the efficiency and flexibility that video offers. A video CMS can fulfill this video gap and integrate with other systems to streamline video content.
A key issue, again, is file size. Many CMS have default file size limits that most video would easily exceed. For example, the SharePoint maximum default size is 50 MB. As previously stated, a typical mobile device requires 80 MB for just 1 minute of recorded video. SharePoint can be extended up to 2 GB per upload, but even this would limit to a 25 minute video, not nearly long enough for extended training sessions, video conferences or quarterly calls. SharePoint is not exclusive in this restricted size; Docebo, Cornerstone and Moodle are all limited to less than 200 MB.
Another major problem facing other video platforms is the inability to properly search videos. When videos are indexed on Google, the user can manually add a title, description, creator and tags to the video. However for corporate videos and training sessions, which can often run for hours, many concepts within the video will not be tagged and therefore lost to the search engine. Video CMS mitigates this problem by allowing searches for keywords within the videos and fast-forwarding the user to the keyword instance, solving yet another problem of the tagging system.
What about public video sites like Youtube or Vimeo? Wouldn’t it be easy to upload videos privately and only grant viewing access to company employees? Besides the aforementioned search problem that a user would also face on these public sites, companies that elect to use public video platforms do so at the risk of their own confidential information.
Privacy settings are easily used to curtail some of the threats associated with storing sensitive and proprietary video content, but they are just as easily removed, whether by accident or by malice. In the event that a video becomes public, it is now available to millions of eyes around the world, an action that could realistically go unnoticed for a very long time.
The advantages of using a video CMS to host and distribute video content is a key component to a successful organizational training program, an integral system feature that vidREACH takes into consideration when constructing its platform for online coaching and training. From simplifying the video creation and editing process to streamlining uploading and hosting, to generating a video playback experience that is user-friendly and efficient, video CMS is meant to get the most out of this remarkable technological tool that has become such a focal point in modern business.
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