Join the Stanford University School of Medicine and Kaltura for exciting video application hacking, learn about Kaltura in Stanford School of Medicine, build cutting-edge video applications and a chance to win awesome prizes!

Venue: Stanford University (3160 Porter Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94304)
Time: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM (PDT)

Agenda:

10:00am – 10:30am
Meet and greet

10:30am – 11:15am
Presentation by the Web Services team of Stanford School of Medicine

• Identifying and transferring our videos from Akamai to Kaltura
• Analyzing our current environment and preparing for the migration
• Updating our core video script to utilize the Kaltura Dynamic Player
• Utilizing the Kaltura API to execute a mass update of our thumbnail images
• Installing, customizing and configuring MediaSpace in the Stanford Medicine context

11:20am – 12:30pm
Presentation by Kaltura – The Kaltura API and “Video Expirements”

• Building Kaltura API based Video Applications
• Showcase of exciting education related video experiences
• Sneak Peeks into the future of online video

12:30pm – 1:00pm
Lunch

1:00pm – 3:40pm
Hackathon: Building HTML5 Education Video Apps

3:40pm – 4pm
Hackathon Apps Showcase and Closing

Register to the event

This week Alex and his gang of robots were busy at work – shooting all around Tribeca Festival. At the same time, Alex and his partner Brent Hoff launched a Kickstarter campaign to further develop the robots and bring them to the masses.

Join us in supporting Alex’s innovative project!

Watch below an exclusive interview with Alex and one of his innovative robots, about the history of the project, and hopes for its future.

Learn more about blabdroid at http://blabdroid.com/

According to Peer5, it won’t be long before WebRTC will transform the way we communicate online; “it’s the technological breakthrough that will enable a truly plugins-free web experience – from audio and video collaboration to recording solutions and more” says Hadar Weiss, Peer5 CTO, “so far, the missing piece in the WebRTC puzzle has been the development of the  DataChannels API, the browser feature that facilitates direct delivery of raw data between two or more users without a need for a server.”

Harnessing the power of WebRTC, Peer5 is set to bring hassle-free, peer-assisted video delivery to everyone with nothing more than a modern web browser (Currently on Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox).

By building on top the DataChannels API, Peer5’s player plugin creates a peer-assisted network where viewers seamlessly share parts of the streamed video to enhance video delivery and reduce network bandwidth.

With the Peer5 solution now a part of Kaltura’s Tech Partners Program, a cutting-edge HTML5 innovation will be available with the first live demo of WebRTC-based video delivery, exclusively for members of the Kaltura community.

We invite you for a sneak preview of this new disruptive technology and experience the first ever plugin-free, large-scale peer-assisted streaming of video from multiple sources around the world, where all registered participants will enter the live demo together, and watch as the video plays seamlessly from multiple peers.

To join the live demo, register at: http://kaltura2013.peer5.com

]]> http://blog.kaltura.org/html5-plugins-free-webrtc-peer-2-peer-video-delivery/feed 0 http://blog.kaltura.org/increase-video-views-and-conversion-with-ab-testing http://blog.kaltura.org/increase-video-views-and-conversion-with-ab-testing#comments Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:07:01 +0000 Iddo Shai http://blog.kaltura.org/?p=5802 Zappos.com is famous for many reasons. The #1 reason may be the fact that it was one of the first online stores to offer free returns, making it easy for customers to overcome the limitation of not holding the product in their hands before committing to pay for it. The #2 reason for Zappos’ fame is its use of product videos that are focused on solving the exact same problem as the free returns – helping customers shift away from the brick-and-mortar store mentality.

The results were astonishing: an increase of 6%-30% in conversion. That is significant for a company that exceeds a billion dollars in annual sales. Thus far, Zappos has produced over 200,000 product videos and is well on its way to reaching the 250,000 videos goal.

Zappos considers video to be a vital part of its marketing efforts for two reasons. “Although we have seen an increase in conversion, what’s more important is the decrease in returns we’ve noticed. Regardless of conversion and free returns, if a customer receives a product they are unhappy with – they can become disenchanted,” said Laurie Williams, Senior Manager of Photo & Video for Zappos.

But the decision to produce videos is only one step in an organisation’s video strategy. No doubt it’s an important one, but, the way they are used to drive traffic, how they are presented on the page and the player’s performance could have a huge impact on video consumption on your website.

One of the best ways to make these decisions is by performing A/B testing: the same method that has become instrumental for UI designers and marketers in organisations such as Netflix, Google and Amazon to examine how design impacts  user behaviour  could also work well when examining the ROI for your video investment.

Surprisingly, when it comes to video usage, A/B testing is not as common as you might think. However, there are some good examples of tests that could help you understand what factors impact video consumption and engagement.

1. Promise Videos

Video is a great way to get the customer to stay on your site longer and ultimately drive conversion. A good way to do that is by clearly communicating to the user that there are video previews available. Sometimes another word or video icon can make a big difference. For example, the site SixPackAbsExercises.com did a split testing on a sales page. As part of the test, the site tested two different versions of the same button:

1. The control was: “Next Page Read Sample of Book”;

2. Variation 1 was: “Watch Video Preview”;

3. Variation 2 was: “Watch my #1 Abs Exercise On Video”.

Variation 1:

The best-performing variation (variation 1, see above) increased conversion by 14.18%, which clearly shows how “watching a video” is so much more attractive than reading a “sample of book”.

2. Use Narration

We usually hear that an image is worth 1,000 words, but the combination of images and words is much more powerful. As proof, take a look at an A/B test that was done for Biotone body crème videos. In this test, two videos were used:

1. Version 1 – no voice over;
2. Version 2 – with voice over.

Version 2 (with voice over):

The video with the VO over increased conversion by 50% – from 3% to 4.5%. This goes to show that converting an image gallery to a video wouldn’t necessary have a great impact, unless you invest in adding narration.

3. Optimise Your Thumbnails

Although we are often being told not to judge a book by its cover, we tend to do exactly that. Especially when it comes to videos and their thumbnails. A thumbnail should always represent the most exciting part of the video. Thumbnails should be sharp, high-quality images. We at Kaltura also usually find that people’s faces are more attractive than generic wide shots or computer screenshots.

One more factor is the size of the thumbnail/player in your website. This is especially important today, since much of our traffic comes from mobile devices where screen real-estate is scarce. Some interesting research done in the Netherlands examined thumbnails ranging from 60px to 110px; the bigger thumbnails performed slightly better. The main conclusion, however, was that dynamic thumbnails (a set of consecutive, moving, reduced-size images) worked far better than static thumbnails (a reduced-size version of a single static image). This was especially noticeable when the viewer was accessing the video via a mobile device.

4. Optimise Your Video Performance

When thinking of video, it is also important to keep in mind the startup time and video quality. These are performance factors that leading video providers like Kaltura continuously try to improve, no matter how fast the player loads.

Some research done by the University of Massachusetts and Akamai (which provides CDN services) showed that “a 1 second increase in (startup) delay increases the (video) abandonment rate by 5.8%”. Buffering issues have the same effect.

Interestingly, video quality didn’t have much impact on video consumption and abandonment rate. However, it did hurt repeated viewing, showing that websites with low quality video have fewer chances of being visited again by the same viewer: “the probability of returning within 1 week after a failed visit is 25% versus 27% after a normal one.”

5. Measure Wisely

Finally, if you find these conclusions interesting and you are ready to do some video-related A/B testing – you should also keep in mind what not to do. Most importantly, remember that video is a unique piece of content. Since it usually requires the viewer to take an extra step to consume it (click the play button), you shouldn’t compare it to other UI elements like images (just like the Obama campaigners chose to do here). Also, it’s important to use a video platform that allows you to both modify the players as well as track individual videos.

If you do all of that, you will soon find that you are able to get a much higher ROI on your video investment.

This blog post was originally published on Fourth Source.

1. This week, I will celebrate the anniversary of my first year at Kaltura!

2. Today is Global Epilepsy Awareness Day.

To many of my friends and colleagues, it will come as a surprise that I have epilepsy. It’s not something that I shout about for a number of reasons. Disability in the workplace is still not where it should be. Even the word “disabled” suggests that others can do something that I can’t. In my case, it’s quite the opposite.

I was diagnosed with epilepsy five years ago and as someone who is incredibly career focused, it came as a huge shock to me and filled me with apprehension. I had serious concerns about how I could continue to achieve, continue to focus on my career, which I love, and how other people would react to me in the workplace. Even as I write this article, I feel nervous about my customers and the wider business community finding out that I have epilepsy and judging me by this. But why should I? This has been the year where my career and success has rocketed more than I ever could have imagined, and within one year, I’ve been promoted to Director of Strategic Accounts.

When I was first contacted by Kaltura about an open position they had in their London office I was really excited. The role was for the first Account Manager outside of the US. I would be working in a new team with a stack of new customers, many of them huge global companies, who would require a high level of dedication and commitment. The role would mean quite a lot of travel throughout the UK and Europe plus trips to the US and Israel to work with colleagues. It provided the successful candidate an opportunity to really make a mark and to be part of a team that would make a huge impact in EMEA. I wanted to be part of that team.

During my interview process, I was honest about having epilepsy and about my need to have flexibility in the workplace. Some days I could work from the office, others I would need to work from home. When I told senior management that I had epilepsy, their response was “Ok. Tell me what we’ll need to do to accommodate that”. That was it. It’s the most incredible, positive response I have ever received when telling someone I have epilepsy.

When an employer supports you 100% in your lifestyle, needs and goals, the commitment and drive that is instilled in you can’t help but encourage you to succeed. I’ve achieved an incredible amount during the last year and my drive and commitment has been supported and encouraged by all of my managers and colleagues at Kaltura. There isn’t another place in the world that I would rather work than Kaltura.

Kaltura’s approach to ‘disability’ is to focus on your ability. Because of their flexible working approach, their enthusiasm in embracing and supporting achievement and their support of diversity, you have every opportunity to succeed here. For me, epilepsy hasn’t hindered me, it’s made me more determined to succeed and prove to everyone that it hasn’t affected my ability in any way.

Other companies should take note of Kaltura’s example. They are exactly the kind of company that we should be highlighting on Epilepsy Awareness Day, and every day thereafter.

Now I’m off to celebrate my one year anniversary as a Kalturian!

First up was Mark Stubbs (@thestubbs), Head of eLearning at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). Mark showcased how Kaltura, in unison with other teaching and learning tools, had changed the way in which the university teaches. MMU use Kaltura with Moodle, an open-source e-learning software platform. Kaltura provides a video building block that enables teachers to share videos of assignments, lectures, experiments and more with students, then empowers students to submit assignments, feedback and presentations to the teachers. Using video inspires creativity and brings teaching to life and the MMU team wanted to create engaging, well organized courses.

You can watch a video on the Manchester Metropolitan University implementation here:

Mark said about the day “Great people, great atmosphere and really good to see Kaltura taking the right steps to build a supportive community around their product”.

After a hearty lunch, the next speaker was Dr Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn), Assistant Director at the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at National University Ireland, Galway. Sharon talked about their Kaltura implementation with Blackboard, a virtual learning environment and course management system. Sharon spoke about how quickly video had been embraced at the university and the vast difference it made to teaching and learning. The ability to upload video once but use it many times was key to the implementation, as was the webcam recording and student presentations. With low resources and the need to get buy-in from the wider university, the Kaltura features and Blackboard integration proved a real success both during implementation and during the role-out.

Sharon commented that one of her users had no idea that they were using the Kaltura platform – for me as a Kalturian, that tells me that the Blackboard integration is seamless and a real success.

Sharon created a great presentation which you can see here:

Both Mark and Sharon are thoroughly engaging speakers and their honesty and openness in sharing their experiences is invaluable to other users. The Kaltura User Group is a great way to encourage users to share hints and tips, to explore challenges faced and how to overcome them and importantly, to feedback their experiences to help drive the development of Kaltura.

As per Sharon: “[The Kaltura Education User Group] is a real opportunity for questions and discussion around the use of the tool for teaching and learning, challenges faced and overcome”.

In addition to the excellent speakers, there was plenty of opportunity to “quiz the speakers” about their implementations, and quiz they did! The questions asked helped us all to learn more and proved to be a really great session in the day.

Throughout the event, the Kaltura team came in to meet the users and we also had a Solutions Engineer on hand to ask any on-the-spot questions.

As a Kalturian, the day was hugely important to me as you can never replace the opportunity to stand face-to-face with a diverse group of users who share their experiences. Open-source companies grow, develop and succeed as a result of sharing and also learning from their user base. The culture at Kaltura means that intimate sessions like these provide a real opportunity for us to advance the Kaltura Video Platform to meet and exceed the expectations and needs of our customers.

For those who missed the meetup, here is a quick summary -

We’ve opened the evening with (pizza and drinks) Michael Dale, Player Framework Product Manager at Kaltura. Michael gave a presentation of the state of HTML5 video and writing a player framework, giving a walk-through of Kaltura’s HTML5 Player Framework and launching the evening into a hackfest of player plugins creation.

Following after, Costa Michailidis shared the beauty of SVG based web application design in a 5 minutes lightning talk about SGV. Judging by the exciting feedback this lightning talk received, we’ll have to followup with an in-depth SVG session in a future meetup!

We talked about HTML5 video, popcorn.js, mwEmbed, SVG and hacked on player plugins.

Usually there are 3 options for videos:

1. Funny, viral videos that increase brand recognition and make your company look cool and exciting.
2. Slick product videos that help in sales pitches.
3. Engaging tutorials to support your current customer base and demo specific features for prospects.

But it doesn’t end there. Let’s say my company chose to produce a great viral video –

1. How do we market it?
2. Which metadata should we use?
3. Should we buy ads on YouTube or should we find other ways to increase views?

We asked Bettina Hein, Founder and CEO of Pixability, for her advice. Hein and her company have much experience in getting maximum views on YouTube by analyzing video analytics and other data.

For more information take a look at this presentation that the Pixability team used for their SXSW session:

How many times have you heard that prediction before? However, it’s been more than 35 years since we first met R2-D2 and we don’t really see many robots strolling down the streets these days. But what if you could have robots shooting engaging videos like vox pop with random people or funny company videos featuring your employees? Well, that is actually possible today.

Here is an incredibly cute video that was screened by our friends at the MIT Open Documentary Lab during their great SXSW session, which focused on innovative documentary filmmaking. The star here is ”Boxie” – a robot that was designed by Alex Reben with the MIT Media Lab. Take a look and stay tuned for more great videos from SXSW 2013!

During the first 5 days of SXSW the interactive and the film tracks are taking place concurrently. This is a unique opportunity for content creators, entrepreneurs and programmers to re-imagine the way we tell stories online. One of the most exciting technologies in this space is Zeega - an open-source HTML5 platform that aspires to “remake the Internet” by allowing creators to easily mash together text, video, animation and sound.

We chatted with Zeega’s CEO, Jesse Shapins about all of this. Watch the video to see some very original content being created on Zeega today. And of course stay tuned for the latest on video technology showcased here at SXSW 2013.

To watch the full Zeega presentations featured in this video:

1. How I Got to Boston

2. Jesus Rocks