IBM Video Streaming

I manage live streaming for our university’s central communications office. I’ve used Ustream/IBM Watson Media's Video Streaming to centralize the streaming of major university events to one channel. I’ve also helped our smaller division set up their own channels for their events.

[Updated review on 10/2020: I decided to update this review after IBM stripped one more piece of useful functionality (a simple YouTube integration) without notice this week, and after many months of glitches in their web CMS and cloud platform. We have been a "metal plan" (self-serve) customer for years, and unfortunately, I can no longer recommend this product that deliver excellent performance for a good price. The price now is too high for what it currently delivers, relative to market peers. Save your money and look elsewhere if you're budget is below $20K per year for a live/VOD platform for your company.]

We’ve greatly benefited from this scalability during our graduation ceremonies. Rock solid performance.

[Updated on 10/2020: Yes, while IBM can handle "massive concurrent viewership", if you have the budget for it, it's web and CMS infrastructure has significant glitches and, in some cases, its engineers haven't even deleted or removed feature buttons that the product no longer supports, and it makes it confusing to our teams when we try to onboard new users. It's bizarre, and reflects poorly on the IBM brand.]

Yes. We have some annual events, such as graduation, that have done well without issues for several years.

The dashboard is very good but for one shortfall. If you have more than one live event on one day, the analytics for two or more events get commingled. It is hard to separate the data. This has been an issue for years for us. Seems like an easy fix.

[Updated review on 10/2020: Just this past month, the company introduced automated streaming reports that its customers can download in a PDF format. This was long overdue, but appreciated. Before that, we had to download excel sheets, do our calculations, and create reports for delivery to managers.]

We are not using AI & machine learning yet but would like to.

[Updated review on 10/2020: I don't think we are a large enough customer to benefit from this product offering, but I can say we are getting very good quality automated live- and recorded captions from some other vendors whose prices are much lower than IBM's.]

We use IBM Cloud Video (Ustream® Enterprise) as a professional white label service for the client not interested in using a social media streaming service. These typically include internal corporate communications or government agencies. Once an awhile we'll use the service for universities and colleges for their commencements which the institutions don't feel a social media streaming platform is appropriate.

Absolutely. Most clients want no cap to their viewership.

Yes. We've often had clients have their own platforms fail and use IBM as a backup.

Every client wants deep analytics without compromising privacy concerns.

I've only seen the feature in VOD. It's usually acceptable. It would be ideal to have it for LIVE. YouTube is currently in beta for this feature as of June 2019.

We've used the platform as a service provider. We produce live streams for many organizations on many different platforms. When a client needs a platform with professional streaming abilities we often recommend IBM Cloud Video and TalkPoint®. We've had a lot of success with IBM Cloud Video with production partners that want to get into the live streaming service provider world. It's been ideal for projects that happen in other states and countries that just aren't cost effective for us to personally be there on-site.

Pricing and Alternative solutions with more service offerings included.

Yes. Very easy to use.

I recommend turning off all social media connections if you're looking for simple configuration.

I've used the dynamic embed code that isn't auto-generated within the platform.

Yes. I recently needed a backup channel and this was completed within 10 minutes.

Get an Enterprise plan. You'll need the back-end developers at IBM to help support the code.

Channels, Viewer Hours, Payment Terms.

Set your payment terms as part of the negotiation. They are very flexible.

Ustream is used by one of our clients in order to share video and broadcast their live events. Ustream was recently introduced and it replaced another similar service. The reason behind this shift can be, probably, linked to the additional features offered by Ustream (for example the possibility to ask to users to access an event only by giving their email address, the geographical localisation of viewers, etc).

We opted for IBM Watson Media's video streaming in order to stream live the events we organise and, at the same time, enlarge the possible audience of our training sessions to online attendees. Our usual outreach is about 150-180 people in terms of audience and 2-3 hours in terms of duration.

I am not familiar with the specific software SD - CDN contained by IBM's video streaming and its functioning. For this reason I am not in the position to describe if and how we have benefited from this capability in terms of video scalability. I will investigate further this option and update at a later stage this review.

From the channel dashboard, in the menu "metrics", it is possible to review and download data about the viewers of the channel. It is possible to personalise the time range. The website automatically gives a series of default graphics on these data. It is very useful and allows for additional insights (especially if, like in our case, we embed the video on a different website).

I must admit that, to my knowledge, we have not yet profited of the possibility to leverage on the artificial intelligence offered by IBM's video streaming as far as closed captioning is concerned. It is possible, however, that our viewers have opted to activate them because we do not foresee closed captioning to the events we stream.

We are currently using Ustream in order to realise webinars and broadcast live events, in order to expand our audience and minimise costs related to travelling and organising conferences. The player can be easily embedded in another online platform, allowing us to integrate live broadcasting of events and seminars to our website, allowing for greater visibility of our page.

In general, I think that I would not change my evaluation and/or the selection process described beforehand. Unless there will be a breakthrough proposal/service offered by one company in the field of live broadcasting of events, I think that the price will still be the most important factor influencing our decision making.

I had a problem because the channel appeared to be disabled. I contacted the support in the morning (CET time) and only after I recognised that actually support (if I remember well) follows the US time zone. Nonetheless the support was available and operated their magic in order to have my channel up and running

As a modern radio broadcaster with visions of the inevitable future, we had a need to have a video streaming tool to stream our videos to listeners on the internet. We have bought cameras, production devices like ATEM Switchers, converters etc., and started using Ustream with Adobe Flash Encoder and/or OBS Player. It works very well, and for now - it can be widely used across the whole organization (not only in production and media departments).

We also stream video with this configuration as an outside broadcast from any localization which has an internet connection (ethernet or mobile).

I think I can say that we are forerunners here in Poland in using this type of service...other companies call me to get a review.

We had increased employee productivity and trained them using new tools. We had increased the range to reach our listeners giving them new type of media (which is a normal use in modern broadcast company like radio).

We used the product for the first of our quarterly town hall meetings. The 30,000-viewer hour option met our needs in that we are broadcasting to a global audience and can do so with a password-protected URL. Streaming quality was as high as our ingest rate; note that this can be variable, depending on bandwidth.

We also used the Ustream eCDN product to consolidate streams to two of our remote offices .. this ensured multiple, individual streams wouldn't clog the top of our router and impact network performance and user experience at our offices.

Town hall meetings.

We will be doing it again; no change in the process .. if we decide to enhance to multi-site talk-back, we will evaluate all vendors again.

The product can be used without training and the site provides reasonable walk-throughs for several scenarios.

Allow enough time to get through the documentation when deploying.

Test with stock videos.

Use eCDN if you have a higher number of users in a physical site than you have 1gb per stream bandwidth at the top of your router.

eCDN setup. Be sure to read the documentation and engage Tier 2 support to avoid delays.

From start-to-finish, with white glove service.

Cost and support.

Explain your use case up front. See a demo. Ask more questions that relate to your use case.