Ensemble Video vs. Kaltura

One of the main reasons we were drawn to Ensemble Video was it's emphasis for supporting multimedia in higher learning environments. Unlimited user accounts, security features and the ease of use has made Ensemble Video an effective solution. Prior to Ensemble Video we tested free sites like YouTube and Vimeo. However they didn't have the privacy settings we needed, especially for our user contributed content, and things were not in a centralized location. This made it more difficult to support and troubleshoot with our students.

Kaltura and Mediaspace are well suited for any business that has a need for an easy to use video conversion software. We use the SaaS solution, but Kaltura is also open-sourced which means if you have the server resources available, you could get Kaltura up-and-running for a minimal cost or customize it to your hearts content. We have gone with the SaaS solution to minimize the amount of administration required as well as give us the benefit of getting the most-up-to-date version of the software. There are ways to monetize videos by adding ads and other things, but unfortunately I don't have much experience with these since we are a University. Kaltura is excellent from our University's perspective because it gives our campus a way to share their videos in a very easy to use package that basically "just works." If you're a small company or institution that doesn't need a lot of control over the back-end of a video solution, then there may be other, better alternatives that are free such as YouTube.

• Ensemble is a really excellent video content management solution for organisations that want to deploy onsite, enjoy a perpetual license and all the features found in competitive products costing many times more.
• Ensemble does not try to be a monolithic application. Instead it leverages Sorenson Squeeze transcoder for ingest and Wowza's streaming media engine for playout. So it's pretty lightweight and is focused on content management tasks.

• 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

Incentivized

• There is one issue where sometimes the 'Add' button to add new media disappears, typically once per week. The workaround is to restart the physical server. While restarting the server each week can be a good thing, it would be nice not to have to keep a reminder on my calendar.

• 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.

Incentivized

The choice to renew our subscription does not belong to us, though we are able to provide input. We are aware of competitive products who have matured in the past three years, and we are aware now of alternatives to conventional plugin usage (LTI).

The team at Ensemble Video is dedicated to supporting us and they offer prompt and reliable services.

The first line support agents seldom are able to diagnose or troubleshoot any problems that we have. These agents simply open support tickets in their system which are escalated to a foreign level 2 support agent which creates at least a day delay between reporting a problem and getting initial feedback. Any back-and-forth questions add at least another day delay.

Incentivized

Our campus has been using Ensemble Video since 2008. At the time we were unaware of Panopto or Kaltura, or other services. That said, I'm glad we picked Ensemble Video. Their team has been very supportive of us every step of the way. I'm not saying the other services would not be effective for our campus, but from what I've seen of those other services Ensemble best suits our needs and workflows.

Panopto is a much cheaper option (based on a pay per view model) but the user experience is not nearly as good. The video portal UI is difficult to navigate and the recording feature requires downloading separate desktop software that differs greatly from PC to MAC. Inline quizzing features are far behind Kaltura. It does have stronger analytics tools but they are the type that are better exported to .csv and processed by an advanced Excel user. Vimeo Pro is a very cheap and solid option for a small program or business that is just starting out, but it isn't highly searchable, it doesn't support a large body of users and does not offer any type of online features. It isn't really much more than a repository but it is a bit nicer than using freeware such as YouTube.

Incentivized

• ROI is sometimes tricky because systems, once implemented, are never welcomed by end users and thus, the ROI originally foreseen was more idealistic than real. Ensemble Video is almost universally well received by end users and thus, there is a real ROI that mostly relates to institutional effectiveness.

• Managing video content with the KMC has greatly reduced the amount of hours previously needed to manage.
• User issues ie: uploading video, viewing video has been greatly reduced.
• Increased user engagement with using video in LMS courses. We currently have 6,929 videos on our system. Last month , 2/1/14, 17,623 videos were viewed at least 75% of the way through.