Brightcove Blog - The Leading Online Video Hosting Platform

New Video Cloud Features Boost Quality and Engagement

Rob OConnor — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:30:08 +0000

At Brightcove, we’re constantly striving to introduce new features and functionality that drive real value for publishers, helping them realize greater value from their online video investments. Our most recent Video Cloud release continues this trend, with features that promise to help our publishers create even higher quality video experiences and drive viewer engagement.

Re-Transcode Assets in the Media Module

We’ve introduced a re-transcoding option that lets publishers send an asset through our transcoding engine after it has been uploaded. Previously, if a publishers tweaking transcoding settings in an effort to boost playback quality, accommodate the increasing number of viewers accessing video cotntent through mobile devices, and/or take advantage of new encoding formats offered by Brightcove would have been required to upload the new asset, delete the old one, and make the necessary changes to playlists and players to have the new video appear in place of the old. With the new re-transcoding feature, all of this can be accomplished with a simple click of a button, and publishers no longer have to re-upload content to pass it through the transcoding engine. Read more about re-transcoding in our support documentation.

Drive Engagement With the Overlay Player API

Additionally, a new overlay player API lets you add any content as a player overlay to further engage viewers. Our existing logo overlay feature is a great option for publishers looking to brand video content. As the logo overlay can be clickable, it also provides an opportunity for distributed content to drive traffic back to a corporate website, further engaging viewers and driving conversions. However, the standard logo overlay feature has a few limitations – the logo size is static and doesn’t change if the player is resized or the viewer goes full screen, and logos do not appear in HTML5 players.

Overlays created through the overlay player API bypass these constraints. Logos will scale dynamically based on the size of the viewing window, ensuring that the logo always occupies a certain percentage of the screen. Additionally, logos created with this method can appear in HTML5 player instances, ensuring publishers can display branded content regardless of viewing environment. Click here to learn more about the overlay player API.

Provide Streaming Quality Details to Viewers via APIs

Finally, we’ve built APIs that allow publishers to obtain the available bandwidth, current bitrate, and current framerate for a video stream in real time and surface this information to viewers either in the player or elsewhere on the page. This enables an increased level of transparency that helps viewers understand why they are viewing streams at a specific quality and can lead to reduced complaints from viewers receiving lower-quality streams as a result of reduced bandwidth environments. Read more about the APIs to access streaming quality details here.

These are just a few examples of our recent Video Cloud innovations. Head on over to the product updates page to read up on all of the details surrounding our latest release, and be sure to subscribe to the product updates RSS feed to make sure you’re informed of new features as soon as we release them.

Integrating Video with Your Website CMS

Jeff Whatcott — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:00:35 +0000

Image:

Content marketing is quickly becoming the focal point of many communications strategies, helping organizations to build their brand, increase social interactions and grow their business. To appreciate the emphasis that organizations are placing on content as part of their marketing strategies, look no further than Chief Marketer’s annual Interactive Marketing Survey of more than 1,000 marketing professionals on the tools they are using to drive Website engagement, which reported that almost half of all respondents are increasing the amount of fresh content they are adding directly to their Websites.

Video is a major piece of the content marketing puzzle with its ability to tell stories, generate exceptional engagement and deliver a rich customer experience. As media publishers and marketers work to expand the role of video in their content mix, it has become increasingly important to be able to manage and optimize the video experiences they are delivering.

Content management systems (CMS) give website publishers greater control over their content mix with more personalized experiences and a wider range of content to drive visitor engagement, conversions and return visits. By integrating video with the broader website content management strategy, organizations can draw on the full range of content creation, management, and optimization tools to make video a seamless and highly effective part of the online experiences they deliver.

In this month’s Bright Ideas video, I’m joined by Shiri Friedman, Brightcove’s manager of technology partnerships, to discuss the challenges and opportunities of integrating video with your website and customer experience management strategy. We also sat down with two of our CMS partners, Ektron and Sitecore, to get their thoughts on the importance of video working seamlessly with their CMS platforms.

To learn more about this topic, I encourage you to download our free whitepaper, “Integrating Video with Your Customer Experience Management Strategy”.

You can also attend our special webinar series to learn more about our partnerships and integrations with leading CMS providers:

Integrating Brightcove Video Cloud with Drupal or PaperThin, Tuesday May 22nd, 1:00 pm ET
Increase Website Engagement with Video Content (Ektron and Brightcove), Wednesday, May 23rd, 1:00 pm ET
Integrating Brightcove Video Cloud with SharePoint 2010 or Agility, Thursday, May 24th, 1:00 pm ET
Integrating Brightcove Video Cloud with Adobe CQ5 or WordPress, Tuesday, May 29th, 1:00 pm ET
Introducing Brightcove Video Cloud for Sitecore, Wednesday, May 30th, 2:00 pm ET
Discover Seamless Video Publishing and Web Content Management (Atex and Brightcove), Wednesday, May 31st, 10:00 am ET

App Cloud 101: Content-Level Analytics

Adam Mark — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:24:10 +0000

Learn how to create content sessions for tracking individual article views in your App Cloud apps.

Download a working code sample on GitHub.

Register for PLAY Today, Save $500

Chris Nicholson — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:55:16 +0000

Image:

Today is the last day to enjoy a $500 early-bird savings on registration for the Brightcove PLAY 2012 global customer conference, taking place June 25-27 in Boston. If you’re still trying to decide whether or not to attend, we offer this quick list of compelling reasons to take part in PLAY:

Better yourself, better your organization: PLAY is three days chock full of educational content with 30 in-depth breakout sessions featuring 50+ speakers, all of which are designed to provide practical strategies, ideas, and tactics that can help you at your job and, in turn, help your organization. Among the many sessions at PLAY are:

Optimizing Your Content Strategy
The State of Online Video Advertising
Social TV & Second Screen Strategies
Distribution and Discovery with Social Media
Brightcove Analytics Strategy
Best Practices for UGC
Marketing with Online Video
Building Great Video Apps

New for this year is a Training educational track featuring instruction from members of Brightcove’s product and engineering teams on key topics such as live streaming, advanced search, distribution, App Cloud fundamentals, and app development.

Stellar keynotes: Akamai President and CEO Paul Sagan will deliver a special keynote address at PLAY this year, and we’ll be announcing more guest speakers in the coming weeks.

Akamai President & CEO Paul Sagan will deliver a special keynote.

Next-generation product sneak-peeks: PLAY attendees will get an advance look at new Brightcove product developments and demonstrations of upcoming technologies.

Hands-on demonstrations: Twenty Brightcove partners will host demo stations in the PLAY exhibitor pavilion, which will feature technology from Adobe, Akamai, Ektron, Lightmaker, Sitecore, DoubleClick, AOL Video, Taboola, VideoLink, 3Play Media, FileMobile, TinyPass, MixMoov, Ramp, KnowledgeVision, Cantina, dotSub, Fig Leaf, SubPLY, VeeSEO, and more.

Networking, events, and networking events: With 500+ digital media and marketing professionals gathered in one place, we want to make sure you have plenty of time to exchange ideas, make new acquaintances, and renew old ones. The PLAY opening reception, catered lunches, and Boston Harbor boat cruise are the perfect settings to mingle and network with industry peers.

Extracurricular activities: As one of the country’s most historic cities, Boston offers a wealth of options for sightseeing and entertainment, and June is a great time to visit. The timing of PLAY affords a couple of particularly unique opportunities. The grand opening of the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum is scheduled for June 26, which is overlooked by the InterContinental Hotel, the host venue for PLAY.

The Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum open June 26.

Also, the Red Sox are off to an historically bad start, which has made one of the most expensive and hard-to-get tickets in town a lot cheaper and plentiful! The Sox host the Atlanta Braves on Wednesday, June 27, in a rare weekday afternoon game at 100-year-old Fenway Park. What better way to round out your trip to Boston?

The misery of the Red Sox is your gain with lots of cheap tickets available.

For more information and to register, visit play.brightcove.com. We’re looking forward to seeing you in June!

Making better markup with Markup.js

Adam Mark — Mon, 14 May 2012 21:23:11 +0000

Unlike traditional web sites, App Cloud apps compose HTML strings in the client using JavaScript. There are two ways to go about this: a good way and a bad way.

First, the bad way. Consider the following code, in which an array of articles is manually formatted into a chunk of HTML code:

var html = "<ul>";

for (var i = articles.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
    html += "<li>";
    html += "<div>" + articles[i].title.toUpperCase() + "</div>";
    html += "<small>";
    html += articles[i].description.substr(0, 50);
    if (articles[i].description.length > 50) { 
        html += "...";
    }
    html += "</small>";
    html += "</li>";
}

html += "</ul>";

Notice how even simple tasks, like adding an ellipsis to descriptions longer than 50 words, can force you to write a lot of code. This gets messy fast!

Now, the good way: Take the same array of articles and generate the equivalent HTML using Markup.js:

<ul>
    {{articles|reverse}}
        <li>
            <div>{{title|upcase}}</div>
            <small>{{description|chop>50}}</small>
        </li>
    {{/articles}}
</ul>

Much nicer! As you can see, Markup.js takes the pain out of converting structured data (like an array of articles) into HTML or another text format. And since it's part of the App Cloud SDK, you can quickly and easily separate your presentation logic from your business logic. Let's say you're handling the results of a data request:

function handleData(data) {
    var template = bc.templates["articles-list-template"];
    var context = { articles: data };
    var markup = Mark.up(template, context);
    
    document.getElementById("results").innerHTML = markup;
}

In the above code, Markup.js takes a template string, injects it with a context object, and returns a new string. The new string is then inserted into the document. There's no HTML at all in your JavaScript code! (You could easily modify this code to select one of several templates based on a runtime condition or device characteristic.)

Notice the object bc.templates? It's populated automatically with strings from an external text file (as defined in manifest.json):

===== hello-template
<p>Hello, <span class="username">{{user.name}}!</span></p>

===== goodbye-template
<p>Goodbye, <span class="username">{{user.name}}!</span></p>

In this example, the text file contains two Markup templates: hello-template and goodbye-template. You can call them by name, as shown above.

Markup.js comes with more than 40 built-in "pipes" for transforming data, and it's easy to write your own. Check out the complete docs on GitHub.

App Cloud 101: Parameterized Content Feeds

Adam Mark — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:10:21 +0000

Learn how to extend the power of content feeds by passing parameters at runtime.

Get the source code at GitHub.

Tips for Driving More Value with Video: Effectiveness

Rob OConnor — Mon, 14 May 2012 16:46:57 +0000

This is a blog post to accompany a webinar series we recently launched titled Top Tips for Driving More Value with Video. The sessions highlight 10 advanced ways to make sure you're providing high quality video experiences efficiently and effectively. Below are some excerpts from the presentation, but be sure to sign up for a session to get access to the rest of the great information.

So you’ve purchased an online video platform, figured out how to deliver high-quality video content to your end users, and ironed out all kinks in your publishing workflow to make it as efficient as possible. The final step in this Top Tips series answers perhaps the most important question: “How do I make video work harder for my organization?” In other words, what steps can you take to make your video experience as effective as possible in terms of monetizing your video views? Here are a few tips that will help you take advantage of advanced Video Cloud features designed to increase the value of your video initiative:

Drive social traffic back to your site with hosting options

Video is a social medium, and social sharing is a great way to drive not just video views, but engagement as well. Video Cloud players come equipped with advanced social sharing features that make it easy to enable your viewers to share your content across the web and to social networks.

However, when you create a player in Video Cloud, we don’t know where on the Web you will embed it. As a result, the default behavior for our sharing buttons is to give your viewers a generic link.brightcove.com URL. This link will point potential viewers to a blank page, and though that page will include your content and your player – plus all branding, analytics, and advertising you may have set up in the video and player – it misses a valuable consequence of viewers sharing your content: driving traffic not just to your video but to your website as well.

To accomplish this, simply use the Hosting Options selection in the player settings. Just select “Host on Your URL” and add the URL on which you plan to embed the player. Once that’s done, the sharing buttons on your player will direct traffic to your website as well as your video content, encouraging viewers to browse other areas of your site and providing an opportunity to convert the viewer to a customer.

If you plan on embedding a single player on multiple URLs, however, the Hosting Options feature is not ideal – viewers will be upset if they end up sharing a link to a page other than the one they’re currently on. This is why we created a parameter – the linkBaseURL parameter – that overrides the URL you have set up in the Hosting Options with whatever value you choose. Click here for instructions on using the linkBaseURL parameter.

Increase brand impressions with a default viral player

One of Video Cloud’s sharing features is the “Blog This/Get Code” button, which lets viewers grab the embed code for the video they are currently watching and embed it on their own website or blog. This can be a powerful way to increase video views, as the more sites a video is distributed to the more likely it is to gain viewers.

Video Cloud lets you set a specific video player to be employed when a viewer uses the Blog This/Get Code feature, called the Default Viral Player. Because content shared this way appears on sites outside of your own domain, it’s a good idea to create a dedicated player for this role that takes advantage of Video Cloud’s various branding features – banner images, bumper videos, etc. If done correctly, your Default Viral Player will drive brand impressions and traffic back to your own domain as your content is distributed across the web. I’ve detailed how to set up a player for this purpose in another blog post: click here to read the post for further instructions.

Expose rendition links to enable viewers to download your asset and view it offline

Did you know that you can access direct URLs to each rendition of every asset in your account through the Studio UI? Just select a video in the Media Module, click on “Edit Settings,” choose the “Video Files” tab, select the rendition you’d like to download from the list, and click on the “Copy link” text under “Rendition URL.” Pasting this link into a browser will prompt you to download the file (with one exception – the Google Chrome browser will load the asset in a built-in video player; right-clicking in the video window exposes a download option).

This can be a godsend for publishers who, for whatever reason, have lost the source file for a video uploaded to Video Cloud – especially if they used the preserve source as rendition feature, which I detailed in a blog post recently. But this feature can also be used to present viewers with a “download and watch later” option, which can be ideal for viewers who travel frequently without an internet connection or who have a slow internet connection but still want to view a high-quality version of the content.

You can simply hard-code the download URL into a webpage, but Video Cloud also includes a Related Link option that would be ideal for this use case. The Related Link appears in the menu area of every Video Cloud player, and in certain player templates the Related Link has persistent real estate just below the video player. Surfacing a download link to your viewers can increase engagement by letting them view content on their own time, regardless of whether they have an internet connection when they are ready to watch.

To see these tips in action and to learn additional tricks that will help you manage content more effectively, publish assets more easily, and make video harder for you, be sure to sign up for a Top Tips for Driving More Value with Video webinar.

Three ways to use text blocks in App Cloud

Adam Mark — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:25:57 +0000

With App Cloud text blocks, you can store arbitrary blocks of text in the cloud and retrieve them for any purpose you desire. Now you can bypass your CMS (and your IT department!) when you need to manage certain types of lightweight data in your apps.

To create a text block, go to the Content section of App Cloud Studio, then click "New Content Source", then click "Text Content":

Then enter a name and some text. That's it! Whenever you want to change the text, just click "Edit" and App Cloud will save a new version. (You can revert to an old version at any time.)

At the code layer, you can request a text block with bc.core.getData(), just like a content feed:

bc.core.getData("my-text", function (data) {
    var myText = data.text;
    // do stuff
});

Here are three ways to use text blocks inside your app:

1. HTML text

Use a text block as a flexible messaging area:

Then insert the text into DOM using jQuery or the method of your choice:

bc.core.getData("welcome-message", function (data) {
    $("#welcome-message").html(data.text);
});

2. JSON text

Use a text block to store structured data in JSON format:

When you load the text, make sure to parse it using JSON.parse():

bc.core.getData("produce", function (data) {
    var produce = JSON.parse(data.text);
    ...
});

3. CSV text

Store a table of information as CSV:

After you load the data, split the lines, then split each line on the comma characters:

bc.core.getData("directory", function (data) {
    var people = [];
    var rows = data.text.trim().split("\n");

    for (var i in rows) {
        var row = rows[i].split(",");

        people.push({
            "firstName": row[0],
            "lastName": row[1],
            "phone": row[2],
            "title": row[3],
            "email": row[4]
        });
    }
});

These are just a few ways to use text blocks. As you can see, you can save any kind of text format you want—it's flexible by design!

Lighten up! Remove unused fields in your Video Cloud Connector

Adam Mark — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:08:20 +0000

App Cloud Developers: Take a load off—anywhere from a few kilobytes to a few hundred—by removing unused fields in your Video Cloud Connector. Just select the fields you want, then sit back, relax, and enjoy your lighter, faster app!

Where in the world is App Cloud?

Adam Mark — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:18:19 +0000

Image:

The App Cloud team circled the globe twice in the last month to run developer kitchens in Seoul, Tokyo and Sydney. We trained more than 70 developers and racked up thousands of frequent flier miles to boot! Here are some shots from the events:

Seoul, South Korea

Tokyo, Japan

Sydney, Australia

Interested in attending a developer kitchen in your city? Let us know!

Video Cloud Powers New Emmy Screening Website

Chris Nicholson — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:00:31 +0000

Image:

Thanks to Video Cloud, voting members of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences can view content nominated for the 64th Primetime Emmy® Awards anytime on any device, including smartphones, tablets and PCs. In introducing its new “For Your Consideration” (FYC) screening website at www.emmysfyc.com, the Television Academy is providing “members with an affordable and efficient privacy-protected means of screening submission materials,” according to a news release issued by the organization.

Brightcove is the video hosting partner for the Academy’s FYC website.

Not only is Video Cloud making submitted content easy to view, it’s making it easy to find thanks to advanced search functions that allow members to look for and sort programs based on category, title, genre, as well as upload date and keyword search.

Video Cloud is also playing a role in the “greening” of the For Your Consideration process. Allowing networks and individuals to showcase their work on the FYC Website eliminates the need to manufacture and mail DVD copies of programs to the Television Academy’s membership base.

Brightcove is already working with NBC to make it easy for Television Academy members to view submitted content from its networks. Earlier this year we announced that NBC chose App Cloud to support the first-ever Emmy screener iPad app, NBCU Screen It. Available to members in the iTunes store, NBCU Screen It makes NBC’s current-season programming available for screening on iPad by the Academy’s 15,000 voting members.

Akamai President & CEO Sagan to Deliver Keynote at Brightcove PLAY 2012

Chris Nicholson — Tue, 08 May 2012 19:18:52 +0000

Image:

We’re pleased to announce that Akamai President and CEO Paul Sagan will present during the opening keynote session of PLAY 2012. Sagan is a true pioneer in the broadband and digital media industries, having helped build Akamai into the leading cloud platform for helping enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere. His background is the perfect complement to PLAY, a Presidential appointee to the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee and three-time Emmy Award winner who was president and editor of new media at Time Inc., and also founded the world’s first broadband cable modem service, Road Runner.

Taking place June 25-27 at the InterContinental Boston Hotel, PLAY 2012 is drawing Brightcove customers, partners, and digital media experts from around the world for three action-packed days of hands-on learning, in-depth strategy sessions, next-generation product demos, all-star keynotes, and networking. A general agenda and preliminary list of speakers are available on the PLAY 2012 Website, with more details to come.

Early-bird registration for PLAY 2012 is open through May 15, which provides a $500 savings off the full conference rate.

The Art of Office Design

Chris Nicholson — Fri, 04 May 2012 17:52:30 +0000

Image:

When Brightcove relocated our worldwide headquarters from Cambridge, Mass., to new offices in Boston’s Innovation District, we took the opportunity to continue our relationship with the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum’s Corporate Program. As part of the program, the local art institution loans paintings and sculptures to Brightcove for display in our new space.

DeCordova staff recently completed installation of a number of new pieces throughout Brightcove’s headquarters, which were designed with the intention of displaying art throughout. Brightcove employees had the opportunity to cast votes for the works they liked most, and a team of volunteers from across the company helped choose locations for each of the pieces.

Following the installation, Brightcove CTO Bob Mason was interviewed for a DeCordova blog post on its Corporate Loan Program site, in which he discussed the design process and the importance of art in the workplace. The full interview is available on DeCordova’s Website.

Brightcove's new headquarters were designed with the ability to display artwork in mind.

The World Comes to PLAY

Chris Nicholson — Fri, 04 May 2012 16:19:26 +0000

Image:

One of the best things about a global conference is the “global” part of it. That’s why we’re thrilled to see such a great cross-section of countries and continents already represented on the the list of pre-registered attendees for our PLAY 2012 global customer and partner conference, taking place in Boston, June 25-27.

A quick survey of early registrants reveals attendees traveling to PLAY from as far away as China, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as across Europe and throughout the United States. And last year we welcomed attendees from nearly 20 countries around the world. The international mix, not to mention diverse range of participants’ industries and functions, promises to make Boston the hub of the digital media world next month. Everyone from brand marketers and broadcasters to publishers and developers will convene to share insights and experiences on topics such as content marketing, mobile apps, social TV, multi-screen delivery, monetization and much, much more.

Boston will be the hub of the digital media world during PLAY 2012.

We’ve already published the PLAY 2012 general agenda, which outlines three days’ worth of sessions, keynotes, exhibits, and networking events. A preliminary list of speakers is also available, with more to be announced.

Early-bird registration is open through May 15, which provides a $500 savings off the full conference rate. To learn more about PLAY 2012 and reserve your spot to be take part in what’s certain to be an exciting and educational event, visit play.brightcove.com.

Need Some Help Get Started Using Video Cloud Studio?

Bob Bailey — Wed, 02 May 2012 20:44:09 +0000

Image:

As a relatively new Brightcove employee, one of my first tasks was to get up to speed on Video Cloud. I signed up for an account and started digging into the interface and the documentation. I was lucky that I had resources available to help guide me in the right direction and walk me through a simple workflow, starting with uploading a video all the way through getting it published out to Facebook or a website.

I thought it would be helpful to have some type of hands-on guide that would walk anyone just getting started with Video Cloud through some of the features. That's why I developed the Quick Start to Video Cloud series. It is a series of high level topics and hands-on exercises that anyone can walk through to get them started with Video Cloud. While the quick Start is not meant to replace the documentation, each topic has links to the documentation where you can learn more about specific topics if you need to. The Quick Start also offers some sample videos you can use to get started. Everything you need is all in one place.

I Hope you will find the Quick Start useful. Feel free to contact us with any comments or things you would like to see added.

The Early Bird Catches an Extension: Save $500 on PLAY 2012 Registration through May 15

Chris Nicholson — Wed, 02 May 2012 16:29:13 +0000

Image:

Early-bird registration for Brightcove’s PLAY 2012 conference has been extended through May 15. This is the sign you’ve been waiting for. Sign up today!

If you’re in digital media, you’ll be into PLAY. Taking place June 25-27 in Boston, PLAY 2012 promises to bring together hundreds of media companies, marketers, and developers from around the world for three action-packed days of hands on learning, in-depth strategy sessions, next-generation product demos, all-star keynotes, and networking events.

Digital media professionals from around the world gathered for PLAY 2011.

Interested in attending but not sure it’ll fly with your higher-ups? No problem. Just personalize this trip justification form packed full of compelling reasons to attend and email it to your boss.
Curious about keynotes and sessions? Check out the video library of PLAY 2011 presentations and panels and take a look at the agenda for this year.
Want to know who’s speaking this year? We’ve already announced our first roster of presenters, and there are more to come.
Concerned about logistics? This FAQ offers all you need to know about the conference, travel, housing, and Boston in June.

All of this information and plenty more is available at play.brightcove.com.

See you in June!

PLAY 2012 Loaded with Reasons to "Please Come to Boston"

Chris Nicholson — Tue, 01 May 2012 18:52:54 +0000

Image:

In 1974, singer/songwriter Dave Loggins pled to what could be reasonably assumed was his girlfriend to “please come to Boston in the springtime,” in his song titled, originally enough, “Please Come to Boston.”

Apparently Dave, who wasn’t much of the settling down type, was crashing with some buddies while trying to line up work at a local cafe. The incentive he used in his failed attempt to lure his girlfriend to town: An opportunity to sell her paintings on the sidewalk outside said cafe. Shockingly, the girlfriend rejected Dave’s proposal.

We’re pretty sure that if it were 38 years later and Dave had the chance to invite his girlfriend to attend Brightcove’s PLAY 2012 conference in Boston in the summertime (June 25-27 to be exact), things would’ve worked out differently; particularly if the girlfriend was into online video and digital media, and held aspirations beyond selling her art outside the cafe where her boyfriend may or may not be working.

By the sound of it, money was tight. Fortunately PLAY’s early-bird registration rates offer a $500 savings by signing up in time to meet the May 1 deadline.

Maybe Dave’s girlfriend would have come to Boston if he invited invited her to PLAY 2012.

There’s also a good chance that she would find the InterContinental Boston a far more appealing place to stay than his friends’ place with the extra space. Being the media-savvy digital marketer that she likely is, she would quickly recognize that PLAY’s extensive program of strategy, user, and training sessions, all-star keynote addresses, and exhibit hall featuring hands-on technology demonstrations, presents a remarkable opportunity to learn from and exchange ideas with experts representing numerous industries and markets.

While Dave is hanging out at his crash pad, waiting on word from the cafe and plotting his next move, his girlfriend can mingle with peers from around the world at exciting networking events. Registration includes several social functions, such as a scenic cruise on Boston Harbor featuring food and cocktails, during which she can take in breathtaking views of Boston’s skyline set to a one-of-a-kind live musical backdrop provided by renowned DJ/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Chuck Love.

Going by the song, it doesn’t look like things worked out for Dave and his girlfriend back in 1974. He gave Denver a shot before heading west to L.A., all to no avail. Perhaps 2012 and the promise of PLAY and all of its trappings would have charted a different course for the couple.

We can’t guarantee what could have ensued nearly four decades ago, but we can certainly assure you that PLAY 2012 will be a marquee event for the digital media industry. To learn more about and register for Brightcove PLAY 2012, visit play.brightcove.com.

Is Second Screen Viewing Ready for Primetime?

Chris Nicholson — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:03:38 +0000

Image:

It’s always interesting to keep an eye on the big trends that come out of the NAB Show every year. There are plenty that have legs and eventually find themselves in the mainstream, with 3D being a great example as of late. It wasn’t even that long ago that camera manufacturers were breaking new ground (at the time) with the introduction of now-ubiquitous flash media storage for video acquisition.

For every major development, there are plenty of others that haven’t necessarily caught on. We’re still not printing advertiser coupons from our car stereos, for example, and droves of consumers aren’t exactly rushing out to buy off-air broadcast tuner cards for their PCs.

Over the last few years, multi-screen video has emerged as a major force at the show, and more recently but on a very-much related note, “companion screen” or “second screen” viewing has been catching on. This was clearly evident in Las Vegas last week during the 2012 NAB Show. The NAB Show Daily, in fact, took a good look at the second screen in an article by Susan Ashworth.

Nearly 80 percent of viewers watch their primary TV with a secondary mobile device in hand, Ashworth reported. While the trend might scream “fragmentation,” content owners are in fact embracing it, with several instances noted in the article. For its program, “Bones,” Fox offers a companion app “that encourages TV viewers to keep simultaneous tabs on the online and social media aspects of the show while it airs.” Meanwhile, viewers of “Grey’s Anatomy” can access show-related companion content through mobile apps developed by ABC with the Nielsen Company that “automatically detect and synchronize with TV programming using audio watermarks.”

Harnessed properly, social media “turns every episode, every newscast into a live focus group,” Hearst Television senior VP of digital media Roger Keating told Ashworth. According to Keating, this type of companion viewing can help mitigate the audience detachment that broadcasters are currently overcoming using ratings and research, allowing content owners to “know instantly the pulse of the show; the overriding sentiment; what parts draw the most heat,” ultimately making “better programmers.”

Noting broadcasters’ desire to follow their audiences, NAB EVP of communications Dennis Wharton explained, “With this generation of younger people demanding on-the-go programming wherever they are, we want to be on those [second-screen] devices.”

However, “It will be up to the industry to decide if second-screen media remains a sideshow act or becomes a permanent piece of the broader-casting arsenal,” Ashworth concluded.

The second-screen is sure to be among the many hot trends and topics discussed at Brightcove’s PLAY 2012 conference in Boston. Taking place June 25-27, PLAY 2012 is a global gathering of Brightcove customers, partners and industry leaders at the forefront of the digital media revolution. The conference brings together hundreds of media companies, marketers and developers from around the world for three action-packed days of hands-on learning, in-depth strategy sessions, next-generation product demos, all-star keynotes, and networking.

For more information and to register, visit play.brightcove.com.

Brightcove Expands Roster of CMS Integration Partners with PaperThin

Chris Nicholson — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:29:27 +0000

Image:

Brightcove has added PaperThin to our growing list of content management system (CMS) technology partners, enabling seamless online video publishing and management for joint customers using the Brightcove Video Cloud online video platform and PaperThin CommonSpot Web CMS.

Thanks to the partnership and integration, users will be able to easily deliver and manage video experiences powered by Video Cloud through the CommonSpot CMS interface. Customers can easily drop a video from their Video Cloud library on a Web page from within the native CommonSpot interface, which also allows for distributed control of video management to protect the integrity of an organization’s website and brand.

PaperThin is one of several content management systems that are integrated with Video Cloud as part of the Brightcove Alliance global partner program. In addition to PaperThin, we also have Open Source integrations with Adobe CQ5, Drupal, and Microsoft SharePoint, along with deeper relationships that include customer support with Ektron and Agility. The partnerships encompass a broad range of CMS languages including PHP and .net.

All integrations are API driven, which requires users to only enter the Video Cloud publisher ID, read and write tokens, and player ID one time. From then on, the CMS will recognize the Video Cloud library, presenting videos, thumbnails and metadata, and supporting search and tagging functions all within the native CMS environment.

For more information on Brightcove’s CMS integrations and the global partner program, visit www.brightcove.com/partners.

France’s Boursorama.com Selects Brightcove Video Cloud to Deliver News Video Online

Chris Nicholson — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:02:33 +0000

Image:

We’re happy to announce another new customer in France today as Boursorama.com has deployed Video Cloud to deliver online video coverage of economic and financial news. One of the country’s leading information portals*, Boursorama.com provides news, analysis, stock market prices, and aggregated video content from major French and foreign partner news feeds.

Boursorama.com chose Video Cloud as its online video platform following a site redesign late last year, during which the organization made the decision to increase the role of video as part of its content aggregation strategy. Video Cloud met its requirements for a robust, fast, and simple platform that could centralize multiple feeds and metadata in a single, shared interface.

Boursorama.com is using Video Cloud to centralize management and delivery of its aggregated video content.

Since introducing the new video format in January 2012, Boursorama.com reports that site visitors have already viewed more than one-million videos, and expects those figures to increase as it continues to aggregate fresh content. With viewing on the rise, Boursorama.com made the move to incorporate advertising capabilities this April.

Boursorama.com is the latest in a growing number of leading French organizations using Brightcove, including Groupe Sud Ouest, Prisma Presse, L'Express, Le Figaro Group, Audi France, Société Générale, and Roche.

*Boursorama.com considers itself one of France’s leading information portals with 11 million unique monthly visitors (source: Google Analytics, March 2012).