How Do You Choose an Online Video Platform?

It’s not often that I read an article that speaks so directly to something we talk about at uStudio on a daily basis. Tony Dreier from Streaming Media happens to be one of our industry’s most thought provoking writers. He sat down with Theresa Regali from technology research firm Real Story Group to explain how to shop for an OVP or Online Video Platform and I found Theresa’s comments (and Tony’s summary and line of questions) to be highly relevant and wonderfully refreshing.

As a side note, I must admit that I have a hard time embracing the term OVP partly because its been co-opted by a set of companies that have little more tech or IP stitched together than video player technology. Years ago, one of my first tweets, in fact, was a slightly annoyed 140 character statement about how player companies were moving en masse to call themselves platforms without really thinking about what that meant…who were they selling to, what did the customer need, and what other services were available beyond a player for video publishing.

What Dreier captures and Regali implores is that companies looking for video management tools and technologies first understand what they’re using their videos for: “I think that the first thing you have to ask yourself is ‘What really do I need to do with this video? What are the destination channels for the video? What internally do I need to do with this video? What’s really the end-to-end — I often say use case — for this particular video, from the time that it’s created until the time that it’s getting out to all the different channels that you might want to get it on?’” Regli explained.

Amen. Real video leaders get this. And if you’re new to video or are investing, then the paragraph above gives you 95% of what you need to think about before spending a dollar on video management tools.

At uStudio, we work tirelessly to ensure that our platform can deliver the solution to any video need. Video uses are becoming more and more diverse, but too many video player “platforms” are simply not up to the task, mostly because they weren’t built with a vision for today and tomorrow.