Creating Interactive Video with uStudio’s Player Framework

Interactive video is a great way to make the most effective form of communication, video, even more engaging. Savvy professionals are innovating with interactive video by designing custom player skins to align with brand or a certain campaign, adding call-to-actions, requesting viewing feedback, and so much more.

Example of an interactive video experience built with uStudio’s Player Framework

Unfortunately, creating these interactive video experiences isn’t always easy. Many vendors limit customers to a set of predefined interactions and customizations. Others require significant investments of time and money to build out the custom video experiences their customer’s need.

At uStudio, we decided to do things differently. That’s why we built the uStudio Player Framework.

What is a Player Framework?

To best understand uStudio’s Video Player Framework, it’s helpful to think about the car chassis model used by most car manufacturers. Both Lexus (certain models) and Camry share a common chassis, which provides a set of functionality critical to the car’s purpose – transportation. Both are fully equipped to get you where you want to go, but they differ widely in other areas — from style and comfort to performance and extra features. It’s these optional differences that enable the parent car company to appeal to different audiences.

Just as the chassis has its job to do, the uStudio Player Framework does as well: provide the functionality critical to the player’s purpose – flawlessly distributing and streaming video across devices, apps, browsers, etc. And just like a car chassis acts as the base on which you can build out all kinds of customizations, the Player Framework provides a base on which you can create a completely custom video experience.

This approach redefines the concept of what a player solution can be by rejecting the limits of a traditional, single video format player, whose added capabilities are determined by the restrictions of the player vendor.

What are the benefits of creating interactive videos with uStudio’s Player Framework?

Completely customizable, interactive video players
The biggest draw of the Player Framework is that it enables customers to create the exact video experience they want. Innovator’s are free to design any interactive video experience without fear that their video player technology won’t be able to support it.

Faster, less expensive development
Since the Player Framework utilizes universal web standards – HTML, CSS, and Javascript – you don’t have to worry about finding a developer with knowledge of a vendor’s proprietary programming language to customize a player. It’s also designed to be easily customized, which makes any customizations way faster to build and easier to maintain in the long run.

Robust interoperability
Modern interactive video strategies don’t exist in a vacuum; they’ll need to integrate seamlessly with the rest of your technology stack. You’ll want to send video engagement data to the analytics system of your choice. You may even want to integrate other systems into the video experience itself, like a corporate chat system. With the Player Framework, you can build players that talk to any system they need to.

Best-in-class streaming
Because it’s built on the uStudio platform, you’re taking advantage of a number of streaming optimizations like adaptive streaming and automated transcoding that optimizes video for viewing on any device, in any browser, and in any application.

If you want to learn more about building interactive video experiences with our Player Framework, contact us.

To get an idea of the kinds of custom players you can build with the uStudio Player Framework, check out our Player Gallery.

Visit Player Gallery