Video content management system: Scale your video streaming platform
Video has become the epicenter of marketing strategies as it is the most popular choice for content consumption today. By 2023, global digital viewership is expected to reach $3.14 billion. What people didn’t forecast was a global pandemic that confined people to their homes, interrupted business flow, relying on all things digital. People turned to video streaming and conferring tools for content consumption and to communicate with each other.
All these trends point to the need for businesses to have a good grasp of video technologies for delivering the best customer experiences. There are many types of technologies that support video management. In this blog, we will focus on video content management systems or an online video platform. It can support your video delivery and marketing, but certainly not limited to that alone.
What is Video Content Management?
When you are leveraging videos, whether they are used for entertainment purposes or video marketing, the need for order arises at some point. Once the size of your video library expands, the videos must be managed somehow. That is when the need for video content management comes into play. Video creators or businesses with relatively small video libraries usually recognize the need for content management late. A video content management system is best adopted before your library gets too large, however.
What is a Video Streaming CMS?
Commonly known as video CMS, a video content management system is a software system that simplifies the process of organizing videos. As the size of your content library expands, centralizing videos helps it easy to manage everything online. The multi-functional, user-friendly, more protective, and central system fulfils all your video storage; CMS makes tasks simpler. It is a powerful software solution integrated with the cloud to organize all media files of a business.
An organization can publish videos on their private video CMS platform for their employees for informational and training purposes. Organizations often choose free video platforms like YouTube or social platforms to publish, share, and manage videos. However, video content management systems are great alternatives featuring better functionality. You can always choose a CMS that is right-sized for your requirements and expand as you go advanced.
How Does a Video Content Management System Work?
A video CMS is critical for creating and updating multimedia content and easily integrates video uploads, playback browsing, and management across your websites. With less requirement for anyone to offer code training, a video CMS allows you to focus on creating opportunities to showcase your products and services. Extendable and flexible, video content management comes with a lot of benefits for your business. Let’s explore some of the business benefits of using a video CMS.
Simplicity
A video CMS platform helps make the process of video sharing and distribution easy. Hence, simplicity is one of the major factors a video CMS must possess to make it easy for users to effortlessly access and use the platform.
Enhanced content management
This point might seem a no-brainer for the CMS system, but it is one of the primary benefits. A video CMS platform is specially created to help users store, search, retrieve, and organize video content. It is an essential software that simplifies access to a vast video library. Also, it facilitates tracking where and how your videos appear and how it performs. Integrated tools for video analytics can offer significant insights on how videos are performing, giving inputs to improve content strategy and marketing decisions.
Streamline workflows
Best video content management systems can contribute a lot to streamline video production and distribution using features like file distribution, format conversion, and social media publishing. These building blocks of automated workflows can enhance the efficiency of the video production and distribution process, which otherwise is time-consuming.
Security
Video streaming and management is not a solo effort; there might be plenty of people involved. This makes it critical to protect confidential information and data present in the video platform. A video CMS platform helps you to manage access for different users, giving each one the level of control according to their roles. The same security measures apply when sharing, promoting, or selling content. Best video CMS offers support for secure video monetization for content creators and admin as well.
Key Features of Video CMS
When you are choosing the best video content management system, it is important to consider the functionalities it provides. Here are some of the key features of enterprise video CMS that you must consider.
Video search by texts
Video CMS leverages artificial intelligence to search in the video library for each query inputted by the user. Best video CMS software also uses automatic speech recognition technology, which scans the texts spoken in the video to align with the texts displayed in the video. It makes it easy to retrieve a particular video from the vast content library.
Video editing and description
It allows content creators and organizations to edit the video after publishing. Users must be able to trim the overall length and assign descriptions, meta tags, metadata, etc., after publishing the videos.
Transcoding
An efficient video CMS transcodes videos automatically once they are uploaded to the platform. Transcoding enables the CMS video player to adjust the video format to suit devices like Laptops, tablets, TV, and smartphones. Creators must be able to upload their content in different formats like .MP4, .MOV, .AVI, and so on.
ABR adaption
Video CMS support different adaptive bit rates thereby supporting video playing in different streaming quality like 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, and 2160p. Adaptive bitrate technology allows adjusting the bitrate based on the internet bandwidth of the user.
Cataloging
A CMS for video platform management must allow you to organize your videos through various categories and metadata. It is beneficial not only for users but for admins too to manage a rich video library effortlessly.
Live streaming
The best video CMS must integrate live stream features with advanced security to allow users to stream videos live, restrict access, monetize, and protect the content and confidential data.
Video monetization
As video marketing is advancing at a fast pace, content creators and businesses have started selling videos, offering video access through subscriptions, and selling tickets for live videos. Hence a video CMS needs to support video monetization to allow creators to make an earning and for your video platform to generate revenue.
What Are Examples of Video Content Management Platforms?
Video CMS comes in different sizes and shapes, and functionalities vary considerably as well. Some options are more suited more for smaller content creators, and others are geared for enterprises that want to create, share, and monetize their videos.
The ideal CMS for video platform management depends on your needs: Do you want to share videos internally or externally? Are you planning to share on demand videos or live streams videos, or both?
We are going to look into some of the best video CMS platforms that allow users to store, manage, and share their content with viewers. The best streaming platform that is right for your business greatly depends on matching up your requirements and goals.
That said, here are the five best video CMS options available in the market:
StreamTube
StreamTube from Streamhash is one of the best self-hosted video CMS packed with incredible features for a competitive price. It supports unlimited and multiple video input formats, robust admin panel, SEO-friendly features, ad management, subscription plans, and banner video. It comes with all functionalities one needs to create a full-fledged video-sharing website. The professional video CMS is designed to support a vast library of video content.
Pros
- Support unlimited number of video uploads
- It comes with a powerful Nginx server
- Features embedded monetization model
- SEO friendly URLs for all videos
Cons
Being a video sharing CMS open-source, StreamTube lacks hosting services.
Brightcove
Brightcove offers the most comprehensive solution to help businesses meet their video publishing and distribution requirements. The software comes with several robust features like the quick publish feature and play feature to group similar videos automatically through tags. Though it has some good features, it lacks some very important features like in-depth analytics, which calls for the integration of additional plugins for the same. Intuitive GUI, custom metadata option for video searching, etc., are some of the best features.
Pros
- Easy and user-friendly user interface
- Robust back-end framework for better video delivery
Cons
- Lacks mobile-friendly user experience due to flash-based video player
Vidizmo
Vidizmo is an all-in-one video solution that offers support for on demand video streaming and live broadcasting. The business-ready platform simplifies video uploads and facilitates secure video sharing. It supports different file formats and combines features that suit different business niches, including training, entertainment, education, compliance, and more.
Pros
- Provides role-based access to the software
- Integration with LMS, CRM, and other CMS
Cons
- Video creation and monetization are not supported
Kaltura
Kaltura is an all-in-one video CMS that leverages an open-source format to provide streamers the ability to customize their broadcasting experience.
However, the customizability of the CMS platforms is not user-friendly. As every “part” of the software can be swapped out, it is not suitable for beginner-level users. Kaltura offers support for video hosting and management for business and educational institutions.
Pros
- It comes with AI features
- Supports video monetization
- Integrates with LMS and video conferencing apps like Zoom.
Cons
- It doesn’t offer password protection
- Though it comes with encryption, it is not highly secure.
Panopto
Panopto is a video hosting software focusing on offering services to businesses and universities. The portal helps to store and manage your videos and features tools to record and broadcast videos live. The robust and feature-rich software solution can effortlessly transfer your traditional classroom-based teaching to an online training environment.
Pros
- Easy to use video content management tools
- Secure portal to store and manage all videos
- Video API access for customization
Cons
- Restrictions on player customization
Video CMS works wonders for managing video content effectively and offering a comprehensive set of capabilities to support use cases served by video delivery for organization. Considering the number of tasks businesses have to prioritize around video management, your organization can most benefit from the best video CMS. If you are looking for choosing the right video CMS solution for your business, we are here to help you. For any expert assistance on creating a video streaming platform, get in touch with us.