Kaltura’s Blog

We’re Happy to invite you to the second Kaltura & Open Video NYC meetup. This time at our new Kaltura offices in NYC!
It’s time to get together and find out what’s up in the world of open video solutions.
We’ll have pizza and drinks to share. Join us and meet developers working on cutting-edge online media solutions.
Prepare yourself for some serious brainstorming on ideas and plans for open video projects.

Few of the topics we’ll discuss -

• The new and improved version of Kaltura Community Edition (CE) V2.0 - the free Open Source Video Platform for video publishing, management, syndication & monetization. This new version now includes Enterprise level tools for monitoring and administration, as well as better support for multiple sites and accounts and provides a flexible video solution for large publishers, enterprises, universities and OEMs.
• Discuss ideas for implementation details of scalable and innovative media centric web applications.
• Prepare towards the Open Video Conference hackathon right here in NYC!

Join us & Register here.

The Tiki Community just released its first promotional video: How to get help. The video features Gary Cunningham-Lee who explains how new Tiki Community members can get help with their Tiki sites. 

The videos showcase the Tiki integration with Kaltura, bringing a wiki approach to video within the TikiWiki framework.

See http://dev.tikiwiki.org/Video for more details on the Tiki+Kaltura integration.

Over the past year we’ve quietly rolled out the Kaltura 360 Solution for Education, signing up the nation’s leading universities as clients and development partners.

Yesterday, Kaltura’s game-changing Blackboard release coincided with Blackboard’s own Wimba and Elluminate  announcements.  Although the blogosphere is now buzzing about innovation and market capture,  when Kaltura looks at these events, we see a mega story brewing about rich media in education.

Here are a few key themes in that 2010 Media in Education Story:

1.  Advanced media solutions are becoming a core part of the education technology stack. No longer is it enough for a university CIO to buy only an LMS, ERP, and servers.  A video solution is a key part of the equation.

2. Although most video providers on the market have developed stand-alone video apps (lecture capture, editing tools, or other video “boxes”) Blackboard’s move signals that media becomes powerful when it’s deeply integrated into educational software applications. Video was never meant to live alone.

3.  Although synchronous environments are one part of the advanced media services equation, Blackboard’s core product is still missing 2 key components:

• An integrated curricular media solution that allows students and professors to upload and interact with media the way they’d work with text or documents.  (Ironically, BB now has the latest in synchronous tools but leaves its standard user to run to YouTube for asynchronous communications.)

• A rich media middle layer that will connect the media from Wimba, Elluminate, NBC, or the lecture capture systems and allow it to flow freely across the platform… and to mobile devices.

3.  The next big question in edu tech innovation is about this “media middle layer.”  Who is developing it?  Who will own it?  And can it be controlled by any one vendor or LMS?

Here at Kaltura, we think we know the answer, and we’re already seeing the disruption.  Stay tuned to find out.

@leahbel, #Kaltura, #BBWorld2010

Make sure to join us on October 1-2 in NYC for the second annual Open Video Conference! In the meantime, you are invited to submit your proposal for speaking at the event - we’re looking forward to lots of great topics and ideas.

More about the call for participation: http://www.openvideoconference.org/2010/05/ovc-2010-call-for-participation/

Submit your proposal here: http://www.openvideoconference.org/proposals/

The deadline to submit a proposal is June 7th, so don’t miss it!

Thanks Grant and ReelSEO!

The Aberdeen Group just released it’s new report Business Class Video - Defining the Standard of Business Value, sponsored in part by Kaltura.

The research summarizes the top strategies and actions to gain business value from video solutions in the enterprise. Based on the input of over 150 organizations, this study is intended to look both at the current state of video in the business environment and line-of-business video usage to discover how video has created business value.

The report is available for free for a limited time only - view the full report here.

Visit us at the Broadband Pavilion, booth SU9506W, for a demo or to chat about our online video platform.

Our team members have also joined the Microsoft booth (SL220) where you can catch a demo of our brand new integration with Microsoft Silverlight.

Enjoy the event and we hope to see you there!

Today Kaltura has launched the new version of its open source video plugin for WordPress – the Kaltura All in One Video Pack for WordPress, version 2.4.

To date, tens of thousands of bloggers have added Kaltura’s plugin to their WordPress blogs, adding full interactive video capabilities to their sites within minutes.

This new version includes some great new features, including:

• Support for WordPress version 2.9.2
• WordPress MultiUser support for blog networks using WPMU
• Deeper integration with the Kaltura Management Console providing added features and improved management capabilities. For example, bloggers can design their own players in the Kaltura Application Studio, and then easily insert one of their own players into a blog post
• Improved playback and video comments performance – now based on Kaltura’s KDP 3.0 video player version with optimal playback performance

More information about the plugin, additional new features, and the zip file for download, including a 10GB free trial, can be found at: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-video-pack/

And here are 2 tutorials to start with:

Creating Video Posts Directly From the Kaltura Management Console by Category

Add Media Flow in v 2.4

Following Kaltura’s partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation and our joint work on adding Kaltura’s open video tools on Wikipedia, we have also worked with the Open Video Alliance, Mozilla and PCF to launch another related important project: a mass campaign to bring video content to Wikipedia. Moving images can communicate ideas in ways that text can’t. We see this as the next step in Wikipedia’s evolution.

Let’s Get Video on Wikipedia is part of our effort to support both individuals and institutions who wish to contribute to this vision. For individual contributors, we are offering the best and easiest tutorial anywhere on How to Post a Video to Wikipedia, along with a number of community-based projects to support collaborative work.

We’re also making it easier to convert videos to Theora, the open format used by Wikipedia. Participatory Culture Foundation, makers of Miro, are unveiling a free conversion app for Mac and Windows.

There’s lots happening elsewhere, as OVA members coordinate efforts around software improvements and content partnerships. If you’re interested in contributing to the development of open video tech, you can download and install the Kaltura HTML5 media library here.

Video is going to enhance Wikipedia and make it an even better educational resource. Not only is open video good for Wikipedia; it’s also good for the web. Wikipedia is the biggest site yet to implement fully open video, and its success will lend momentum to the movement for a 100% open and royalty-free video distribution system.