Brightcove Ecosystem

We are excited to announce a new BEML search component available to any Truveo partner for free! 

Truveo has built a search component that you can use in your Brightcove templates. It has the ability to search your entire Truveo channel and will return results that will playback in your Brightcove player when selected. This is done through an integration with the Player API. 

Main Benefits:

• Offers search functionality, provided by the leading Video Search provider Truveo, embedded in your Brightcove video player.
• It greatly helps with recirculation and engagement with the optional "Related Video" functionality at the conclusion of a video.
• It's free.

Here's how you can participate:

1.) If you have not already, create a channel on Truveo.com. Truveo is a great video search engine partner and indexing your content there can help you reach more new viewers. You can sign in using existing AOL, Bebo, or AIM credentials to create/access your 'Director Account'. This is where you can add feeds of content - http://developer.truveo.com/DirectorMyAccount.php.

2.) Once you have created this account and are approved, you can add your channel name, appid and edit the optional parameters in the SWF URL for your Brightcove BEML template:

<SWFLoader id="truveo_widget" width="480" height="420" source="http://www.truveo.com/brightcove/release/truveo_search.swf?channelName=<your channel name>&appid=<your appID>&hideWebWideSearch=true" depth="2" visible="false"/>

The SWFLoader element should be placed within "<Canvas>" tags, ie:

<Runtime>
  <Theme name="Deluxe" style="Light"/>
  <Layout>
    <Canvas>
      <VideoPlayer id="videoPlayer" width="480" height="420"/>
      <SWFLoader id="truveo_widget" width="480" height="420" source="http://www.truveo.com/brightcove/release/truveo_search.swf?channelName=BCCL&appid=f2f9d2d35f529c1db&hideWebWideSearch=true" depth="2" visible="false"/>
    </Canvas>
  </Layout>
  <Labels>
    <label key="controls menu">Search</label>
  </Labels>
</Runtime>

The "Menu" button will trigger the search menu, in this example we have renamed it "Search". Please note that currently the player dimensions must be 480x420.

Demo: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid36249156001?bctid=15251106001

Full instructions from the Truveo team are available here: http://developer.truveo.com/BrightcovePlugin.php.

Let us know what you think!

 

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New Brightcove Alliance partner, Livestream, today announced the availability of their new API and a Brightcove player plug-in that they developed with it. At its simplest, the new plug-in allows joint Brightcove and Livestream customers to broadcast live web shows within their Brightcove players. 

Setup is fairly simple, especially since Livestream put together some straightforward instructions here. For the technically-oriented, the process involves creating a custom player template using BEML; creating a player that uses that template; and then specifying which Livestream "channel" should be loaded into the player. Easy.

Livestream offers some great tools for live broadcasting, making the process dead simple. You can use their downloadable Procaster application for single-source broadcasts, or their more fully featured Studio, which allows you to choose from and switch between multiple sources (live or VOD), add graphics, and perform other control room-like functions. 

The entire system is turnkey, too. No need to figure out solutions for uploading, encoding, hosting, distributing, etc. It all just works. And as of today, it works with Brightcove!

Learn more about Livestream here, or just sign up for an account and try it out.

 

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We recently worked with Facebook to enable playback of Brightcove video in the 'News Feed.' Now Brightcove publishers can allow their users to share content into their News Feeds on Facebook*.

You will probably want to create a new player for viral sharing on Facebook to turn off advertising and track the performance seperately in your reports. Within the HTML code of your site you can configure how the metadata will be passed into the News Feed, full details on Facebook sharing options can be found here.  Once this is set, a few lines of Javascript enable a user to post one of your videos to their Facebook news feed for all of their friends to see.

One of our first customers to take advantage of this is Rainbow Media's WE tv. I have also created a demo of this and attached the source code with getting started instructions below.

Getting Started:

• Download the file and open a text editor - Download Source Code
• Edit Meta tags at top of the HTML page
• Replace existing Brightcove player with one from your account
• Edit "image_src" and "video_src" within Facebook button code to reference your image and the video player that you would like to be posted in the News Feed (retain format of 'video_src' url and add your publisher/player/video IDs).

*Note: Be sure to abide by Facebook’s Platform Guidelines, and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Please note that advertising is not allowed on user profile pages.

 

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There is nothing better than the gift of sample code, our very own Carl Rutman from the Brightcove Customer  Support team has created a simple yet effective way for Brightcove customers to create iTunes podcasts with their content using the Media APIs. There are some account configuration requirements so be sure to check out the comments section at the top of the PHP file.

http://forum.brightcove.com/brgh/board/message?board.id=Developer_2&thread.id=315

Need inspiration? Here are the Best iTunes podcasts of 2008.

 

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There are clearly some attractive benefits to cloud-based video encoding including a high degree of flexibility and reduced costs. Alliance Partner Encoding.com breaks these down in a new whitepaper “Everything You Wanted To Know About Cloud-Based Video Encoding But Were Afraid To Ask."

View Whitepaper

 

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Facebook released the 'Live Stream Box' to their developer community last Wednesday. As you may recall, this was used by CNN for the presidential inauguration - I wrote about it here.
 
I put together a quick demo of how any Brightcove publisher could add this to their video pages to enable user interactivity and engagement with their Facebook network while watching their favorite videos. This is a great way to expand the conversation beyond your regular users to their extended social networks and increase your traffic and user base.

When a user adds a post to their 'Live Stream Box' on your site it is also posted to their Facebook.com News Feed with a link back to your site.

Check out the demo and learn more about how to launch your own 'Live Stream Box'. Also you can view my source code to get a sense of how the demo was put together (be sure to add your Facebook Developer API Key and Application ID).

 

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As online video rapidly moves from internet novelty to business requirement for many web publishers, we have started to see greater and greater call for measurement. Call it what you will: engagement, virality, ROI, something entirely different--but web publishers are increasingly needing to see the results of their video efforts against whichever metrics are important for them.

Within the Brightcove Alliance, there are a number of partners who provide plug-ins to enable deep analytics of Brightcove video, including Visible Measures, TubeMogul, GlanceGuide, and Nedstat. Recently, web analytics giant, Omniture, released an updated plug-in as well. Now web publishers who use both Brightcove and Omniture Site Catalyst can look at video metrics side-by-side with the rest of their web analytics. And the implementation couldn't be simpler.

Omniture has a complete set of implementation instructions, available from within SiteCatalyst:

• Log into SiteCatalyst
• Click the "Help" link on the right side of the title bar
• Select "Supporting Docs>Manuals" from the left side navigation
• The documentation is called "Media_Tracking_Guide"

Within the Media Tracking Guide you will find detailed instructions on setting up the SiteCatalyst Analytics SWF within Brightcove. Here is a quick overview of the process, but be sure to read the documentation:

1. Download the Analytics SWF from Omniture and host it on your server.
2. Create the configuration XML file and host it on your server.
   This configuration file contains required runtime variables, such as your Omniture ID.
   The Media Tracking Guide has an example and defines all the parametes available.
3. Within the Brightcove Publishing Module, enter the URL to the Analytics SWF you downloaded into the "Analytics SWF" field of each player you wish to track. The URL to the configuration file will be added as a query parameter. 

That's it! Within a few minutes you'll be able to add video analytics to your arsenal of web metrics that help you run your business.

Work with other analytics providers? Find certain metrics particularly useful? Have another thought about measurement? Tell us -- we'd love to hear!

 

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We continue our march towards enabling Brightcove distribution on all major web properties and devices with the introduction of Brightcove for Plex and Vudu.

Plex
Plex has an innovative UI built off of the XBMC open source entertainment hub project. We have worked with their team to create a Brightcove compatible plug-in that any of our customers can use to launch a channel on Plex. Users of Plex download the software and can customize which channels they would like to view. They can also connect their Mac to a television for a more immersive lean-back experience. Note Plex is currently only available for Intel/Leopard. I have attached the plug-in code and instructions here for you to get started.

Download Plex Plugin Sample Code

Download Integration Instructions

Vudu
We also recently announced our partnership with the Vudu Movie Player, a 1080p High Def box for your home television. Currently Brightcove channels will show up in the Vudu Labs section of their UI and it is a great way for customers with appropriate content to extend their reach into this fast growing segment of devices. Contact partners@brightcove.com if you are interested in participating in this distribution opportunity.

 

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Quick update to my post last month, a couple of our customers have already updated their Facebook Fan pages to include Brightcove video! Check it out:

FX
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dexter-on-FX-UK/66266495963?v=app_4949752878

US Army
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/USarmy?v=app_6009294086&viewas=783147299

 

 

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I noticed a great example today of a customer using BEML to invoke a custom menu at the end of each of their videos. This is a great opportunity to re-enforce your branding and/or message as well as provide additional options for sharing.

By listening for the "mediaComplete" event you can overlay the standard Brightcove menu with a custom version such as the example below. You can also check it out here (also a pretty cool 'Hypervideo Player' in the video). More on Player API MediaEvents here.

 

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