Navigating the Enterprise Video Workflow

Trend: Percentage of Live Events Versus On-Demand Events
While most readers are familiar with the difference between streamed live events versus on-demand content, several of the reps say that live streamed events don’t always translate into significant live audiences.

Of the four companies, only Merck reports a live event percentage that consistently hits the high 90s. At CA, while the majority of content is streamed live, Lasher says that more users seem to like the fact that the same link can be used to access on-demand versions of the content at a later time.

"Live is our preferred method of delivery," says Lasher. "But some content, such as human resources employee information for benefits or open enrollment, are better suited for on-demand viewing, so they are prerecorded and placed on the internal portal for employees to view on their own schedule."

Lockheed’s Aquilone says that, while live streaming initially created quite a stir, fewer people are watching events live. Lockheed started out with live events constituting more than 90% of total streams, but it has seen live drop to about 60% of all streams.

"Today’s ‘TiVo generation’ [members] are comfortable watching most content on their own schedule," Aquilone says. "There’s also a lessened demand for immediate feedback, which increases the likelihood of more prerecorded presentations, as the content originators don’t feel compelled to do all their events live, instead providing an email address and asking for feedback. Having said that, for live events, we find we get much better interaction than we do from a physical meeting. When a presenter at a physical meeting may get nine questions, a live streamed event may generate 99 questions or comments."

QAD’s Lawson agrees, noting that the company is scattered across so many time zones, even the weekly executive meeting at 8 a.m. Pacific Time is often watched as an on-demand Qbit by a growing number of employees, especially those working from home or in satellite offices.

Workflow
Defining Terms: Webcasts Versus Video
With such a variety of media, one challenge that companies face immediately when approached by clients is helping them understand which medium best suits a particular event or meeting.

Merck, for instance, differentiates between the three-pane presentations on its Accordent system (which internal users call a webcast) and what it calls an "executive video message." Part of the differentiation is the level of complexity in postproduction: A meeting’s webcast is recorded live; the only editing done on the archival version of the webcast is the trimming of the introduction and the closing. The Merck team views archive-only webcasts (webcasts that are recorded but not streamed live) as recording a synchronized live event.

"Webcasts have options that make it easier to find particular content, with … options such as chaptering," Fox says. "But an executive video message will be more like a traditional video production rather than a webcast in that it will have multiple cameras, it won’t be a lock-down shot, and we’ll do a bit of editing before making the on-demand file available."

In CA parlance, on the other hand, video segments are called Qbits. According to Lawson, a Qbit is a small piece of video information, typically less than 10 minutes long and sometimes only 2–3 minutes long. Even longer webcasts are ruthlessly chopped down to Qbit size.

"If we’re recording a meeting with multiple presenters or presentations, we will immediately trim the front [end] and back end and post the entire event recording for on-demand access," Lawson says. "But only until someone can chop it up into the individual Qbit segments via the Mediasite editor. Then we toss the original version."

Request Process
One area I was most interested in was the process that companies used to create events, from initial contact to event day to archive availability. In general, what I found was that the companies used the request process as part of their initial criteria in choosing a system, with the portal features on some of the systems providing a consistent workflow for requests.

"Everything [is done] through the Accordent portal," Vanderdecker says. "A requester would go to Accordent’s portal page on our intranet and complete a webcast request form. Our webcast coordinator then assigns a producer and notifies IT an event will be happening. The producer then handles [the] live event, including gathering content to display as well as equipment for the desired location." Lockheed has a similar process.

"Our Multivision lead, Katie Teufel, gets a request from the media services electronic service request (ESR) system," Aquilone says, "and begins the process of gathering the right information to deliver a successful webcast. Depending on the originating location a Multivision team within geographic proximity is then assigned to work directly with the requestor."

"The Multivision team works with the presenter regarding the presentation," Aquilone says. "While the PowerPoint slides are typically the responsibility of the presenter, we offer assistance to help make the slides more appealing and effective [within the templated three-pane layout]."

The Lockheed team typically provides a direct URL link for publication, publishes both the presentation and the associated URL link on its Multivision portal on the requested day, and sets up the AV equipment for the webcast.

Game Day: Location and Personnel
With the success of streaming, each company’s internal teams have to deal with both large and small events. As a result, there is no typical number of personnel assigned to a given webcast, nor is there even a typical location. But the reps provided a few "rules of thumb" as to how they handle particular events.

At Merck, for instance, a typical event may require two people: a camera operator and a webcast producer who handles pre-event and postevent production. During an event, the producer may also run audio and watch the webcast encoders. Merck uses up to eight simultaneous encoders for up to four simultaneous languages. "We have really been able to reduce head count with the ‘trigger’ feature [in] our system," Fox says. "Slide changes [are] done automatically, leaving us to focus on the encoders. We send out two streams, both with synchronized slides: One is a 100Kbps video stream, which we are now migrating to 300Kbps, and the other is a 16Kbps audio stream for remote employees."

To accomplish its streaming vision, Merck has four main auditoriums with remote control cameras, audio boards, and encoders. The pharmaceutical giant also has carts that carry portable sound gear such as mixers and equalizers for use in conference rooms.

The CA group that Lasher leads, the AV group, has five full-time employees who are responsible for watching more than 50 conference rooms at CA headquarters, each with integrated AV systems, as well as providing AV services for web conferencing (LiveMeeting) and classic