As video becomes an increasingly important tool for communication and productivity, organizations must find new ways to manage, store, and share large numbers of massive video files across their networks without negatively impacting bandwidth. The solution to this problem is to use a video content management system, or video CMS.

What is a video content management system?

A video content management system, or Video CMS, is a platform that enables the organization, management, and delivery of video content from a centralized location. The content can include video files or live streams which audiences can then view from anywhere in the world on any device.

Why do you need a video content management system?

There are a multitude of reasons behind needing a video content management system but the main focusing points are the ease of use for both the administrators of the platform and the audience. Many organizations have used LAN folders and SharePoint sites in the past, which although are great for the storage and sharing of document files, are severely lacking when the need to share videos across an organization arises.

A video content management system makes it easy to upload, encode, and organize existing content. Without an intuitive, easy to navigate back-end, those managing the content could spend countless hours doing work manually when it can be done automatically after a few clicks of the mouse. Many video content management systems may still require you to encode your videos before uploading which can be very time consuming. Flixout does all the video encoding for you automatically. A video content management system may also enable creators to live stream events in real-time to their audience. All of these activities are very bandwidth heavy and for any organization trying to share videos outside their local LAN knows, can greatly impact their overall internet speed performance serving their audience.

For the audience, having a centralized video content management system allows them to find the videos they need and watch them online in real-time without the need to download software or wait for excess buffering from anywhere they have internet access. Sometimes an audience member's broadband speed just isn't up to par, but with Flixout, we utilize adaptive bitrate technology to automatically adjust the quality of the video being delivered to your audience, no buffering, just a seamless experience. Our platform also allows the audience to engage in a meaningful way with the content they watch through a variety of different tools such as user metrics, online quizzes, chatrooms, comments, ratings, favorites, leaderboards, and forums that integrate directly with the video content on the same page, no plugin required.

Why can't I use our existing CMS for video?

Traditional content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress, Drupal, SharePoint, etc., are tailored mainly for other purposes and not video. Short videos with a duration of only a minute can easily be over 100MB in size, overwhelming these content management systems that are designed to serve content of a much smaller size. Making videos that are 15, 30 or even 1 hour in duration for training sessions, town hall meetings, demonstration videos, and other common enterprise use cases will be a very difficult task for these content management systems even under the best of circumstances. These systems also lack the ability to properly encode media for a seamless delivery to your audience resulting in excess buffering.

What can't I use our existing LMS for video?

The problems faced with a learning management system (LMS) are very similar to those faced with a traditional CMS platform when managing videos. Cornerstone and Saba, the two most common LMS platforms, struggle with large video files and as more and more organizations expect to utilize more video content for their operations, a LMS platform is a lagging solution. With Flixout, we combine the best of a LMS and CMS with a focus on video allowing your audience to access everything they need from one centralized location. Need to share files, check comprehension of the material learned, or track that the material was viewed? Flixout has you covered.

Why shouldn't I use a private YouTube channel for video?

Services like YouTube and Vimeo are great platforms for those managing video that anyone should be able to watch but are not a solution for organizations that needs to restrict access or have detailed metrics to the video. Private videos are regularly indexed by search engines accidentally and users can easily gain access to private channels on YouTube or Vimeo with minimal technical knowledge. Without a way to control the actual users of the platform, the risk is great for any organization that needs some level of privacy and security to prevent unauthorized access to videos. Flixout gives you the ability to control who has access to your platform whether that is via internal security measures, token based authentication, user registration, or subscriptions ensuring your videos remain seen only by those authorized.

Why can't I use LAN folders for video?

Much like the other previous sections, utilizing a shared LAN folder has its own pitfalls with video content. Shared LAN folders do not allow encoded videos to be played and as a result, must play the same file from the same server possibly to multiple users at once. This results in playback performance issues in terms of quality and interoperability between different devices. Video is a very bandwidth intensive resource due to the size of most video files and without the ability to scale, can degrade network performance not just for those watching the videos but other users on the network as well.

A local area network folder also makes it difficult to present anything other than the video file to your audience making it hard to decide on which video must be watched in a particular sequence, enabling users to go out of sequence, or skip videos entirely. This can result in an information gap which is critical to organizations hosting training or demonstration videos. With Flixout, you can be assured that your audience is watching videos in the order you want them to and even monitor their progress, ensuring all content is watched as designated.

Benefits of a video content management system

Flixout supports large high-definition videos out-of-the-box, from those ranging a few seconds to hours long and we will automatically encode the video so that playback is optimized and seamless for all of your audience members regardless of their location. This ensures a quality viewing experience on a multitude of devices including desktops, laptops, tablets, TVs, iPhones, and Androids.

The Flixout platform allows you to organize your content into different categories that are easy to navigate and understand. This reduces audience frustration and bounce rate so that your audience stays for what they came for. The ability to add tags to videos and search within the platform allows your audience to find related content for more in-depth understanding of the content at hand. Quizzes and activity monitoring further solidifies this understanding and gives leadership peace of mind that what was watched was actually learned and comprehended correctly reducing problems in the future.

Flixout is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform which further reduces administrative complexity. Traditional CMS and LMS platforms may require you to obtain hosting for your content which can be extremely costly depending on the audience number. Furthermore, constant system security monitoring, updates, and patches can further add to increased overhead costs. Instead, Flixout operates in the cloud so that you do not need to worry about capacity problems, bandwidth saturation, storage constraints, or even a lengthy install procedure. Flixout is ready to go, out of the box and is fully scalable regardless of how big, how long, or how many videos you need to upload, our platform is ready to handle any task you need to throw at it without the frustrations or complexities of using a traditional CMS or LMS platform.