But if someone steals your content, “brand awareness” isn’t a worthy consolation prize. 

What if you could proactively protect your content from being stolen? Better still, what if you could determine who stole your content thanks to its video watermark? 

Enter dynamic watermarking. An alternative video watermarking solution, dynamic watermarks change based on the viewer, generally displaying personal information as a theft deterrent while moving intermittently around the screen. The regular movement of the watermark makes it nearly impossible to remove. 

No matter what solution is ideal for your content, this guide on video watermarking will help. Discover how to watermark videos and why it’s important, plus check out examples to decide which type of watermark is best for your business. 

What is a Watermark for Video & What Does It Mean?

Companies and creators add watermarks to online intellectual property — such as videos, photos, and documents like PDFs — that need to be protected.

Generally speaking, a video watermark is either a:

• Static brand logo indicating the content owner, or
• Dynamic semi-transparent text identifying the viewer’s email and IP address

Static watermarks indicate ownership and establish brand authority. Dynamic watermarks help prevent content from being stolen and misappropriated. 

For these reasons, video watermarks act as a security measure. You can add watermarks to videos during editing, post-production, or after uploading your asset to a video hosting platform. 

We’ll discuss the use cases for each type of video watermark in more detail later. 

Do Watermarks Indicate Copyright?

Watermarking a video does not copyright the content. But it doesn’t need to! You gain copyright in a creative work when it is written or recorded. Register creative works through the U.S. Copyright Office if you might need to defend your property in court. The most proactive way to protect your video assets is to prevent the content from being stolen in the first place. 

What is the Purpose of a Video Watermark? 

Brand awareness and theft prevention are the main reasons to add a watermark to your videos. The level of security a watermark provides depends on the type of watermark used. 

Static watermarks (i.e., brand logos) are less secure than dynamic watermarks, which intermittently display viewer information on-screen. However, businesses and creators need different levels of protection. Let’s consider the two major use cases for video watermarks. 

Watermarking for Brand Awareness & Content Reach

The most basic watermark is a static image in the form of a brand logo or creator name. Static watermarks are the same for every viewer. This watermark ensures your business receives credit, helping to build topic authority and brand awareness when your content is shared.

Static Logo Watermark

Static watermarks are generally placed in the bottom left or right corner of the video. However, this placement makes static watermarks fairly easy to remove or crop out if a thief wants to pass the content off as their own. New AI tools to remove watermarks only make this easier. 

One solution to discourage unauthorized use is covering the center or entire video with a semi-transparent watermark. Stock image and video libraries commonly use this method.

Edge-to-Edge Static Logo Watermark

However, this doesn’t prevent AI from removing the watermark. Plus, videos covered with a semi-transparent watermark are difficult or unpleasant to watch. 

Therefore, static watermarks are useful for brand awareness and content reach, as most people won’t remove a watermark before sharing your content. However, static watermarks aren’t sufficient for protecting intellectual property.

Watermarking for Copyright and Intellectual Property Protection

The risks associated with misappropriated intellectual property, proprietary information, and corporate data can affect a business’s bottom line. Leaked internal videos, for example, risk exposing private information or unrevealed products. 

Likewise, e-learning course creators must protect their intellectual property from being screencast and shared without permission. To this end, dynamic watermarking is a secure solution to prevent viewers from leaking your content or passing it off as their own. 

Dynamic Watermark on SproutVideo

A dynamic watermark displays different content based on predefined criteria about the viewer; it moves intermittently around the screen to prevent unauthorized use. 

Dynamic watermarks on the SproutVideo platform display the viewer’s personal information (email address, IP address, and session ID) on the screen. Viewers are dissuaded from stealing video content because it would require them to publicly share their personal information as well. 

Additionally, dynamic watermarking creates a trail of breadcrumbs, allowing you to identify the culprit and prevent future access.

Across options, dynamic watermarks strike a balance to provide optimal security while maintaining a high-quality viewer experience. You can even customize dynamic watermarks with SproutVideo: choose a more transparent watermark, prevent it from sticking to the center of the screen, adjust the intermittent pattern, and more.  

Read More: 4 Ways to Customize Dynamic Watermarking on a Video

When Should I Add a Watermark to My Videos?

Consider the security you need across internal and external channels when determining what type of watermark to add to your videos. For each channel below, consider the risks of video asset distribution without your permission.

• Social Media: sometimes necessary. Some platforms (Instagram and TikTok) automatically add a watermark to videos. Therefore, adding your own is unnecessary. An exception is long-form YouTube videos, where it is standard to include a small watermark in the lower corner.
• Marketing Website: unnecessary. Marketing and product-focused videos generally don’t need a watermark. Often, the company is directly mentioned in the video, meaning brand recognition is built-in. These videos build awareness even if stolen and shared. 
• Educational Content: sometimes necessary. Educational videos are a great way for brands to provide value to relevant audiences. As public-facing videos, a static watermark is sufficient for building brand awareness and topic authority. However, private content, such as login-protected videos, gain added protection with dynamic watermarks.
• Paywalled Videos: always necessary. Dynamic watermarks are the most secure way to protect paywalled video guides, e-learning courses, and other privately available content. Dynamic watermarks discourage screencasting theft by displaying the viewer’s personal information. Additionally, it creates a breadcrumb trail, allowing you to block an individual viewer’s access if necessary.
• Internal Corporate Communications: always necessary. Highly sensitive and confidential quarterly data reports, pre-released product demonstrations, and company meetings represent the internal communications that require safeguarding. Internal communications are vulnerable to internal leaks, just as paywalled content is vulnerable to external ones. For the same reasons, dynamic watermarking is ideal for securing this private information.
• Film, Television, and Advertisement Screening: always necessary. Confidential prelease information is shared with popular media outlets, journalists, and content creators before debuting a new product, commercial, or television show. Dynamic watermarking ensures external collaboration and screenings are private and secure. 

Read More: Best Practices for Securely Sharing Corporate Videos

3 Ways to Add Watermarks to Videos

Add static watermarks to videos during editing or with a third-party tool. Adding dynamic watermarks requires a video hosting service because the watermark must be encoded in real-time to display the viewer’s information. 

1. Dynamic Watermarking with SproutVideo

Dynamic watermarking can be turned on account-wide or on a video-to-video basis. 

However, dynamic watermarks require real-time encoding and processing to display the viewer’s information as a watermark. For this reason, viewer information must be captured or applied in one of the following ways to enable dynamic watermarking:  

• Login Protection: Perfect for securing one-off videos and hosted video websites
• Lead Capture: Ideal for gating promotional marketing and educational assets
• Embed Code Parameters: Necessary for membership websites and advanced viewer tracking

The method of implementation you choose will depend on how you share your videos and when you need dynamic watermarking to appear, as outlined by the use cases listed above. 

Lead capture is the least secure of these options because users can enter false information, meaning the dynamic watermark would display the false information entered.

Note: For added security, consider using signed embed codes to prevent embed code tampering and reuse. 

That’s it! Once you’ve enabled one of these three methods for capturing or applying viewer information, enabling Dynamic Watermark is a simple click of the toggle button. 

Read More: How to Enable Dynamic Watermarking

2. Static Watermark in Post-Production

Ensure your static watermark cannot be removed by adding it in post-production while editing. The watermark will become part of the video file when you export your video. Keep in mind that cropping a video or using AI tools can remove a static watermark.

Here are the general steps:

1. Create your static watermark image with a transparent background (PNG).
2. Import the image into your video editor. 
3. Add the image to your video timeline, then adjust the logo’s size, placement, and opacity. 
4. When your video is complete, export and share!

This method is the easiest way to add a static watermark to your videos if you created the video or are familiar with editing software. However, you may prefer a watermarking tool for existing videos. We’ll cover these next. 

3. Static Watermark with Third-Party Application

Third-party applications allow you to add a watermark to existing videos. However, the video must be uploaded to the third-party platform to add the watermark. 

Many applications allow you to add a watermark for free but restrict the upload size, video resolution, and overlay the tool’s branded watermark. Compare the best apps for watermarking videos based on each platform’s free plan. 

• Descript: Viable free option if you need to add a static watermark to a single video. 
• Canva: Free tool for adding watermarks to images and documents, but not ideal for larger videos due to the limited upload size (1GB). 
• Kapwing: You can get started without creating an account; however, the free plan limits video quality, size, and length.

Note: Some video hosts can add a watermark to the video player. However, without additional security measures, thieves can still fetch and download the content. Worse, there’s no watermark on the downloaded file since it was part of the video player instead of the video file. Therefore, choose a tool that adds the static watermark to your video file. That way, your watermark will follow no matter where your content goes.

Fighting copyright and intellectual property infringement is a long and costly endeavor best avoided with prevention. While video watermarking serves multiple purposes, the end goal for most users is to protect their content from unwanted distribution. Check out our library of helpful content to make a plan for keeping your videos protected:

• Determine the Level of Privacy Your Videos Require
• 8 Powerful Reasons to Use Viewer Logins For Your Videos
• What To Do If Someone Steals Your Videos Online

The post What is a Watermark for Video? Automatic Theft Prevention for Videos appeared first on SproutVideo.

Companies use video to easily share internal announcements, coordinate projects, onboard team members, and train new employees. From small businesses to large corporations, video enables teams to stay informed and coordinated. 

Yet businesses need the ability to share videos privately. Security is essential for numerous video applications, from proprietary information and trade secrets to upcoming projects and marketing videos. 

So, understandably, businesses are concerned about the privacy and security of the videos they share. Secure video sharing, unlike social media platforms, puts you in control of your content.

Top-notch private corporate video features include password protection, video login, and signed embed codes. We’ll cover six easy steps to securely share videos as a business in this complete guide.

The Importance of Sharing Corporate Video Privately

Video security and privacy is essential for maintaining the boundary between external and internal video content. External videos are used in marketing campaigns, landing pages, social media, and more. 

Internal videos, on the other hand, are almost always intended for a specific group within the company. This group might be the executive team, a specific company location, new hires, freelancers, or anyone who needs secure access to your company’s videos. 

A video hosting platform focused on secure video sharing for businesses will include password protection, dynamic watermarking, single sign-on, and viewer tracking features.

The Three Pillars of Secure Video Sharing

The difficulty in keeping video content secure is due to the multiple access points and potential privacy leaks. Therefore, your video security plan must address the following pillars.

Control Access

There are two access points at which you need to restrict access:

• Videos: Directly restrict access with password protection, login protection, IP address and location restriction, and single sign-on.
• Video Hosting Account: Use two-factor authentication (2FA) for all account logins to secure access to your video hosting account.

Prevent Leaks & Theft 

This level of video security seeks to prevent those with legitimate access to videos from leaking or sharing content outside the organization.

• Secure Embed Codes: Prevent embed code redistribution with allowed domains or signed embed codes. 
• Deter Theft: Dissuade screen recording by displaying the viewer’s information on-screen.

Audit Regularly

Regular auditing is essential. It will allow you to ensure unauthorized people haven’t gained access to video content and that those with access permission haven’t changed video privacy settings.

• Engagement Metrics: Real-time information on who is watching your videos and for how long.
• Viewer Access Logs: Track login behavior for login-protected videos.
• Account Audit Logs: Keep track of team member account activity.

This information should allow you to consider video security and how you might implement it for your business or organization. We’ll discuss how to implement this information for secure video sharing next.

How to Secure Video Content in 6 Steps

1. Determine the Level of Security You Require

The video security demands of every company will be unique because no two companies require exactly the same features. Use the following questions to determine the types of security and privacy features your business needs.

• How sensitive is the video content? How would your business be impacted if these videos leaked? 
• Do you already have a website where you can embed these videos, or do you need a secure portal for your videos as well?
• Should viewers be able to access your videos seamlessly? Should videos be password protected or require login?
• Where do viewers need to access the video? Do viewers need access on the go or should access be restricted to certain locations, like the office?  
• Who should have access to these videos at your company? Should videos be restricted to specific teams or locations?

The answers to these questions will largely determine the features you need to look for when shopping for a video hosting provider.

2. Choose Your Video Hosting Platform Wisely

Online video hosting services are not one-size-fits-all solutions.

Popular free options, like YouTube and TikTok, are designed for social sharing — the opposite of what you need for private, corporate video. A video hosting platform that focuses on video for business will offer greater control over your content.

Review the essential features of a secure video platform below, then make a list of the solutions your business needs. All of the following features are found on the SproutVideo platform.

Important Features of a Secure Video Platform:

• Two-Factor Authentication: Enable double account verification for login. 
• Password Protected Video: Require a password to access video content.
• Secure Video Login: Create login credentials that are required to view videos.
• Signed Embed Codes: Prevent embed code theft. Once expired, the video can no longer play where embedded. 
• Whitelist Access to Content: Control what IP addresses, domains, and geographic locations have access to your content. 
• Single Sign-On (SSO): User authentication with one set of credentials. Connect your hosted video website (such as SproutVideo) with your Identity Provider.
• Dynamic Watermarking: Display the viewer’s email address, IP address, and session ID on the video to deter theft.
• Account Audit Log: Review team members’ changes to videos and privacy settings.
• Viewer Access Log: Track individual viewer engagement; see who accessed your videos and how much they watched.

3. Restrict Video Access 

There are two levels of restricting video access:

• Restrict access using credentials
• Restrict access by location or network

Restrict Access to the Video

Your approach to restricting video access will depend on how you plan to share your video content.

• On your own website, including an intranet, Sharepoint, Squarespace, WordPress, etc. 
• Video website via a video hosting service, like SproutVideo.
• A third-party location, like Notion, Confluence, or Asana. 

If you plan to share videos on your website: does your website portal include page access controls?

If yes, manage your employees’ access credentials or profiles from your company’s content-sharing portal. This will create a more seamless viewing experience.

Additionally, consider whether those access controls are sufficient: will you require additional security measures for more granular access permissions? Combine additional restriction features such as:

• Login protection
• Password protection

Need a website for your videos? Hosted video websites provide a dedicated portal for your content.

Use login protection and password prediction to restrict access. Or, for serious security with a high-quality user experience, bring your Identity Provider and use single sign-on (SSO) with our hosted video websites.

Restrict Access by Location or Network

Once you have restricted access to videos directly, consider whether or not you need additional restrictions. For example, your website may require log in credentials. But anyone could still access the content if those credentials were shared outside the company. 

To prevent this from happening, use IP address and geographic location restrictions. Doing so ensures that no one outside your organization can access the content even if they have the password or login credentials to load the page or video. 

Example: A company might whitelist its computer network and the IP addresses of any remote employees. Computers outside those networks will be blocked from loading videos or live streams.

4. Deter Screen Recording & Downloads

How do you protect video content once someone has access? Deter screen recording and download theft with dynamic watermarking. The watermark changes positions regularly and displays the viewer’s email address, IP address, and session ID.  

There are multiple ways to customize a dynamic watermark on the SproutVideo platform. You can alter the opacity of the background, select the position change interval, prevent the watermark from covering center-focused content, and more.

Example: A video embedded on a landing page intended for new employees could include password protection, dynamic watermarking, and IP address restriction. This stack of security measures ensures the viewer must have a password to watch, the watermark deters recording by revealing the viewer’s information on-screen, and only whitelisted networks of computers will be able to play the video.

5. Safeguard Embed Codes

Unless preventative measures are in place, it is relatively easy to locate an embed code on a webpage to copy and paste it on another site. There are two major ways to prevent this:

• Domain restriction automatically checks the URL where your embed code is located to ensure it’s approved. The video won’t load if it isn’t approved. 
• Signed embed codes require a unique signing key to play the video. The video won’t load if the signing key is absent or incorrect.

While more technically advanced, signed embed codes can be used in more complex scenarios than allowed domains.

6. Track Viewer Activity

The final step is to audit your viewer records and account access logs on a regular basis. This will ensure your video privacy controls are continuing to work as expected.

Video hosting platforms with robust analytics, like SproutVideo, make it easy to periodically review who has been accessing your videos.

Firstly, tag viewers who have permission to watch the video. This will make it easy to identify them. Viewers accessing the video through login protection or single sign-on (SSO) are automatically tracked.

Regularly review your access log to check for anomalies. Look for unusual email addresses, locations, IP addresses, or viewing patterns. If anything sticks out, temporarily revoke viewer access by changing the video password, privacy settings, or removing it from the page.

Note: In addition to engagement tracking, periodically review account audit logs. This information shows what team members have uploaded videos, edited privacy settings, and more.

As a communications solution, securely sharing video is easy, effective, and can potentially increase your company’s bottom line. Yet to be beneficial, strong video security and privacy are essential.

A video hosting platform built for businesses, like SproutVideo, includes everything you need to securely share video, monitor users, and improve viewer engagement. 

The post Best Practices to Securely Share Corporate Video appeared first on SproutVideo.

We’re serious about security at SproutVideo, which is why we are excited to announce a new way to protect your hosted videos with dynamic watermarking for videos. 

A dynamic watermark displays the viewer’s email address, IP address, and session ID over your video and continuously changes position. This makes it nearly impossible to crop out of a screen recording. You can also customize the opacity of the watermark, restrict its position, and more.

What is Dynamic Watermarking?

Watermarking, in general, is the process of overlaying an image or text over a piece of content to identify the content’s owner, authorized user, or validity. 

There are various methods for watermarking different kinds of content; we’ll focus on static and dynamic watermarking of videos today. We are SproutVideo, after all.

A static watermark is a watermark that is the same for all viewers. Dynamic watermarks change based on various factors, such as where the video is played or who is watching it.

Static Watermarking

Static watermarking adds a visible mark on a video. It’s a great way to brand content and deter theft. When used for branding purposes, these watermarks can commonly be seen on videos or photographs as a logo, name, or phrase that typically appears along the edges, so they aren’t too distracting. 

The creators of a television show, for example, may watermark a video clip or GIF on social media to grow brand awareness. When attempting to deter theft, a content creator might have the static watermark cover the entire photograph or video. 

Even if someone were to download or screenshot the content, the watermark would still be present; therefore, everyone would know who created the content. Static watermarks are easy to incorporate since they only have to be added once and can be done before uploading to a video hosting platform.

Dynamic Watermarking

Dynamic watermarks, on the other hand, change from viewer to viewer based on different factors. For instance, a video could have a different watermark based on what site it’s been embedded in, or each video viewer might get a unique watermark that identifies them. 

While dynamic watermarks don’t prevent screen recording, they can be excellent at discouraging viewers from recording and redistributing content because their personal information is burned in and can easily be traced back to them.

You’ll generally want to use dynamic watermarking on content intended for a narrow audience, such as quarterly reports, employee training videos, or content containing intellectual property or trade secrets.

4 Ways to Customize Dynamic Watermarking on a Video

Dynamic watermarks offer superior security to static watermarks. While static watermarks can easily be cropped out, dynamic watermarks are difficult to hide and reveal the thief’s personal information.

However, to minimize its prominence while providing security, the SproutVideo platform allows you to customize the dynamic watermark on your videos. 

Background Transparency

Set the watermark’s background to be more or less transparent. We recommend a “semi-transparent” watermark for a balance of readability and strong security. The more opaque the watermark background, the more prominently it is featured. 

Position Change Time

By default, the dynamic watermark changes positions on a timed interval to prevent thieves from being able to crop out one section of the image in order to avoid being identified. 

We recommend a 20-second interval. This provides strict anti-theft protection without being distracting to the viewer. Available options include 10-second and 30-second intervals as well. 

Intermittent Visibility

This feature allows you to display the watermark intermittently. The watermark will display every other interval, meaning the watermark is hidden for roughly half the video. 

The frequency of interval change corresponds to the position change time you’ve selected for watermarks. Keep in mind that enabling this setting makes it easier to grab screen captures. 

Restricted Positioning

The placement of the dynamic watermark is random by default. Restricted Positioning prevents the watermark from displaying at the center of the video, which is generally the main focus of the video content.

When this setting is enabled, the watermark will stick to the edges of the video as much as possible. Once again, remember that this creates less variability in the watermark placement, making it easier to crop the watermark out.

Dynamic Watermarking for Videos with SproutVideo

Our dynamic watermarking feature provides a strong theft deterrent by sharing personal details like the viewer’s email address, IP address, and session ID. If a viewer chooses to pirate your content and share it without your consent, their personal information will also be shared. 

Changing the placement of the dynamic watermark throughout the video adds another layer of protection, making it extremely cumbersome for any screen recorder to crop out or conceal without needing to display the watermark over the entire surface area of the content.

Our platform also gives you the flexibility to enable dynamic watermarks for all of your videos account-wide, on a per-video basis, or per viewer login access grant — making it an excellent option that can adapt to your needs. 

Dynamic watermarking is an essential tool for preventing video content from being stolen and redistributed. It is ideal for protecting intellectual property and keeping trade secrets, well, secret.

Ready to get started? 

• Try it out completely free with a 30-day trial to the platform.
• Learn how to set up dynamic watermarking on SproutVideo. 
• Discover the best practices for sharing private videos.

The post Product Update: Dynamic Watermarks for Videos appeared first on SproutVideo.

Live streaming is a powerful way to reach an audience, right now. With the SproutVideo platform, you can leverage our video marketing and privacy tools to gain precise control over how your live stream is accessed and viewed by your audience.

In this post, we’ll share the details of how live streaming works with SproutVideo, and showcase ways you can use it for video marketing, or secure sharing to a limited audience.

Why Use SproutVideo for Live Streaming?

There are many options for live streaming platforms out there. The most popular options are major social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube. There are also platforms for specific types of live streaming, like Twitch, which is focused on gamers, and more.

So, why go with a professional hosting platform for live streaming your content? The answer is surprisingly simple: control.

In this recorded live stream, Nick LaClair and Ikey Ajavon walk you through our new live streaming features in a detailed product tour.

To recap the main points from the video, on social media platforms, you can’t control how the player looks or behaves. Your live stream might have ads before, during, or after it runs. It also might appear alongside other content that’s at best distracting and at worst, negative for your brand.

Further, any viewers that engage with your live stream are actively encouraged to stay on the social platform and to keep scrolling through other content. While you might grow your audience in terms of fans and followers, it’s harder to market directly to engaged leads.

Finally, social platforms aren’t a fit for all business needs for live streaming. If you’re broadcasting a town hall or reviewing the numbers, you probably won’t want to share it on social media.

If you’re using SproutVideo for live streaming, you stay in control of your content and how it’s shared. You can create custom players, and use video marketing tools to capture leads, or secure sharing tools to reach a narrowly defined audience. We have never, and will never, run ads on content on our platform, and put your brand front and center rather than ours. Here are more details on all our new live streaming features.

Live Streaming for Marketing

Live video is incredibly powerful for video marketing. It’s inherently exciting, and can be an amazing tool for driving engagement.

There’s a premium on live content that just doesn’t exist for on-demand video. Viewers have to tune in right now, or they’ll miss something. That’s a strong motivating factor for getting people to watch.

All of that makes live content a perfect fit for video marketing campaigns. From product announcements, to special deals, or as a part of a blog post, live video offers many opportunities for reaching viewers.

Specific Live Stream Features for Marketing

In terms of specific features that can help grow your audience and your sales, SproutVideo has a lot to offer with live streaming.

Before your stream even starts, you can customize the video player to match your branding. If you’re sharing on our landing pages or video websites, you can also add your logo and enable commenting for your live streams, which can help drive engagement.

You can also help drive SEO by adding the URL where you’re sharing your live stream to your sitemap with our easy video SEO tool.

Another option before your stream starts is to require viewers to submit contact information in order to view. This information can be passed directly to a marketing platform integration for further targeted campaigns.

Once your stream begins to play, you can display a message during your live stream with our in-player CTAs. This is perfect for directing viewers to a specific link, like a product, special offer, or blog post. You can also encourage viewers to share it with built-in social sharing and embed code sharing player features.

Finally, when your stream concludes, you can display a custom post-play message. It could be as simple as a link to another landing page, or a completely custom HTML design, like a survey or a form.

Securely Sharing Live Streams with a Select Audience

Live streaming isn’t just for public promotions. There are plenty of ways to use live streaming to reach a limited audience. For instance, company town halls or announcements, exclusive content, or paid content are all examples where you may not want your live stream to be public.

Live Stream Privacy Features

SproutVideo can help you control access to your live stream with several options for privacy settings.

Private live streams only appear where they are embedded. This is a simple way to ensure your live stream is only published in your company intranet or on your website, for example.

Password protection is a simple way to require all viewers to submit a password to view your live stream. The same password is shared among all your viewers. Anyone without the password won’t be able to access your live stream.

Login protection provides more options for restricting live stream access. With login protection, viewers have to enter an email address and password combination to view your live stream. The credentials are unique to each viewer. You can set a window of time for login access, limit how many times the login information can be used, or set download permissions for individuals for the recorded live stream.

Similar to login protection, single sign-on (SSO) requires viewers to enter credentials before they can view your live stream. The difference is that viewers are authenticated by your company’s identity provider, like Okta or ADFS or Google Apps, then redirected your video website on SproutVideo’s platform.

In addition to those privacy settings, you can layer on more security depending on your needs. Domain whitelists prevent viewers from sharing your live stream on another website, IP address whitelists prevent viewers on unapproved networks from loading your stream, and GEO whitelists restrict viewing to specific geographic areas.

Measuring Live Stream Performance

Once your live stream starts, you can view real-time analytics on your audience, including:

• How many viewers are currently watching
• The peak views for your live stream
• A count of the unique viewers that have tuned into your live stream
• The average time each viewer has watched of your live stream

When your live stream has finished, you can review more detailed analytics:

You can also check viewer engagement throughout your live stream to see when the most popular moments were, or when viewers dropped off:

Once your live stream has ended, a recording is automatically posted to your SproutVideo account. This recording is an on-demand video you can repurpose in many different ways.

The analytics and engagement metrics for the on-demand recording of your live stream are completely separate from the stats collected when your stream was live. You can replace or delete your on-demand live stream recording, and it won’t impact your past live stream’s data.

Update: Check out the latest feature updates for live streaming on SproutVideo!

The post An Inside Look at Our New Live Streaming Platform Features appeared first on SproutVideo.

At the core of a durable business continuity plan is an effective communications strategy. Of course, it should include video. In a time of crisis, video provides the ability to communicate fully and with nuance, which is essential when so much is unknown. Here’s how to incorporate video into your continuity plan to prepare your business for anything.

What is a Business Continuity Plan?

A business continuity plan is your company’s roadmap for maintaining productivity in the face of adverse events beyond your control. Usually, you only turn to a continuity plan when a serious disaster of some sort strikes. Think floods, pandemics, earthquakes, or even armed conflict.

It’s easy to assume you’ll figure things out when and if the time comes. However, it’s far more advisable to have a plan ready to go so you aren’t scrambling. 

A basic business continuity plan consists of guidelines for adjusting key business processes when everyday resources are not available. For instance, a solid plan should account for losing access to your office space; moving employees to remote work; postponing, rescheduling, or relocating major gatherings; reassigning roles if essential personnel are indisposed; managing supply chain disruptions; as well as many risks related to technology, software, and cyber crimes.

Why You Need Video

Beyond answering the basic question of, “how will work get done?”, your continuity plan should also address your communication strategy for when things are going belly up. 

Video is an essential tool for both fronts. For both internal and external purposes, video is the glue that can help hold an organization together and keep things moving forward.

Displaying Leadership

If you’re turning to your business continuity plan, you’re dealing with some sort of crisis. In times like these, strong leadership is essential. 

A faceless email can only do so much to reassure anxious coworkers. Seeing a familiar face, with the right tone of voice and nuanced delivery, can really enhance the impact of a message. 

Internal Communications

Regular messaging from executives can help align teams and keep employees focused on your company’s mission. Try to set a cadence you can maintain, assuming a busier-than-usual workload. 

This is a perfect opportunity to take stock of the situation, offer reassurances, and provide critical updates company-wide. 

To ensure your videos remain for employees only, video privacy features like single sign-on, IP address restriction, or requiring viewers to login are easy ways to control access. 

Public Relations Messaging

Remember, it’s not just your employees who might look to you for leadership. It’s also your customers, and potentially the general public. By displaying leadership in a crisis, you can help ensure others will think of your brand as reliable.

Customers will want to know whether your company will continue to provide goods and services going forward. If you anticipate disruptions of any kind, it’s best to be transparent since most customers will understand there are mitigating circumstances at play. Further, leaving people to wonder what’s happening when their order doesn’t ship or they can’t reach anyone on the phone will only make things worse.

If your company is taking special steps to help those in need during the crisis, video is the perfect way to explain what you’re doing, and encourage widespread sharing of your message. Video helps make dense information easier to digest, and people are more likely to share information if they have an emotional reaction to it.

To reach customers, embedding a video on your website or blog, or including a video in an email campaign is a great way to get the word out. To reach the general public, sharing your content on social media or in a press release are excellent options.

Reaching Remote Employees

In this day and age, not coming to the office is hardly a reason to stop working. However, there are challenges to remote work that video is uniquely suited to solve.

Video Resources

When you can’t just wander over to someone’s desk for help with a problem, you need somewhere else to turn. Creating video resources for employees to answer quick FAQs about key business processes, especially ones newly enacted to deal with changing circumstances, is essential to helping people adapt to the new reality.

If you are scrambling to put these resources together, our guide to making video with just a laptop might help. We also cover how to make a professional screencast in our How To Video series.

Once you have your content in place, create a video resource center by embedding video in your intranet, or by creating a secure video portal with a third party. For instance, SproutVideo’s websites offer single sign-on, password protection, and more privacy tools to ensure only employees can access this content.

Video Chats and Messages

While Slack, Microsoft Teams, and other professional messaging apps have displaced email significantly, it’s hard to replace face-to-face meetings in lots of circumstances. Video chats are essential when you can’t be in the same place at the same time and need to discuss something important.

The key to ensuring everything moves online smoothly in a crisis is already having a tool in place. Introducing new tools when teams are already dealing with extraordinary circumstances can lead to confusion and lost productivity.

Slack, Zoom, and Whereby are all popular choices for video chats. No matter which tool you use, setting an agenda, avoiding interruptions, and noting key takeaways and action items, are essential to keeping video chats productive.

Sometimes, you can’t even manage to schedule a video chat. However, video can still be used to share important messages with your team. For instance, providing feedback using a screen capture instead of typing it up could be more efficient. 

Online Events

In situations where large gatherings are no longer possible, conferences, big meetings, and similar events can be a headache and a half to cancel. Online video offers alternatives that can save the day.

Try to get recorded presentations from the participants to share, or use webinars or livestreams to showcase the presenters instead. You might not be able to get the whole lineup on camera, but hearing from some of the experts will still feel valuable to erstwhile attendees.

Failing that, our tips for leveraging video for public relations above should come in handy if the event needs to be delayed or canceled outright.

Putting it All Together

No matter where you are in your disaster recovery planning process, it’s never too late to make changes for the better. Review (or create) your plans today to identify the points at which video can be leveraged. Then, ensure the teams involved are aware of the communications strategy you’ve put in place, and that they have the resources they’ll need to produce and share video accordingly.

In trying times like these, we are here to help with any of your video questions, large or small. Share them in the comments below!

The post Business Continuity Plans: Why Video is Essential appeared first on SproutVideo.

In those types of scenarios, it’s critically important to be able to restrict your audience to a select group. In this post, we’ll walk through seven examples of when curtailing sharing is necessary, and best practices for securing your videos with the exact settings to use.

Project Collaboration With Your Team

Picture this: You are part of a marketing team at a tech company that has multiple teams working on a variety of projects. Project X is one such product, and is due to be released in two months. The team working on Project X wants a promotional video for the launch, which your team has been tasked with making.

Naturally, there is a lot of collaboration between your team and the Product X Team as they develop the new product. They have to communicate how it works, all of its benefits, and the type of people who will be most interested in it to your marketing team.

Your team must then translate that information into an attention-grabbing video. It has to make the new product look good, and appeal to the target audience. This will require a lot of back-and-forth between the two teams, especially as you finalize the video.

This is where the ability to easily allow Product X Team access to the unfinished video, while ensuring no one else can see it, becomes imperative to a successful launch.

Video Privacy Settings to Use

Since every person involved in the project is an employee at the same company, three specific factors shape the optimal video security options for this situation. You probably log onto the same network, possibly through a VPN. You might also have existing company credentials for accessing your company’s admin or intranet.

If you can’t easily embed your video, or just prefer the ease of sharing an automatically generated landing page, single-sign-on (SSO) is a great option. It requires a little setup, but once it’s in place, SSO allows anyone at your company to use their existing credentials to access your videos on a SproutVideo hosted website. Viewers are authenticated by your existing Identity Provider, like Google Apps, OneLogin, or ADFS.

A second option is to embed the video on a secure page, for instance, in your company’s intranet. You’ll want to leave it set to Private on the SproutVideo platform, so your video will only appear where it’s embedded. You can also leverage allowed domains or signed embed codes to make sure the embed code can’t be copied and shared elsewhere.

Since you are all on the same network, IP address restriction is an easy third option for ensuring your videos will only load for viewers on a whitelisted connection. It’s seamless for the viewer, and easy to set up if you know your company’s IP address. This setting also works regardless of whether you are embedding your videos, or sharing via a website or landing page hosted by SproutVideo.

Sharing Updates With Your Customers and Clients

Ken and Dana Design are a customer of SproutVideo. They’re purveyors of high-end jewelry, with a beautiful range of engagement rings.

Since their customers are usually anxiously awaiting the final product, Ken and Dana leverage video to engage them in the production process. Given the nature of their rings, these videos normally have to be kept top secret.

Video Privacy Settings to Use

Your business might not work with precious gems, but client deliverables are often for their eyes only. When working with parties outside your organization, you have a couple options for video security settings.

Password protection works perfectly in this situation. It’s simple for the client – they just need to know the password for the video to watch it. If they want to show the video to anyone else, they can share the password and the link easily, while still keeping the video secure and under wraps.

For additional control, login protection is a powerful and simple way to deliver video to clients. With login protection, you create a secure viewer account for each person. Then, you can grant video access to each individual. You can also determine how long their access lasts, whether they can download any versions of the video, and how many times they can login to watch.

Video Campaign With Influencers

Imagine you are the owner of a toy company known for its specialization in Montessori toys for young children. You’re preparing to launch three new toys this holiday season, and have done your research. You’ve identified social media influencers in the Montessori education field to help add credibility and get the word out to potential customers.

Not only do you want to ensure the influencers understand exactly how your toys work, but you also want to ensure that absolutely no one else knows about your offerings until launch day. Video happens to be the best tool for the job.

Video Privacy Settings to Use

Tracking is incredibly important since you are trusting third parties with insider product information. If word gets out to competitors, they might have time to beat you to the punch. You also want to preserve the element of surprise for your product launch.

As we just reviewed, login protection provides lots of control over the terms of video access for individuals. It also provides lots of tracking information about your viewers. You can audit your viewer log to make sure credentials aren’t being shared without permission.

Training New Hires

The new Montessori toys range has sold beyond expectations. You are now in need of new staff over the holiday period to keep up with demand. To quickly bring new hires up to speed, you’re planning to use video during the onboarding process.

Video Privacy Settings to Use

Similar to internal project collaboration, training videos typically contain sensitive company information. For new hires, SSO or secure embeds are great options.

If you want them to get a jumpstart on their training before their official start date, login protection is another great choice. Login protection can be setup for anyone inside or outside of an organization.

Geo-targeting an Audience With a Special Offer

The Montessori toys range has sold well, new staff have been trained, and it’s time to go international. The problem is that you need to offer slightly different prices in foreign countries. For example, the videos marketing the product in Europe are going to show higher pricing compared to the US.

Video Privacy Settings to Use

Since these are marketing videos, you want them to be shareable and publicly accessible. However, you still need to prevent videos with different pricing information from being watched in specific areas.

Geo whitelisting allows you to designate the specific countries or regions where your videos can be played. Once enabled, your videos will not load or play in countries or regions that are not included in your whitelist.

Sharing Meeting Minutes Internally

Whether it’s a board meeting or a town hall, you might need to go back and review the discussion down the road. Video is a great way to capture and preserve important information.

Video Privacy Settings to Use

Company meetings usually include sensitive information, so privacy is always important. If the information and discussion shared in the meeting is particularly valuable, opting for SSO will give you control over who is able to view your videos.

Alternatively, login protection is also a good choice for this type of video. Login protection allows you to grant video access to individuals. That means you can adjust which videos each team is able to see when they log into your video website.

Special Offers for Members or Subscribers

Say you’re at a non-profit organization throwing a limited-seating event that will sell out quickly. You want to ensure your biggest donors, supporters, volunteers, and sponsors get first dibs on those tickets. This means you can’t just send a video about the event to your regular mailing list.

Video Privacy Settings to Use

How can we get the word out to select people? Secure embedding of the video in a members-only section of the website. Or, use login protection to grant video access to individuals.

Have any questions about sharing your video securely? Share with us in the comments below or on Twitter @sproutvideo

The post 7 Best Practices for Restricting Sharing for Business Video appeared first on SproutVideo.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to evaluate your video privacy needs, and pick the right settings for secure sharing.

Analyze Your Content

Start by taking a hard look at the video you’re planning to share. The goal here is to assess the risks inherent to sharing your video, as well as the likelihood someone might try to misappropriate it.

Try to answer the following questions:

• Does it contain sensitive company or personal information? For instance, watch for trade secrets, financial data, and sales or product information.
• Are you planning to charge viewers to access it?
• What would happen if it was shared widely online?
• Who is likely to be interested in sharing it, and why?

Obviously, sensitive or paid content requires stringent privacy controls. However, there certainly is a spectrum of privacy needs. For example, a video talking about an upcoming product release may not require as many restrictions as a video about company financial data.

Ultimately, categorizing your content is highly subjective, and is not one-size fits all. If you think it’s really important to restrict sharing of your video, then it is as simple as that.

Who is the Intended Audience?

When deciding on a privacy setting for your videos, it’s important to take your intended audience into consideration.

Your audience likely falls into one of these buckets:

• Public – anyone online should be able to view it and share it
• Restricted – only a select audience should be able to access and view it, with no sharing outside of the group
• Very Restricted – only a specific list of individuals should be able to access and view your content, with no sharing at all

To determine which bucket you’re addressing, look at these two key factors related to your audience that can impact the right choice for protecting your content.

Size

How many people (roughly) are you planning to share this video with? Size matters because it will determine the type of privacy control that best fits your needs.

For example, if your video privacy settings are really complex, and you are sharing with a large group of people, you might wind up spending too much time troubleshooting video access for individuals. There are likely better ways of solving for video privacy for large numbers of people that still meet your content security needs.

Trust

Do you know everyone who might watch this video? Do they fall into any particular group, such as coworkers, classmates, or family and friends?

It stands to reason that the privacy requirements for sharing a video with individuals you know poses a smaller risk than doing so with a larger group of people you don’t know.

Similarly, certain privacy settings work best when you’re sharing with a group of individuals that are all a part of the same company, or connecting to the same network.

Where Are You Sharing It?

The final factor in picking the right privacy setting for your video depends on how you plan to share your content.

Your Website

Sharing content through a website you own allows you to take advantage of a large number of video privacy options.

1. Your website content management system might have its own privacy tools. For instance, the ability to restrict access to the pages where your videos are embedded.
2. Allowed domains enable you to easily restrict where your videos can be embedded and played.
3. Signed embed codes similarly allow you to restrict where your videos can be embedded and played. They rely on a secret, expiring signature, making them extremely secure.
4. Geo restriction whitelists specific countries where your videos can be played.
5. IP address restriction enables you to whitelist connections, ideal for when all your viewers are on the same network.

Privacy options like login protection and password protection definitely work with embedded videos. However, having to enter credentials or a password every time a viewer tries to watch a video can be tedious. Generally speaking, we recommend restricting access to the page where the video is located instead.

A Video Hosting Platform

Similarly, sharing your content on a professional video hosting platform gives you granular control over your content. In this case, you’d be using the landing pages or video website features that come with each SproutVideo account.

All of the privacy options above will work, with the sole exception of signed embed codes. And, password protection and login protection are ideal for simple sharing on our platform.

In addition, some privacy settings are only available for videos shared on our platform. For instance, single-sign-on, unlisted videos, and site-wide passwords are intended to work exclusively with SproutVideo’s websites or landing pages.

Here’s a breakdown of where each video privacy setting works best:

Offline

If you plan to make your videos available offline, your privacy options are really limited. For a video to playback offline, it has to be downloaded to a local hard drive. You cannot control the content once it’s been downloaded to a local drive.

So, this option is only really recommended when you trust the person downloading your video. Or, when it’s handled through a mobile app that can prevent access to the downloaded video file.

Social Media

It’s wise to assume that content on social media is more or less public. After all, that’s the intention behind sharing on these platforms. You may have some controls available within different platforms to restrict your audience to a certain extent.

However, as the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal shows, the network effect means your content can spread far and wide on social media very easily. For that reason alone, plan to only share public videos on social media.

There are also technical reasons to make sure videos you share on social media are public. For the poster frame and video metadata (title and description) to appear in a post, the video has to be public.

Putting it All Together

Different video privacy settings are optimized for different use-cases. Some work best for large groups because they put up easy-to-manage guardrails to protect against unwanted sharing. Others are best for high-value content that needs to be kept very secure, even when shared with a small or trusted group.

This guide is intended to give you a general sense for when to use different privacy settings. Keep in mind that although a given video security tool might be optimized for a specific scenario, there are usually exceptions where it will also be the right choice. For instance, you may choose to use single-sign-on with a small group of people. Or, use login protection with a video embedded on your website.

Each situation is as unique as the company and the video they’re sharing. If you’re ready to upload and share your videos, we’re here to help determine the best video privacy settings for your specific use-case. Just reach out to our support team for guidance, or leave a comment below!

The post How to Determine the Level of Privacy Your Videos Require appeared first on SproutVideo.

Video should never be an afterthought. In fact, if current trends continue, it’ll soon be the standard for business communications.

We’re not just talking about marketing. In many ways, marketing is already there with video.

So, how can you ensure your company is ahead of the curve? By integrating video throughout your company culture. It has to become your professional way of life.

Here’s how you can get started. Follow this in-depth guide to build habits and establish default behaviors to promote the use of video throughout your organization.

Contents

This post is so thorough that we’ve included a Table of Contents to help you navigate it.

1. Why You Need a Video-First Culture
2. Get the Right Tools for the Job
3. Designate Responsibilities
4. Thinking Video First
5. Centralized, Secure Sharing
6. Reporting and Improvements

Why You Need a Video-First Culture

A video-first culture is one where videos are created and shared as a central part of everyday workflows. Video becomes a way of doing business, rather than just another project to manage.

Video is too powerful a medium to leave relegated to marketing departments. When used properly, it can drive employee engagement, facilitate training and on-boarding, and enhance corporate communications across the board. Did we mention it could also save you money?

Here’s a quick breakdown of why a video-first culture will help your organization better prepare for the future.

Engagement

Would you rather sit through a PowerPoint presentation, read a lengthy email or PDF, or watch a short video with all the info you need? We thought so.

Video gets the message across better than other mediums. The importance of this fact can’t be stressed enough when it comes to corporate communications. Beyond engaging viewers in the moment, video results in higher retention rates of information compared to other medium.

The fact that you can hear, see, and read information simultaneously helps reinforce it in your memory, helping you to clearly recall it later on. Video also often contains emotional triggers, helping to promote the formation of memories.

Communications

Think about the time before email (really, there was a time). We predict video communications will become as pervasive for the modern workforce in the next few years. So, you better start now if you want to stay ahead of the curve.

Video offers specific advantages compared to other mediums for communication. Ultimately, it’s all about the personal connection. Humans are hardwired to respond to faces and emotional expressions. A lot of what we communicate is nonverbal. Unlike text or audio, video allows you to speak more directly to your audience.

Training

Training doesn’t just happen when you’re first hired. Maybe you’ve been promoted to a new role, changed departments, or want to learn new skills.

This is where an engaging video resource center can really shine. By investing in tools your employees can access at any stage of their careers, you’ll help drive retention and advancement.

Video is perfect for training because it makes it easy for workers to refer back to a lesson if needed. Since it helps employees retain information better, it’s more efficient, too. Finally, it’s less disruptive to their workflow when training can be accessed whenever its needed, rather than at scheduled meetings.

Saving money

Often thought of as expensive and time-consuming, producing and leveraging corporate videos can be highly cost-effective. It all comes down to your priorities, and how you tackle it. In fact, we’ve often heard from our users that they realized substantial cost-savings by using video throughout their companies.

Take training, for example. It’s often one of the costliest aspects of on-boarding new employees or implementing new procedures. By using online video, you can save significantly on transportation, staffing, and more. Even better, you can reuse video time and again, so the savings accumulate in the long run.

Get The Right Tools for the Job

Having the necessary equipment on hand is as much about reducing friction as it is about getting the job done. If you’re scrambling to find cables or charge batteries every time you want to make a video, you’ll never get around to actually filming anything.

A basic camera kit consists of three main components: a camera, a microphone, and a tripod. Professional lighting can also be extremely useful, but technically isn’t necessary for basic video projects.

Here’s what your kit might look like if your phone is your main camera:

The kit above includes a Joby Gorillapod tripod, a lens, and a microphone, and would cost around $150 (plus cost of the phone) to put together.

We also have a detailed video guide to making a professional 4K camera rig using an iPhone:

If you have a camcorder or DSLR camera with video capabilities available, your setup won’t be that different. You’ll still want to use an external microphone and a tripod.

For a full rundown of video equipment you might want to consider, read this post about the ten most essential pieces of video equipment.

Finally, if you don’t have any sort of camera, you can still make plenty of videos using just a laptop.

Designate Responsibilities

Just announcing you’d like more video won’t get you anywhere. Each team needs a point person for ensuring video is an integral part of their project planning.

Even teams that you might not regularly peg as creative assets can help produce interesting videos. From accounting to sales to support and even c-suite executives, interesting perspectives and useful information can come from anywhere.

The point person for video should be relatively tech savvy, and see this new responsibility as an opportunity rather than a burden. Ask them to come up with a handful of ideas for videos they could produce, and see which get traction on the team.

If they’re not sure where to start, look to other teams for inspiration. Or, brainstorm topics that could be useful internally. Training, special learning sessions, quarterly reporting, new hires, and more can all be excellent opportunities for video.

The people you select to help spread video across your organization aren’t necessarily the ones producing the actual videos. It might make sense to have a specialized person or team in charge of that, depending on the size of your company and the resources available to you.

If you’re not quite ready to expand this across your whole organization, you still need someone in charge of ensuring videos are regularly planned and produced. That person could be you, or a colleague with a passion for video. Ask around for volunteers, and you might be surprised at how many you get.

Thinking Video First

Most companies have plenty of opportunities for capturing great video content. They just don’t seem to know where to start.

Here’s are some common endeavors most companies will undertake at some point. If you plan on capturing video from the get-go, you’ll find yourself with a wealth of content at the end of the year.

Company Events

Planning a conference, round-table, panel, or similar event? Be sure to capture it all on video.

This high value IP can be reused in numerous ways. For instance, you could leverage it for employee education, marketing for future events, or repackage it for attendees.

An ideal setup for filming an event would involve more than one camera, and a microphone for each speaker. By having at least two cameras, you’ll have two perspectives to choose from when editing your clips. This will help smooth over any awkward pauses, coughing, or other audible interruptions in the dialogue. It also reduces the chances a speaker might wander out of frame.

Giving each speaker their own mic also avoids a few annoyances. Ever sit in an audience, waiting to hear from a panel speaker while a microphone is slowly passed their way? Yeah, us too, and it’s no fun.

Wireless lapel mics are usually the way to go, but handheld mics can work just as well. Importantly, your speakers are less likely to walk off with a handheld mic, or to forget that they have a hot mic on them.

That’s the ideal scenario, however, all of that fancy equipment is not required. You can certainly make do with a simpler setup.

Town Halls

Important information is often shared at company town hall meetings. Yet, it’s easy to forget the specifics of what is discussed. Further, at least a handful of employees will likely be out of office for one reason or another.

All the more reason to capture it on video. This requires a really simple setup. Just a camera, a tripod, and a single microphone will usually suffice.

You will likely find a surprising number of ways to use this footage. It can be fun to review at a later town hall to check on progress towards a goal, for instance. You can also look for bloopers or outtakes for the company Christmas party.

Aside from those fun ideas, making the video available to anyone absent from the event helps ensure everyone is on the same page. It will also allow people to check back in the future if they are trying to remember a detail or a goal that was set during the town hall.

Video Conferences

An everyday occurrence in most offices, video conferences help teams collaborate and get work done efficiently. They’re also a great way to interview experts who can’t visit your company on site. By regularly recording them, they can also be a great way to enable teams to easily keep track of what’s going on with different projects, and to promote employee education.

Whether an internal video conference merits recording can certainly vary quite a bit. If you’re discussing a milestone in a project, recapping accomplishments, or planning next steps, it’s probably worth archiving for future reference.

If your video conference involves external experts, recording it is nearly mandatory. You can use soundbites or clips from these sessions in many different ways. From marketing, to education, to blog posts, there are many possibilities.

Producing these types of videos is really simple. Most video conferencing applications come with video recording features. The only equipment you need is a computer and a webcam of some kind.

Test your setup ahead of time with a colleague, and remember to hit record. Then, export the video to an MP4 file, and upload to the web for sharing.

Internal Communications

Beyond town halls, company communications of every variety represent a chance to create video. We are particularly big fans of using video for major announcements, product releases, messages from executives, or introducing new hires.

Similar to town halls, these don’t have to be complicated or fancy videos. A quick soundbite is all it takes to put a human face on an important message.

Since the purpose and audience can vary tremendously, we recommend working with equipment you have on hand. That means a webcam, iPhone or Android, DSLR or even a camcorder might do the trick. The message is the central focus here, not production value.

Charity, Conventions, and Outside Events

If your company is sponsoring or organizing an event for a charitable cause, participating in a convention, or any other outside event, capture it on film. These special one-off events are great material for brand marketing, recruiting, and promoting different causes.

Assign someone to film the event the day of, or encourage everyone participating to capture special moments on their phones. Ask that they film in landscape, not portrait mode, if possible. Look for celebrities or interesting people to interview, too. At the end of the day, you’ll have a wealth of footage to compile into a video about the event.

Don’t forget to grab plenty of b-roll footage of the location, exterior, crowds, or event signage to help provide context to the video.

Try to Keep it Simple

We can’t emphasize this enough – video doesn’t have to be a huge production. Keep production as simple as possible. You’ll find it much easier to produce video on an ongoing basis.

Tie the level of effort to the intended audience, and the importance of the message being communicated. Often, less is more!

Centralized, Secure Sharing

All this video won’t do you any good unless it’s easily accessible to your intended audiences. You’ll basically need two things:

• A place where the videos will live.
• Appropriate video privacy tools.

To determine where your videos should be shared, and the level of security they require, first look to your intended audience.

Internal Audiences

Employees, interns, contractors – anyone with a company-issued email address would likely constitute a member of your internal audience. Board members, trusted advisors, and others involved directly in your business are also likely included here.

Executive communications, town halls, training, recorded video conferences, and other proprietary company videos could all be shared with internal stakeholders.

Privacy Controls for Internal Video

Internal video can range from light-hearted, to extremely sensitive in nature. It’s imperative to ensure the proper privacy controls are in place before content is shared.

The right video security tools will vary based on your company’s particular needs. There are two main ways to approach it:

• Embed videos in an existing secure portal, like Sharepoint or a company Intranet.
• Send viewers to a secure video website, hosted by a 3rd party.

Existing Secure Portal

If your company already has a Sharepoint, intranet, or similar employees-only section of your website, you can easily share your videos there.

In this case, you’ll be embedding your videos, and if you’re using SproutVideo as your video hosting provider, you’ll want to leave them set to Private. Private videos only appear and are playable when embedded, not on SproutVideo landing pages or video websites.

To prevent your videos from being copied to external websites, ensure your video embed codes only work on specified websites. Use either allowed domains or signed embed codes to that effect.

Allowed domains is a straightforward video security setting. Enter the domain(s) where you’d like your video to appear, and it simply won’t load anywhere else.

Signed embed codes allow for more precise control over viewer access to your video. Signed embed codes require a secret signing key in order to load. If that key is missing, or incorrectly configured, the video won’t load.

Secure 3rd Party Video Website

Some video hosting services, such as SproutVideo, offer customizable video websites and landing pages. When used in conjunction with our video privacy options, they can be a powerful solution for keeping corporate video secure.

Creating the landing pages or video website is extremely simple. It only takes a few minutes to pick a theme, customize your URL, and add your branding. Hit publish, and you’re almost ready to share.

After uploading your videos, you’ll need to determine the best privacy settings to use for sharing your corporate videos securely. SproutVideo offers several options for controlling video access through our video websites, in approximate order from least secure, to most secure:

• Leave all videos set to Public. Your website will be discoverable and anyone with the URL can access your content.
• Require an email address to view a video, allowing you to track each viewer by their email.
• Unlist a video to make it undiscoverable on your video website.
• Password protect individual videos on your video website.
• Password protect your entire video website.
• Assign login credentials to viewers, and set download permissions, or limit access to a period of time or number of logins.
• Use IP address restriction to ensure your video website only loads for viewers on an approved connection.
• Implement single-sign-on (SSO) to use your company’s Identity Provider (ADFS, Google Apps, or any provider using SAML 2.0), so viewers can use their company credentials to login.

The best option really depends on the level of security and the reporting you require. If you’re unsure about which might work for your company, then contact us for guidance, or leave a comment below.

External Audiences

People outside of your company include prospects, clients, the general public, or friends and family.

Your marketing and PR videos, product or company announcements, and educative content are likely to be of interest to these parties. Designed to engage and convert, these are the types of videos that are ideally shared widely.

On occasion, you might need to share sensitive information via video with an outside party. A deliverable to a client, for example, would probably not be shared publicly.

Privacy Controls for External Video

Chances are, publicly shared videos will be ideal for this audience. You might even look to promote sharing of your public-facing videos by enabling social sharing, or including a call-to-action.

For external videos that require more security, some of the above options for internal video could work well. For instance, password protection and login protection are good options for simple, secure sharing with individuals.

Reporting and Improvements

At this point, you’re producing content on a regular basis, and sharing your videos confidently and securely. By keeping regular tabs on your video analytics, you can continuously improve your process and your content.

Tracking and improving viewer engagement is key to the success of corporate video. It helps you determine whether or not your message is getting through to your intended audience.

An engagement rate of 100% would mean that everyone who started watching your video finished it. Usually, the higher the rate, the better. It means your audience is engaged and consuming your content in its entirety.

For publicly shared videos, you’ll also want to consider other data points for your videos. For example, how many leads did they generate? What was the reach of your video? Did viewers comment on it? Determine the metric that is most central to your video campaign, and track it to see how you’re doing.

Use the data to change your process for making and sharing videos. If you notice flagging viewer engagement after more than one minute of footage, for instance, chop your videos down to size.

By continually improving your content, you’ll keep driving the use of video throughout your company culture.

How does your company use video? Where specifically has it helped, and why? Please share your experience in the comments below.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Developing a Video-First Company Culture appeared first on SproutVideo.

Issuing a login to viewers, with which they can access your videos, is a highly secure and easy way to share your content. It’s simple to setup, straightforward for the viewer, and can be tightly controlled by the content owner.

In this post, we’ll walk you through eight of the most clever ways you can use logins for sharing your videos, with some tips and tricks thrown in to boot.

What is a Viewer Login?

Just in case you’re not familiar, here’s a quick overview of viewer logins, and login protection.

Viewer logins are a combination of an email address and a password. Each viewer login is typically assigned to just one individual, although they can also be shared by a group. They’re used exclusively for video access, and work with videos on SproutVideo websites or landing pages, as well as embedded videos.

Login protection is a video privacy setting available on the SproutVideo platform. When a video is login protected, anyone trying to watch the video will be prompted for a username and password before they’ll be able to do so. Permissions can be granted to individual viewers for just one video, or can be granted in bulk.

1. Individualized Video Access

Sharing videos isn’t one-size fits all. It can be ok for certain people to have unlimited access, but not for others. Maybe you only want one person to be able to download your video, but still need to share it with a few more people with view-only permissions.

Login protection solves this scenario by enabling you to customize video access for specific individuals. You don’t need to upload more than one copy of your video. You also don’t need to create or share different links to your video, either (more on that below).

Once your video is set to login protected, and you’ve created logins for the viewers with whom you’d like to share your video, you can grant video access to each separate login according to your needs.

That means some people can be permitted to download your video, while others can only watch it. There are several other granular ways to configure viewer access, making this a very powerful way to control the privacy of your content.

2. One Secure Sharing URL For All Your Videos

Sometimes, you need to share multiple videos with a group of people, but you need to do so securely. Rather than sending a long list of password protected links, you can share just one URL with the group when using login protection.

If you choose to do so on the SproutVideo platform, you’ll also want to take advantage of the video website features we offer. This will simplify sharing substantially.

Once you have your site setup and ready to go, you can then use it to share all your login protected videos. When someone loads your video website, they’ll be prompted to login. As soon as they do so, all the videos they have access to will appear. Any videos they don’t have access to will not be displayed on the site.

Login protection makes it really easy to share your videos all in one place, using just one URL – even if you’re sharing videos with multiple people, each with different video access settings.

Note: videos appear on your video website according to their privacy settings. Refer to this help article about how video privacy settings work with video websites for more details.

3. Expiring Access

One really common request we encounter at SproutVideo is to be able to share videos with someone temporarily. By setting video access to expire automatically, you can help protect your content.

Limiting the period of time in which a video can be viewed helps prevent unwanted sharing. With a time limit enabled, even if someone tried to share your content without permission, the link they were attempting to share would eventually expire.

This is a particularly great option if you are concerned about people viewing content past a specific date. Perhaps you’re sharing video with students for an exam, or need to have a review process completed on time.

No matter the reason, putting an expiration date on video permissions is a straightforward way to limit access to your content.

4. Limited Viewing Sessions

Sometimes, it’s not about exactly when someone views a video. It could just be about the total number of times someone access your video. This is another great way to prevent or limit unwanted sharing of your content.

With login protection, you can limit the number of viewing sessions permitted for each individual. That means your viewers can only load your videos a specified number of times.

The way this works is by tracking and limiting the number of viewing sessions each person can have. If you limit it to two, for instance, someone would only be able to load the page containing your videos twice. Once the page is open, they could watch the video more than once. However, after the second time they loaded the page, they would not be able to open it again.

This curtails sharing because each time a link is opened in a new browser, it creates a new browser session. If you only permitted two viewing sessions, as in the example above, the max number of people who could view it would be two.

If your goal is to truly limit the exact number of times a video can be played the whole way through, there’s an easy way to do so. Simply use a post play screen to force the viewer to refresh the page to replay the video.

5. Tracking and Auditing Viewer Logins

Once login protection is enabled for your videos, SproutVideo generates robust reporting on exactly who is accessing your content. We publish the data in the form of a Video Access Log. This report details all of the minute interactions your viewers had with your videos.

You can see exactly who loaded your videos, and clicked play. If you have engagement metrics, you can also see how much they rewatched or skipped. This reporting is particularly useful if you need to know exactly who watched your videos, and how much they watched.

This level of granularity allows you to rest easy knowing that only people with permission are watching your videos.

7. No Password Management

When using login protection in combination with a video website hosted by SproutVideo, an added benefit is that you don’t necessarily have to manage users’ passwords.

By enabling the option to allow viewers to reset their own passwords, you can relieve yourself of the duty to assist them if they forget it. You will still have to create their initial password, but after that, it’s the viewer’s responsibility.

Of course, the account holder always has the ability to change passwords for a login at any time. This is just a handy option to explore, especially if you have large numbers of viewer logins to manage.

8. Revoke an Individual’s Video Access

When using password protection for a video, it can be frustrating to have to change the password, and then update everyone with the new password. With login protection, you can change only one person’s password. Or, revoke their access entirely, without changing anything for anyone else.

Since each viewer has their own login, editing one person’s password or access permissions doesn’t affect anyone else with access to the video. This could dramatically simplify your life depending on how you’re sharing your videos.

Questions about how your business might benefit from login protection for your video content? Ask in the comments below and we can help.

The post 8 Powerful Reasons to Use Viewer Logins For Your Videos appeared first on SproutVideo.

Make Sure You’re the First to Know

If the video contains highly confidential information, set up Google Alerts (or a similar notification service) for either the subject of the video, its title, or keywords that might be used to describe it. This way, if a search engine locates the video somewhere on the web, you’re more likely to know about it sooner rather than later. Try to be specific and use long-tail phrases, or you might wind up with a lot of false positives.

You can also pick a video hosting provider that offers detailed reporting on where your videos are being played, and can track individual viewers at a very granular level. If you notice a strange location or IP address in your reporting, for instance, you’ll want to investigate right away.

Take Stock

If it appears that someone did misappropriate your video, first and foremost, don’t panic, but get to work quickly. Gather as much information as possible about Who, What, Where and When in order to ensure your subsequent actions are thorough and effective.

Quickly track down all the locations where the video is being shared without permission as best you are able. The goal is to take it down as quickly as possible before it has a chance to really spread.

To do so, start at the top. Try to identify the video hosting provider where the video has been uploaded. If the player doesn’t feature their logo, you can still find out by right-clicking on the page, selecting Inspect (or Inspect Element depending on your browser), and locating the video embed code on the page. Usually it’s contained in an iFrame or div element, and the hosting provider’s name will be evident.

Make careful note of the platforms where you’ve been able to locate the video, as well as any usernames associated with the unwanted uploads.

Get Ahead of It

Contact all key stakeholders who might be affected by this event to make sure they are aware of the situation, and that you’re doing all you can to contain it.

Remaining factual and transparent will help engender trust that everything will soon be under control. Issue periodic updates when you gain new information so no one is left wondering what’s happening.

Issue Takedown Notices

Reach out to the platforms where you have located the video in question and contact their support team to issue a takedown notice. Be prepared with proof of ownership of the video, a way of verifying your identity, and the usernames you were able to pinpoint that may have shared your video without permission.

Video hosting platforms are usually quick to act on this type of complaint, and are better able to quickly take action against multiple accounts at a time than if you were to try to contact each person sharing your video individually.

Counteract the Damage

This type of unfortunate event can have ramifications beyond short-term embarrassment. Depending on what the video contained, you could face issues with business partners, investors, or employees for starters.

If necessary, first check with a legal advisor, then consider how you can best remedy the damage caused by the leak of your video. Sometimes, addressing it publicly, via Twitter, a blog post, or a press release, makes sense because it takes the shame out of the situation. This works because you can gain control of the dialogue by taking ownership of the situation.

If the video was not shared widely, however, that might not be your wisest approach as far as how to publicly handle the situation. Tweeting or blogging about it might create a mountain out of a molehill, or motivate people to try to find the video in question. Start by communicating clearly and reassuringly with any impacted stakeholders, and then re-evaluate if a broader approach is needed.

The third option is a tad riskier – don’t address it publicly at all. Handle everything quietly and discreetly, and hope no one notices. Given the short lifespan of most content online, you might just get away with it. This, of course, could allow the conversation to run away from you, or could give the erroneous impression that you don’t really care in the event word gets out.

No matter which approach you take, rather than playing a blame game, it’s important to be forthright with the information available to you, and to assure others that controls have been put in place to prevent subsequent information leaks.

An Ounce of Prevention

Speaking of preventative controls, avoiding this situation entirely is clearly the best course of action. Luckily, with internal video communications, there are many good options for ensuring your video can’t be shared beyond your company walls, by non-employees, or anyone without permission to view it.

Starting with the simplest option, allowed domains is a video security setting available to all SproutVideo accountholders that allows you to specify the websites on which your videos can play. Anywhere else, they simply won’t load on the page and will display an error message instead. This prevents people from grabbing your video embed code from the page source information, and placing it on another website. This won’t, however, prevent sharing of the URL of the page on which your video is embedded.

A slightly more sophisticated but similar option is signed embed codes. Signed embed codes require some programming knowledge to implement, but make it so that the video embed code requires a secret signing key in order to load. This means that your video embed code will only load in certain circumstances under your control, and can’t be shared on other websites.

To limit the sharing of the video no matter where it is located, you can use login protection for your videos, and restrict the period of time or number of logins for which a given viewer can access your videos. This would allow your selected viewers to view your video, but would limit the extent to which your video could be shared without permission.

Another simple yet effective option is to implement IP address restriction for your videos. This means only viewers on approved network connections can view your videos. This is an excellent option for companies that own blocks of IP addresses, or use a VPN, so that all employees are on the same network. IP address restriction only works in instances where you already know, or can easily find out, the IP address of all your intended viewers. For anyone outside of your designated networks, your videos won’t load.

Finally, using single-sign-on (SSO) in conjunction with a SproutVideo website makes it so that only people with company-issued credentials can access your videos. Although it requires a little extra effort to setup initially, SSO is very low maintenance going forward. SSO works by redirecting to your company’s Identity Provider to authenticate viewers when they try to log into your video website to view your videos. If they aren’t registered in your company’s database, they won’t be able to access any content.

In summary, controlling access to your videos in the first place is the best way to ensure they won’t be shared without your permission. If you do wind up facing a potential disaster, remember to breathe, and use these tips to mitigate the damage.

Here’s hoping you never need any of that advice! Let us know if you have any questions in the comments below.

The post Your Corporate Video Disaster Recovery Plan appeared first on SproutVideo.