Wistia at Work » Product Updates

Replaceable Video. For safer screw-ups.

Alyce — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:15:24 +0000

Your newest video just entered the wild, and you couldn't be prouder. Then, just when the tale seems to be reaching its happy end, you realize you've made a horrible oversight and something major is off. There's no getting around it: you need to replace the video, stat, but the one person with access to the page where the video is embedded is nowhere to be found, and you're racking up views by the hundreds who think your company is named "Wisti" or "Wisteria" or "Bratwurstia" instead of "Wistia".

With our Replaceable Video tool, launched today, you'll never have to worry about this scenario again. With one click, you can upload a new file in the place of any video in your account, and it will be replaced everywhere: in all of your embeds and in the Wistia app. It works with all SuperEmbeds and in all legacy embeds except the legacy HTML embed. As we're encoding the web-viewable versions of your new video, the old version will stay visible. As soon as those encodes are complete, your video will be automatically, seamlessly updated in all locations, with a new thumbnail and everything. So go ahead, run wild, be free and make mistakes. We've entered no regrets mode.

Unified API: Flash and HTML5, in beautiful harmony

Alyce — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:29:06 +0000

In ancient times, a.k.a. about a month ago, Wistia’s Player API (and all associated documentation) basically controlled the Flash side of the player, without really allowing much control on the HTML5 side. Since we’re all about making sure your video plays right everywhere — including the mobile devices where HTML5 video is a necessity — this could not go on forever. So we’re happy to announce our new Unified Player API, which just works, regardless of whether your audience is viewing your video in Flash or HTML5.

The new Player API places a new layer of abstraction on top of the player, creating a true Wistia API that eliminates the annoying little details that used to catch people up (for instance, you couldn’t instantaneously issue commands to the Javascript API, you had to wait for it to initiate). With the new API:

No more polling the video! The unified API supports video events like play/pause/ended/timechange on both Flash and HTML5.
You don’t have to worry about what’s going on under the hood, just tell the player what to do and we’ll take care of the rest!

We’re excited to have a Unified Flash/HTML5 interface and we think it’ll make everyone’s lives a whole lot easier. To learn more, read the new Player API documentation. Combined with our recent new customizable player, Matador, and SuperEmbeds that make customization even easier, you have more control over your videos than ever.

SuperEmbeds: Viva La Revolución

Alyce — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:28:24 +0000

Today we are pleased to announce the launch of a new feature we call SuperEmbeds. We’ve totally re-engineered the way video embeds work with the goal of giving you more advanced tools to customize your video — tools that you can now deploy with a click of the button. Please watch the video, read the post, try out the demo page and let us know what you think!

In the not-so-distant past — a past which overlaps with the present or future for many video hosting providers — video embeds focused on one task: embedding the video. To add extra richness to the video experience, you or your crazy computer whiz friend had to build additional functionality on top of the existing embed, creating long, complicated codes built from barely compatible snippets, stitched together haphazardly to create something that only barely functioned (and probably experienced compatibility issues we shudder to think about).

We at Wistia were not content to exist in a world where functionality like social buttons, interactive transcripts, popovers, and calls-to-action were only accessible through a cumbersome process that only 1% of the population could successfully employ in concert (#OccupyWebVideo). We’ve always had labs with neat extra features available, but not everyone could make use of them. So, we’ve been working hard on a completely new way to handle video embeds. We’re starting a video revolution, and its handsome hero goes by the name of SuperEmbeds.

These have been a work in progress for quite some time, and we’ve thought about it from all angles. First of all, in the true Wistia way, these embeds — and all added functionality — are compatible across all devices, without you having to think about it. They will work on your desktop, they will work across browsers, they will work on all mobile devices, with no extra work on your end. These embeds work seamlessly no matter how many additional “plug-ins” you decide to add — we’ve devised a grid system that prevents conflict and tested it like crazy. An added bonus of this system is that it will be super easy for us to add new things in the future.

We’ve got a lot more to say about SuperEmbeds, so keep your eyes peeled for upcoming posts about how you can use new features like our Unified API and Calls to Action to your advantage. And as always, we’re happy to answer any questions you may have at support@wistia.com!

Back to the Future: Video Plays by Date

Alyce — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:15:05 +0000

If you’re in touch with us regularly, particularly about analytics, you have probably heard the mystical phrase Stats 2.0. Perhaps this elicited an image of a single massive overhaul, but what’s the fun in that? That would be like eating your entire advent calendar on December 3. Instead, over the next few months, we’ll constantly be releasing awesome new stats-related features that we’ve been working on (and are currently perfecting). The first of these is a pretty neat one: Video Plays by Date!

You can select a range of dates to view stats for:

And you can also choose to view weekly or monthly graphs:

To access Video Plays by Date in your account, simply visit the usual stats page for a video and click “Plays by Date” in the upper right corner.

Soon, you’ll be able to access this — and other — data as a .csv for Excel manipulation, view stats by project, pivot stats by embed location or visitor, and more! And we’re also happy to report that our stats will never fall behind again (a problem that we’d seen a couple of times in the past).

A fun fact about Video Plays by Date: we developed our own graphing library from scratch for it. We thought that a lot of the libraries out there were too bloated or generic, so we wanted something tailor-built for simplicity. That’s always what we aim for — doing the best job in the simplest way possible (and it’s a pretty sweet bonus when it can look sleek, too). Now, what are you waiting for? Go check out your new stats!

Matadors on the Loose: 3 Examples of Player Customization

Alyce — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:35:47 +0000

We launched our new player, Matador, on November 30. This player lends itself to some sweet customizations, and we’re starting to see some very aesthetically pleasing examples roaming the wild plains of the Internet!

We’ve seen video players where custom color looks tacky, and we were afraid of falling into the same trap (especially when we want our player to stay out of the way and let your video content take center stage), but these customers have picked great colors to make the player look even better amidst their content than before. Click the thumbnails to visit the live sites!

MailChimp

Blue Mango Learning Systems

Weave

The HD button is dead. Long live HD!

Ben — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:20:19 +0000

The HD button, much like time, race, gender, and beauty, is an arbitrary construct. That’s not to say it was never a good idea — but it’s something that became prevalent early in the days of web video and eventually became convention despite not necessarily being the best way to do things. Web video really got started on YouTube, and early gripes were mainly about the 240p quality of the videos hosted. Vimeo stepped in, with their main selling point being higher quality than the competition via providing an HD button to click for higher resolution video. This works fine for higher connections, but causes problems for a lot of users.

That’s why our philosophy is to provide the best experience at all times and not have to think about it. Most embeds on pages are less than 640 pixels wide. HD encodes are 1280 x 720 or greater. When an HD encode is viewed inline, it’s using three times the bandwidth as the computer downloads the HD stream, leading to choppiness and other negative effects (and there are starving children who could eat that bandwidth!). That’s why we created our new Auto HD feature. When you’re watching a video inline in our player, it will display at the best perceivable quality, measuring how fast you’re downloading; when you fullscreen the video, if your bandwidth can handle it, it will switch to an HD encode where it matters.

Video on your website should be all about user experience and your message. If the viewer doesn’t get the message, then the quality of the video doesn’t matter — they won’t hear what you’re saying and you’ve lost a potential conversion (particularly important for business video).

Basically, we can view the problem on two axes: one ranging from SD (standard definition) to HD (high definition) video, and the other ranging from inadequate bandwidth to adequate bandwidth. For the SD group, the button is just clutter. This applies to more than just people viewing a video without adequate bandwidth for HD: it can also mean people viewing the video as a smaller inline embed or people who aren’t really watching the video for image so much as they’re watching it for message. Then, there are those who hit the button but don’t have adequate bandwidth to support HD video. For them, it can ruin the experience — like a mouse expecting a treat and instead receiving a slowly buffered, annoying electric shock.

Based on what we’ve measured, over 1/3 of viewers still don’t have the bandwidth to support HD. The first image that this may conjure is one of slackjawed hillbillies jamming out to the chiptune beats of their dial-up modems, but they’re not the only ones. Some other examples — a few of many — include: an office sharing a cable modem, users sharing a connection in a café, places where IT throttles traffic, or DSL connections that can’t support the bandwidth. For people who can’t load video smoothly, the viewing experience is awful and the message is lost.

We <3 HD video in the right time and place, but that time and place is limited. With Auto HD, we think about deliverability for you so you can focus on making your video amazing.

Introducing Wistia’s new player!

Brendan — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:15:49 +0000

We’re super excited to announce the release of the new Wistia player, Matador! Here’s the philosophy behind our player: your viewers’ focus should be on your content, not on our player. That’s always been our ideology, plain and simple. Matador stays out of the way. With this in mind, we’ve meticulously redesigned our player from the ground up.Here are the most significant new features of the player:

Auto HD: HD content is automatically shown to viewers when the size of the player and their connection speed can handle it. When they can’t support the bandwidth, the SD version of the video is displayed, without any extra effort on your part! HD videos are sexy and we’re huge fans. But any benefits of slick HD content are negated if 30% of your audience closes the video immediately because their connection results in annoying buffering. Even worse, if the video is embedded in a small rectangle on your site, your viewers get buffering without any visible improvement in video quality between HD and SD. And so, we built Auto HD.
Color customization: Change the color to make the player blend in or stand out! We used some advanced color math to make it so any color you choose looks great. We stand by the idea that the player should stay out of the way to let your content shine, which can be challenging to incorporate with color customization, but we think we’ve found a way to incorporate player “theming” without being tacky.
Enable/Disable Individual Controls: You can turn on and off the volume control, fullscreen button, play/pause button, and even the playbar itself! Be as minimal as you want to be. We know that some video content requires all sorts of control and other content might just call for one click of the player to get the video rolling. Now, it’s up to you how much control you want to offer your viewers.

Scroll over this demo to compare the new and old players:

And here are some more subtle differences that we think make our player the best it can be:

No More Volume Control by Default: Nearly every computer that ships nowadays has volume control buttons on the keyboard. Why clutter the player with another volume control? So now, volume control is off by default on our player (but we understand there are situations where you need volume in the play, so you can just tick a box and enable it).
Only slightly taller controls (32 vs. 29 px), but much bigger click zones: The previous player was minimal and stayed out of the way, so we kept that experience, but updated the look and made the click zones much larger (i.e. much easier to scrub, click play, pause, etc.) We know it’s very annoying when other players have small click handles for controls, and we didn’t want to fall into that category.
Keeps the stripes but updates them for a more modern look: We wanted to keep that Wistia look that people know and love, but update it. The stripes in the bar are our signature look, but were looking a bit stale, so we refreshed that and made it awesome.
Show the length of the video before you start it in the control bar: Clutch.
Warmer default color: The default color for the player is no longer completely grey, but a desaturated yellow, like the Wistia app and homepage. We’ve added a slight warmth to it.
Space bar to play/pause the video: Okay, this is something nearly every other player has and we didn’t. We’re sorry. Now it’s there.

To get the new player, click on the “Account” tab in your account and click the “Get the new player!” link on the bottom right.

Pre-roll video comes to Wistia

Ben — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:50:48 +0000

We’re super excited to announce the launch of our new pre-roll video tool. This new feature allows for the display of a short video clip (that can’t be skipped) before your main video. See a cool example of how it works here:

We’ve built this tool to support a wide variety of use cases such as: self-managed sponsorships and video advertising, branded intros to your videos, and having a call to action before your video (donation, registration, clickthrough).

Some of the unique features of our pre-roll video are:

Works in both Flash and across mobile devices
Can switch out the pre-roll for all of your pre-roll enabled videos with a single click (and without needing to update the embed code)
All of the viewing of the pre-roll video is tracked with video heatmaps
Can select a specific pre-roll video to display or have it chosen randomly from a list
The option to display a countdown timer for the pre-roll video

To get more information on how our pre-roll tool works, check out our documentation. Or, jump right in and start using the tool.

Video

joe — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 21:36:05 +0000

The way we see it, video and email are a perfect match. Six months ago when we began developing a video embed that would work with MailChimp, we knew the marriage of email and videowould bring about some fantastic email campaigns. What we didn’t expect was how popular the couple would be. We’ve heard from dozens of customers and providers who want to hop into bed with this pair, so we’ve invited a bunch of new partners to get in on the action.If you’ve ever seen Big Love, you know that this sort of thing can get a little tricky. That’s why we’ve taken care to make sure every provider is fully supported in the embed dialogue. Just choose your preferred campaign manager, pick a width for the thumbnail, pick where you want people to watch the video (on your site or directly out of your Wistia account), copy and paste the embed code, and you’ll have a video in your email campaign!

And that’s not even the best part – because your campaign manager already collects information about exactly who’s on your list and whether or not they view your email, we’ve introduced the same functionality to our tracking and analytics. That means you can see the email address of every viewer that clicks through and follow their exact interaction with video heatmaps. Sounds awesome? Find out more.

Automated Video Transcription

Chris — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 18:43:19 +0000

Today, we’re excited to announce one-click, 100% accurate transcription for all Wistia accounts. These transcripts are interactive and synced to the video which is great for usability and can give your video a boost in search results.

To celebrate, we put together this interactive demo that covers how transcription works and what you should expect from the user experience.