Wistia at Work http://wistia.com/blog Fri, 24 May 2013 14:05:25 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.1 Non Sequitur Fridays: Who Are You? http://wistia.com/blog/non-sequitur-fridays-who-are-you/ http://wistia.com/blog/non-sequitur-fridays-who-are-you/#comments Fri, 24 May 2013 14:05:25 +0000 Jordan http://wistia.com/blog/?p=126508123 This post is part of our Non Sequitur Fridays series, which will feature a different Wistia team member's take on a non-Wistia-related topic each week. It's like our "employee of the month" but less "of the month"-y. Jordan Munson is a customer champion at Wistia. "Who are you?" For me, that's not a really hard question to answer. It's [...]

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]]> This post is part of our Non Sequitur Fridays series, which will feature a different Wistia team member's take on a non-Wistia-related topic each week. It's like our "employee of the month" but less "of the month"-y. Jordan Munson is a customer champion at Wistia.

"Who are you?"

For me, that's not a really hard question to answer. It's probably not that tricky for you to answer, either. How about this one, though:

"Who do people think you are, based on what you post to social media?"

Jordan As Adele

In this picture on Facebook, my identity was Adele.

Much harder, right? It was for me, too. Not long after Facebook launched for colleges, I started my first year at university (Northeastern, to be specific—go Huskies!) and hopped aboard the Facebook train. At that point, I had no idea what I was doing and mostly treated it like MySpace, posting as much stuff as I thought would make me look cool and goofing off with my friends. I never thought for a second about what folks actually thought of who I was based on that stuff, but I was pretty sure I didn't need to worry since only my friends (folks who already knew me) could see it. In recent years, all of that has drastically changed.

Now, there are all sorts of cautions about not posting compromising things to Twitter, Facebook or even the Internet in general—which is all well and good, but not why I'm writing this. Instead, I'm here to talk about how I've begun to think more about specifically leveraging social media to strengthen the image of me, not just to avoid damaging it. You may find this surprising (or you may not, I don't really know), but my Facebook is completely and totally public. I know that as time goes by, there will be folks who want to check out my Facebook to get in touch with me, which I think is awesome. Instead of leaving them guessing, I keep it all open so folks can see my pictures and friends and posts. It's who I am, why hide it?

Of course, I don't post every part of my life to Facebook. I post things I'm interested in, thoughtful insights, things I write, and all sorts of other content. Things that are very much who I am, but things that aren't deeply personal. Think about how much better it looks from the outside if someone visits your Facebook and sees that you're completely open about the things that make you who you are, as opposed to locking it away like some sort of dirty secret. For me, that's a pretty big disparity.

Twitter is a bit of a different animal. My Twitter is very much tied to the things I actively participate in and the things I'm interested more than the more personal nature of the things I share on Facebook. I'd like to think I'm a huge ambassador for Wistia on Twitter, helping and connecting with customers and folks we work with. In addition, I connect with other metal journalists and folks who cover metal, since I sort of moonlight as a hack music journalist (primarily writing for a site called Under The Gun Review).

I tweet lots about hockey, too, while my playoff beard grows. The list of topics goes on, but it's mostly of a different nature than the Facebook stuff. I belong to a number of other social networks, but the other major force is Tumblr, which I almost exclusively post audio/visual content and more lengthy editorial content, rarely of an intensely personal nature, unless I feel that it's beneficial for folks to hear (perhaps an enlightening story or positive message). Again, different content.

It may not be of much interest to you, readers, but I've found it incredibly beneficial for networking, leads on things and just enjoying social media more to not hide the things that make me who I am, but instead find the ways in which I can most accurately express the parts of who I am in a beneficial way.

The beauty of social media is that you can, more or less, shape exactly who you're portraying yourself to be. Why not take advantage of that in the most beneficial way possible? You're really missing out on a huge asset if you're not actively working to portay yourself online an an honest and positive way. My last piece of advice here is that you shouldn't fake it: eventually people will notice. If it doesn't translate to who you actually are, what's the point?

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]]> http://wistia.com/blog/non-sequitur-fridays-who-are-you/feed/ 2 Add Mid-Roll Links to Your Wistia Videos http://wistia.com/blog/mid-roll-links/ http://wistia.com/blog/mid-roll-links/#comments Wed, 22 May 2013 18:39:05 +0000 Alyce http://wistia.com/blog/?p=126507941 Labs Follow-Up: Mid-Roll Links You might be familiar with Wistia's post-roll calls-to-action (which link users to their next destination at the end of your video) and Turnstile (which allows you to collect emails at any point before, during, or after your video), but what if you want to add a call-to-action at an opportune moment as [...]

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You might be familiar with Wistia's post-roll calls-to-action (which link users to their next destination at the end of your video) and Turnstile (which allows you to collect emails at any point before, during, or after your video), but what if you want to add a call-to-action at an opportune moment as your content plays? The Mid-Roll Links Lab lets you add clickable buttons anywhere during your video and link them to anything.

Use Mid-Roll Links to link people directly to buy a product you're talking about, to a map when you mention a location, to further documentation for a feature you just described, to a talking head's blog or website, or to Rick Roll someone who thinks they're about to view a valuable resource (just kidding, please don't do that).

Read on to learn how Thermo Fisher Scientific and CLiCKPLAY Continuing Education University are already using Mid-Roll Links.

Case Study 1: CLiCKPLAY CEU

CLiCKPLAY Continuing Education University offers online healthcare and human services video training. They started testing out Mid-Roll Links in a blog campaign highlighting their latest course on Smoking Cessation. Instead of making a standard preview of the course, they created four tobacco-wielding characters and used the Mid-Roll Links Lab in the video embedded blog post to draw people to vote for their favorite characters on their Facebook page.

We thought this was a cool use of the Lab because it turns the video into a more interactive experience and draws people further down the funnel without being too forceful.

Case Study 2: Thermo Fisher Scientific

Thermo Fisher Scientific's clever use of the Mid-Roll Links lab is a bit like a post-roll call-to-action, but it circumvents the dropoff that usually happens as a video ends (people tend to stop watching as a video wraps up, which might mean that they miss a post-roll call-to-action if the ending meanders). Technical content specialist Jared Snider explains:

"Many of our products are kits and reagents that allow scientists to analyze proteins from patient, animal and experimental samples. One of the most commonly used methods to detect specific proteins in samples is called Western blot analysis.

"It’s a multi-step method that can take 1-2 days to complete, and because it’s the bread-and-butter procedure for protein analysis in the majority of bioscience labs worldwide, we wanted to make sure that our customers know how to perform a Western blot. So I made a series of six videos that each focus on a single step in the Western blot process."

The Mid-Roll Links Lab is used on the individual video pages in the last ten seconds of each video, linking the viewer to the entire workflow page. This ensures that viewers who find a page for an individual step via search don't miss out on the full extent of resources available on the site and can easily view the videos for every step of the process.

Try it out!

Add Mid-Roll Links to your video and let us know how it goes for you!

Try out Wistia Labs and other powerful Wistia tools.

Sign up for a free account!

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]]> http://wistia.com/blog/mid-roll-links/feed/ 24 Pre-Production Tips for a Killer Company Culture Video http://wistia.com/blog/pre-production-killer-company-culture-video/ http://wistia.com/blog/pre-production-killer-company-culture-video/#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 21:15:50 +0000 Alyce http://wistia.com/blog/?p=126508054 Lauren Hill is Video Production Specialist at Volusion, an ecommerce platform that helps empower online business. Her background includes film, social media and marketing. She also really likes assorted jellybeans and balloon hats shaped like animals. You can check out more of her work on The Ecommerce Authority or send her a tweet at @lmhill. [...]

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Lauren Hill is Video Production Specialist at Volusion, an ecommerce platform that helps empower online business. Her background includes film, social media and marketing. She also really likes assorted jellybeans and balloon hats shaped like animals. You can check out more of her work on The Ecommerce Authority or send her a tweet at @lmhill.

I'm of the opinion that, regardless of your size, every business can benefit from a culture video. It's the fastest and easiest way for people to gain a sense of who you are, what you do and how you work as an organization.

I recently went through the process of creating a new culture video for the Volusion team and, as a result, gathered a few nuggets of wisdom that I believe are helpful for any company looking to foray into this kind of video. While making a culture video is no easy feat, there are a couple of things you can do to help make the process as smooth (and fun!) as possible.

Pre-Production and Planning

From an organizational standpoint, there are a number of key ideas that you'll want to define. These can vary by company, but the following are absolutely essential throughout this process:

Define your audience

Is this a recruiting video or an advertisement for your company? It goes without saying (but I’m going to say it anyway) that a potential employee is very different from a potential customer. Defining your audience will help to better determine your needs throughout production. Hopefully, by this stage you’ve already identified why you want to make a video that’s representative of your company’s culture (in case you haven’t, here’s a little help), so defining your audience should be relatively easy.

Based on the feedback I received from my teammates, it was clear that the Volusion culture video would be targeting prospective employees, so it was important that I find a way to visually articulate our core values. In a nutshell, we’re all about working hard, playing hard and kicking butt. Once I understood my audience and what they needed to see, it made the later steps of the process much easier.

It may seem like a small task, but understanding who you’ll be catering your video to will help to save you time and money at the finish line.

Construct a shot list

This is as simple as opening up an Excel document, creating three columns titled Scene/Shot Number, Location, and Description, and defining each of them. Here’s an example from my shot list used on the Volusion culture video shoot:

My shot list basically worked as a quick reference sheet where, in this example, I was reminded of important details that needed to be captured, such as the large grey couches, size of the room, and volume of employees caught on camera. The most important thing to have here is a strong description of what you’re trying to accomplish with each shot. Having this list fleshed out properly now will allow you to focus more on actual production later.

Here's a snapshot of how the shot mentioned above turned out:

Depending on how complicated or detailed your culture video is going to be, you might also consider adding the following information to your spreadsheet:

  • Shot type: wide shot, close up, point of view shot, etc.
  • Additional notes: props, makeup, special requirements
  • Time: "This will take approximately 40 minutes to complete"

It's as a simple as that! Lucky for us, we're not working on a Spielberg picture here, so it doesn't have to be overly complicated. You just need to make sure that you have your ideas down on paper so you'll stay organized throughout the production stage of your video project.

Create a production schedule

This one seems kind of obvious, right? But I cannot stress to you just how important it is have a shoot schedule in place. This nifty little document saved me about a million times from steering the production process off course.

It might seem very similar to the shot list, and you can always combine them if you'd prefer, but this document includes more details, such as scheduling and contact information. Creating a production schedule will allow you to manage time expectations, involved participants, and overall production workflow.

I'd suggest including the following items in your shoot schedule:

  • Location
  • Scene or shot
  • Equipment needed
  • People in shot
  • Contact information
  • Date and time of shoot

Because I know that seeing is believing, here's a glimpse at a portion of my production schedule for this shoot:

Something I tried to stay conscious of was my coworkers' schedules. It’s important to secure your talent’s time, no matter how small of a role they play in your shoot. If you’re working in a busy office that doesn’t revolve around video, chances are that everyone else is busy working on other important projects, so be flexible. Also, be sensitive to the fact that many people are initially a little uncomfortable on camera.

Well, there you have it! It’s important to remember that the pre-production process will scale with your video. If you have an overarching storyline that you’re trying to convey throughout your video, it might be necessary to create a storyboard or video treatment. But, in the end, it’s all really just about capturing those special moments that set you apart from the competition. If you get all of your thoughts and scheduling down on paper during this phase, you’ll be just fine.

And, in case you're interested, here’s the Volusion culture video that I worked on.

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]]> http://wistia.com/blog/pre-production-killer-company-culture-video/feed/ 3 Non Sequitur Fridays: Games With Friends http://wistia.com/blog/non-sequitur-fridays-games-with-friends/ http://wistia.com/blog/non-sequitur-fridays-games-with-friends/#comments Fri, 17 May 2013 20:34:21 +0000 Alyce http://wistia.com/blog/?p=126508037 This post is part of our Non Sequitur Fridays series, which will feature a different Wistia team member's take on a non-Wistia-related topic each week. It's like our "employee of the month" but less "of the month"-y. Liat Werber is a designer at Wistia. I am a huge proponent of playing games with friends. When it comes to socializing, [...]

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]]> This post is part of our Non Sequitur Fridays series, which will feature a different Wistia team member's take on a non-Wistia-related topic each week. It's like our "employee of the month" but less "of the month"-y. Liat Werber is a designer at Wistia.

I am a huge proponent of playing games with friends.

When it comes to socializing, there isn’t a lot of variation: crowded bars, snobby coffee shops, dank basements: from a distance, it all looks about the same. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy sitting and talking, but every so often, I like to take a more gameful approach to socializing.

Skeptics may tell you that playing a game will distract from enjoying the company of your friends. But here, I would like to argue that the perfect game requires enough mindfulness that it challenges you, but not so much that it prevents socializing mid-game.

Of course, the ideal talk-to-play ratio will depend on your mood and how social you are at base level; other things to take into account are the number of players, how competitive you’re feeling, and whether or not there will be drinking. With all that to consider, it can be difficult to decide what type of game to play, but luckily I have outlined the range of possibilities in a handy little graphic.

Set:

(2+ players) Set is just about the worst game out there for talking while playing. You may start off with the intention of conversation, but inevitably you’ll end up locked in silent tension, while all eyes dart back and forth between cards, keeping your mouth available to cry “SET” as soon as the opportunity arises. This is not to say you shouldn’t play, but be warned, this is not a casual game.

Deterministic games:

(Usually 2 players) (i.e. Chess and Go) Deterministic games are no time to shoot-the-shit. You can certainly talk as you play, but given the intensity of the game and the mental bandwidth it requires, the conversation tends to revolve around the game play and nothing else. My favorite in this category: Blokus.

Strategy Board Games:

(Usually 3-4 players) For me, this is the sweet spot. Just enough activity to fill in the lulls, but not enough to stifle natural conversation. With the added benefit that most of these games involve a compelling backstory and some arcane jargon that is perfect for alienating onlookers who aren’t privy to the game. Some favorites in this category are: Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne.

Playing Cards:

(2+ players) Playing cards are like your overachieving older brother. They are intelligent and charismatic, with the capacity for profound complexity or drunken stupidity when the occasion calls for it. Pretentious and casual, unscrupulous and wholesome -- their ability to fill any role makes playing cards a safe choice for whatever level of socializing you are looking for. My favorite game: good old fashioned Hearts.

Social Games:

(4+) (i.e. Pictionary and Taboo) True to their name, social games are excellent for socializing. Requiring more communication skill than strategic thinking and consisting mainly of yelling over each other, they are haven to the extrovert, and have been engineered to keep you engaged in social activity throughout. The best one: Salad Bowl (also known as Celebrity).

Drinking Games:

(The more the merrier) In every group, there’s at least one person who considers it his destiny to coerce his friends into drinking irresponsible amounts of alcohol (at Wistia, it’s Ben). If you are not that person, drinking games can still be a fun alternative to just plain drinking. My recommendation: 21 general.

The bottom line:

I enjoy myself most when I am challenged. I like to think that I surround myself with people who will challenge me freely and organically, and a good conversation can keep me just as engaged as any game. But still, there’s something to be said for structure. A game provides a balance between structure and freedom that is rare to come by in social situations, and whether it be a dignified chess match, a rollicking round of poker, or a huddled game of Magic the Gathering, a good game will always deliver a proper challenge.

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]]> http://wistia.com/blog/non-sequitur-fridays-games-with-friends/feed/ 4 6 Ways to Get Video Views That Matter http://wistia.com/blog/explainify-video-views-that-matter/ http://wistia.com/blog/explainify-video-views-that-matter/#comments Wed, 15 May 2013 22:30:05 +0000 Alyce http://wistia.com/blog/?p=126508021 Eric Hinson is the Founder and CEO of Explainify, which specializes in short, engaging, remarkable explainer videos for businesses. You can see a wide selection of videos they've produced in their portfolio. If you're interested in learning more about how Explainify helps companies tell their stories, sign up for the newsletter on their homepage. This [...]

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]]> Eric Hinson is the Founder and CEO of Explainify, which specializes in short, engaging, remarkable explainer videos for businesses. You can see a wide selection of videos they've produced in their portfolio. If you're interested in learning more about how Explainify helps companies tell their stories, sign up for the newsletter on their homepage.

This is guest post #4 in a series from Explainify:

  1. Five Benefits Of Telling Your Story With Explainer Videos
  2. How To Tell Your Company's Story in Under 90 Seconds
  3. The Best Story Always Wins: Prioritizing Storytelling To Generate Leads, Sales, And Lots Of Love

It's clearly important to get views on your videos, but with 72 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute, your chances of striking internet gold are pretty tiny. In a study by Slate, 0.3% of videos uploaded will ever see over 10,000 views, 3% will pass 1,000 views and 65% fail to achieve a mere 50 views. You might have better luck playing the lottery than being the next YouTube star.

To top it off, if viewers share your video on YouTube rather than your home page or sales page (somewhere you have the potential to convert them), you are seriously missing out on the equity that link provides. A YouTube video could be great, but it might make no sense outside of the page it was created for.

If you're creating the next "Charlie bit my finger" with no business benefit in mind, then sure, get as many views as possible. But businesses don't necessarily benefit from that - so we won't be discussing "going viral."

Holistic video marketing

Businesses are looking for a more holistic approach focused on the entire marketing funnel, not just attracting new leads. In fact, over 80% of corporate market value is now represented by your brand, relationships and other intangible assets.

This means having great video on your website as a part of the marketing mix: video that explains your business well and with which website visitors truly engage. This means having regular video content that can be sent out to an email list to announce product news, webinars, educational resources, how-to videos and even support videos to lessen the burden of your support personnel.

There's a critical distinction to make in order for people to be more successful with web video, to set the right goals, and to get started down the right path. You have to stop associating "video marketing" with YouTube and getting tons of views or going viral.

Here are some tips for getting your video in front of the right eyes.

1. Make videos for your core audience

If you’re talking in a way your viewer can’t easily grasp, you’re going to lose them. If you’re talking to the wrong person, you’re likely going to lose their attention. You have to know who your audience is before you even start to make the video. Once you know who you need to talk to, focus on your core audience.

A problem that people often have is that they make a video for “everyone.” You need to accept that not everyone is interested in what you’ve got and focus on your niche, which will be a much smaller audience. I know, it’s freaky, but you can get higher engagement from people who are interested than from a broad scope of everyone who probably isn’t.

Ideally, you’ll focus on your customers, people who’ve tried your product, your Facebook and Twitter followers, your email list contacts, and anyone in your circle of influence. If your immediate audience is interested, they’re more likely to share with their audience and connections. Your circle of influence grows as a result.

2. Post your video on your website

Posting your video on your website is a great way to get people to interact with your site! We recommend that the video be placed at the top of your homepage (above the fold), at least 640x360 pixels in size. You put a lot into your video, so why hide it on a subpage or as a tiny, hard-to-view video on a sidebar?

Video is the best way for people to quickly understand what you’re all about, so let them see it first. A recent client of ours had analytics indicating that their “About” page gets ten times more traffic than their homepage, so their video would probably be better suited on the “About” page than the home page. That part’s up to you.

Encourage sharing by enabling social share links within the embed code. Include a play button smack dab in the center and a short description (and possibly mention how short the video is). Minimize the amount of text on your homepage to draw the attention to your video and your main messaging. Use an enticing thumbnail.

End with a post-roll call-to-action. These are pretty amazing. Someone’s just invested 60 seconds of their life to hear your message, and now you have their undivided attention. Why not ask them a question or tell them to take a next step? You control the experience before, during, and after the video.

3. Blog about it

Write a blog post about your new video. Make sure your readers know right away that there’s a video in your blog post: don’t just post a link, and don’t make it too small. We recommend embedding the video at around 640x360 pixels at the very top of the post.

Don’t neglect having text content in the post. Text gives your viewers some context around the video and could entice them to watch it. Plus you could drive better search engine results to your blog and draw in some business leads.

End with a call to action. Encourage others to share the content, like you on Facebook, sign up or whatever else you want. Don’t miss out on this opportunity.

4. Email it out

This is a great time to reintroduce yourself to your clients/customers/leads through your new video! Send out an email promoting the video, encouraging viewership and urging your loyal client base to share it through their different social channels.

We recommend you make the video the focus of the email so your reader is more likely to click play. Once again, choose an engaging thumbnail and include a play button.

Adding video to your email can also be a great way to increase click-through rates and engagement.

5. Find influencers

Simply making a video and praying it will be successful should not be a strategy or objective. You want to identify with influencers who will love your video! This means that you don’t necessarily need to get it out to millions of people, but to key influencers who will get it out to their group, and so on -- views that matter to the success of your business.

Make sure that you choose your influencer category accordingly. For example, if you’re a bakery you’d want to get in touch with bloggers that write about food and desserts on board to seed your video. They can create content around your video and share with their large follower base, who will then share with theirs.

Influencers, often successful bloggers, get a ton of inquiries about this, so you need to step up your game a bit. Don’t use impersonal form emails, and try to build a relationship before you ask for something big. Consider developing that relationship via Twitter or Facebook. Remember, the question they’re asking themselves is, “How can my readers benefit from this?” so provide some value in return.

6. Share your video on social media

Be strategic and work hard to get your video seen! Think of places where your audience hangs out on the web: other blogs, forums, Facebook groups, websites, etc. Seek them out and connect with people where they live. Be authentic and conversational - don’t use business jargon. People will listen and believe in what you do if you show them your passion.

Make sure you keep them talking about your video, campaign or business. Answer questions that come up in the comments and stay engaged long after the video has been released.

Resources:

 

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]]> http://wistia.com/blog/explainify-video-views-that-matter/feed/ 4 Non Sequitur Fridays: Hard Drive Fever http://wistia.com/blog/non-sequitur-fridays-hard-drive-fever/ http://wistia.com/blog/non-sequitur-fridays-hard-drive-fever/#comments Fri, 10 May 2013 18:04:58 +0000 Chris L. http://wistia.com/blog/?p=126507995 This post is part of our Non Sequitur Fridays series, which will feature a different Wistia team member's take on a non-Wistia-related topic each week. It's like our "employee of the month" but less "of the month"-y. Chris Lavigne is video producer at Wistia. Hi, I'm Chris. And I have a lot of hard drives. I have an unhealthy [...]

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]]> This post is part of our Non Sequitur Fridays series, which will feature a different Wistia team member's take on a non-Wistia-related topic each week. It's like our "employee of the month" but less "of the month"-y. Chris Lavigne is video producer at Wistia.

Hi, I'm Chris. And I have a lot of hard drives.

I have an unhealthy obsession with storing every piece of my digital life. Videos, photos, documents, downloads, funny iChat screenshots, etc. The byproduct of that obsession is this.

Yup, those are my drives. And there's Lenny for scale.

But I swear, it's not my fault!

It's video's fault. Honest! As a video producer, I'm working with large file sizes just about every day. The raw footage that comes out of my Canon 5D is compressed to h.264, which keeps file sizes down a bit, but my Final Cut Pro projects... that's a different story. I transcode my material to ProRes 422 (LT), which bumps the file size by almost triple. Don't even get me started on how large RED footage is. In fact, that was one of the contributing factors to why I unloaded my RED Scarlet-X just months after I bought it!

The more footage I shoot, the more raw footage I need to store. The more FCP projects I need to keep. The more drives I need to buy. It's a vicious cycle... but I kind of love it. More on that later.

What good are drives without a backup plan?

My backup regiment consists of a mixture of Time Machine, Backblaze, and "A/B" drives. Let me explain.

I use Time Machine to back up everything on my laptop. I have a 12 TB Network Attached Storage device in my basement that automatically backs up my computer whenever I am hardwired to the internet. I exclude anything that may be volatile or that is backed up in another place (all system files outside of my home folder, transcoded media, raw footage, email).

I use a combination of Time Machine and Backblaze to back up my Mac Mini. I have a 6 TB RAID connected to my Mini that contains my managed Final Cut Pro projects, photos, iTunes library, and older archived documents. Although the initial backup is painfully slow, Backblaze is a great (and reasonably priced) option for unlimited backup.

I use A/B external hard drives to back up my raw footage. After a shoot, I'll take my SD cards and copy all of my files to 2 Western Digital 3TB external hard drives. I have an "A" drive and a duplicated "B" drive. When these drives fill up, I store the A drive at my house and take the B drive to my parents house (in case anything catastrophic were to happen here).

The race to a Petabyte

Transferring footage and watching files back up has become somewhat therapeutic to me. Knowing that my footage is going to a better, backed-up place makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. And it’s pretty fun to watch my hard drive collection grow! In college, my good friend Chip and I had a race to a terabyte. He won. But now, it’s a race to a petabyte... and I’ll be damned if I lose this one.

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]]> http://wistia.com/blog/non-sequitur-fridays-hard-drive-fever/feed/ 5 Learning Center: Understanding Analytics http://wistia.com/blog/learning-center-understanding-analytics/ http://wistia.com/blog/learning-center-understanding-analytics/#comments Tue, 07 May 2013 21:25:17 +0000 Alyce http://wistia.com/blog/?p=126507981 We just added "Understanding Analytics" to the Wistia Learning Center: Learning Center: Understanding Analytics Being able to read your analytics will help you understand how your video is performing, when it needs work, and when it's doing well so you can better understand what works with your audience. Engagement Graphs Engagement graphs represent how people [...]

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We just added "Understanding Analytics" to the Wistia Learning Center:

Being able to read your analytics will help you understand how your video is performing, when it needs work, and when it's doing well so you can better understand what works with your audience.

Engagement Graphs

Engagement graphs represent how people are watching your video over time. Web video viewers tend to skip the boring stuff and re-watch the parts that are interesting or confusing, so spotting the trends in your graph can be useful.

If the graph is going down, you're losing attention. If it's flat, people are continuing to watch. If there's a bump, they're rewatching. And finally, if there's sharp drop off, you know a lot of people turned off the video quickly. We recommend watching your video alongside the engagement graph to understand what it really means.

Video Play Rate

If you can't get people to click play, then no one's going to watch your video or connect with your message. Key factors that affect play rate include thumbnail, the size of the embed, and how it's placed on the page.

Watch the video in the Wistia Learning Center!

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]]> http://wistia.com/blog/learning-center-understanding-analytics/feed/ 0 Non Sequitur Fridays: Buying Headphones for Work http://wistia.com/blog/headphones-for-work/ http://wistia.com/blog/headphones-for-work/#comments Fri, 03 May 2013 18:53:44 +0000 Robby http://wistia.com/blog/?p=126507957 This post is part of our Non Sequitur Fridays series, which will feature a different Wistia team member's take on a non-Wistia-related topic each week. It's like our "employee of the month" but less "of the month"-y. Robby Grossman is an engineer at Wistia. A couple years ago, I found myself searching for a pair of office headphones. Unable [...]

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]]> This post is part of our Non Sequitur Fridays series, which will feature a different Wistia team member's take on a non-Wistia-related topic each week. It's like our "employee of the month" but less "of the month"-y. Robby Grossman is an engineer at Wistia.

A couple years ago, I found myself searching for a pair of office headphones. Unable to find a local retailer with demos of the models I was interested in, I ordered a half dozen pairs, compared them, and returned all but the keeper. Here are my reviews of each model in case anybody finds themselves on a similar search and wants to expend less effort.

Grado SR-60 ($74)

The Grado SR-60s came to me highly recommended from the head-fi.org forums, but my experience with them was less than flattering. The open design leaks a lot of sound, which is particularly unfortunate in an office where there's often chatter competing for your attention. Sonically speaking, they have a very airy quality to them. It's not a big deal if you're listening to hip-hop, heavy rock or other bass-heavy material, but if you listen to lighter acoustic tunes, a lot of the detail gets washed out. To their credit, they were very comfortable; I wore them for hours and forgot they were on my head.

Sennheiser HD 280 Pro ($99.95)

The Sennheiser HD 280 Pros were another well-reviewed value headphone that I wanted to try. I found them preferable to the Grados as work headphones because they have better noise isolation. They also have a more balanced sound than the Grados, with a mid-high range that's not overwhelming; however, they are a bit dry sounding. High marks for sonic fidelity, but if you appreciate warmth in your music, these are not for you. A dealbreaker for me was the pressure they put on my ears while wearing them; they became uncomfortable after 60 to 90 minutes of use.

Bose QuietComfort 3 ($349)

The first headphone I tried with active noise cancellation, the Bose Quiet Comfort 3 delivers on its name. Assessing purely by a standard of noise reduction, the Bose are the winner of the bunch, largely because they seal nicely around the ear and partly because the active noise cancellation circuitry helps to eliminate droning noise from the background. An important point on active noise cancellation, however, is that it only reduces low frequencies -- think airplane motors, construction equipment, air conditioners, etc. It's ineffective for silencing nearby chit chat, though it does take a little bit of bass out of people's voices.

The sound quality was good, but not quite up to expectation given the price point. The trebles and highs were slightly unbalanced, noticeable only on minimally-compressed acoustic recordings (Elliott Smith's Roman Candle and Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations). The bass was impressive for a noise-canceling headphone. Active noise cancellation requires manufacturers to do aggressive EQing to get bass to come through because it is those bass frequencies that they are canceling out to block exterior noise; Bose has done an admirable job with this.

A fatal flaw for those who travel for work: the QC 3 uses a proprietary battery, and it cannot be used (even without noise cancellation) when the battery is dead. For anybody who travels, I'd recommend checking out the QC 15, which uses AAA batteries.

Monoprice Active Noise Canceling Headphones #10010 ($101.33)

Monoprice is geek-famous for building high quality knockoffs of expensive products. Perhaps best known for their $4 versions of $30 Apple cables, they've expanded over the years to build everything from USB hubs to high-end projection screens. Their latest offering is an active noise canceling headphone, and for the price, they deliver a winner.

First, the bad: if sonic fidelity is critically important, these headphones are not for you. They're lacking in the mid-high range, creating a bit of a hollow sound and losing nuance and detail in acoustic recordings. On the plus side, the noise isolating over-ear seal is snug but comfortable, and the active noise cancellation is excellent; it's very close to the Bose Quiet Comforts. It features a built-in microphone so it can function as a complete headset. It uses a AAA battery for noise cancellation, but can be used in passive mode without it, so you're never unable to listen to your music. All in all, a great budget buy for those who prioritize distraction-free listening over high sound quality.

Sennheiser PXC 450 ($349.95)

The Sennheiser PXC 450 is a dreamy pair of cans. The noise cancellation is very close to the Bose QC 3, and the sound quality is excellent. They're the most durable headphone I've ever held: beefy plastic, nothing flimsy, even the cord was noticably thicker and better-built than the others with well-engineered right-angle stress reliefs to avoid strain. It also boasts a "Talk Thru" feature that lets you pass outside noise in without taking the headphones off (say, if someone comes by your desk to ask a question). Like the Monoprice headphones, the PXC 450 uses a AAA battery, and features a bypass mode you can use when the battery dies, so you're not stuck on a flight with no way to enjoy your music. If that's not enough to ice the cake, these were the most comfortable headphones of any that I tried.

The only cautionary note I provide is that these headphones are huge, by far the biggest I've ever worn. They fold flat for travel but they are enormous on your head, bigger than winter ear muffs. I didn't test it, but I imagine it'd be very difficult to sleep while wearing these on an airplane.

Sennheiser MM 550 ($299.99)

The Sennheiser MM 550 pick up where the PXC 450 left off, and make a series of sacrifices for a different kind of user. In exchange for a little bit of sound quality (and particularly, bass presence) and a hair of noise cancellation, you get a smaller set of headphones that's easier to travel with, a built-in microphone for complete headset functionality, and Bluetooth audio support for completely wireless listening. A cable is provided for use with devices that don't support Bluetooth audio, or for people who prefer the sonic fidelity of a wired connection. One downside to using these in Bluetooth mode is that the A2DP Bluetooth protocol applies heavy compression, which is particularly noticeable on the high end of the EQ range. It will be most audible on drums and white noise, but close listeners will find it also affects high harmonic frequencies.

Sennheiser MM 550-X ($343.38-$499, changes wildly)

I wasn't able to try the newer MM 550-X model because it wasn't available at the time of my trials, but they are worth mentioning because they are exactly the same as the aforementioned MM-550, except that they support the newer APT-X Bluetooth audio codec, which provides an order of magnitude higher audio bitrate, which should help quite a bit with the audio compression artifacts when listening wirelessly.

What Did I Go With?

I opted for the Sennheiser MM 550, and I bought an extra battery ($49.95) for it so that I could use noise canceling with one while the other charges. It was a difficult decision to give up the sound quality of the PXC 450, but the Bluetooth functionality won me over.

At work I frequently walk around near my desk to stretch my legs; at home I have a treadmill desk on which I walk while working. Not having to worry about a cable in these situations is a nice convenience. I also travel by air several times per year, and the more compact form factor of the MM 550 is great when flying. If I sat at my desk all day and didn't travel much, I'd have opted for the PXC 450.

If I were buying these today, I would spend the extra $43 and buy the MM 550-X with APT-X support.

Are High Quality Headphones Worth the Money?

Big purchases are always personal decisions, but one of the objective approaches I take with them is to keep the amortized cost in mind. For example, a $2000 laptop that lasts me three years costs me about $0.20 per hour of use.

I use these headphones every weekday for a few hours and I expect them to last five years or more, which gives me an amortized cost of less than $0.06 per hour. I think that's a steal.

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]]> http://wistia.com/blog/headphones-for-work/feed/ 9 Non Sequitur Friday: Growing Up a Flipping Gypsy http://wistia.com/blog/non-sequitur-friday-growing-up-flipping-gypsy/ http://wistia.com/blog/non-sequitur-friday-growing-up-flipping-gypsy/#comments Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:55:57 +0000 Laura http://wistia.com/blog/?p=126507916 This post is part of our Non Sequitur Fridays series, which will feature a different Wistia team member's take on a non-Wistia-related topic each week. It's like our "employee of the month" but less "of the month"-y. Laura Hokenson is office manager at Wistia. So, here's the thing. Until recently, I assumed I had a rather normal upbringing. Truly [...]

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]]> This post is part of our Non Sequitur Fridays series, which will feature a different Wistia team member's take on a non-Wistia-related topic each week. It's like our "employee of the month" but less "of the month"-y. Laura Hokenson is office manager at Wistia.

So, here's the thing. Until recently, I assumed I had a rather normal upbringing. Truly American, I rode a Huffy bike, I had braces, I begrudgingly participated in what my mother termed "educational enrichment activities," I scaled closets hunting for Christmas presents. I'll concede the absence of television in my house made me a minority. And I'm sure the fact that I wore boy's elastic waist denim until I was 15 set me apart from my glittery bell-bottomed peers.

But I never paid any real mind to any stark differences between my formative years and those of others. Until I went to college. Yes, higher education is supposed to be this eye-opening, world-widening experience of meeting new people and doing new things—but I was thrown. I was shocked to meet people who had lived in the same house for the entirety of their lives, who didn’t understand the terms "easement" or "escrow," or who had never held a mallet before. And they were just as shocked by me and my stories.

Before I left for college, my mother and brother and I moved more than a dozen times. I wasn't an army brat, and we weren't (as far as I know) a part of the Witness Protection Program. It was just something we did.

Long before HGTV and Pinterest and virtual room planners and before "flipping" ever was a "thing," there was my mother, armed with paint chips and measuring tape, herding us from house to house. We bought, we planned, we worked, we sold, we drove, we packed, we painted, we unpacked, and more again (my mother achieving all of this whilst wearing high heels).

It wasn't an automated process, we spent more time living at certain places than others, and sometimes we had to trade the furniture and treasures from one house to the next (but never, ever throwing out the Christmas tree decorations!).

It was fun and brutally exhausting and obviously exponentially more whimsical than home buying will ever be for me as an adult. Without fail, we would always end up at the "new" old house soon after the closing, after dark – tired from school and pesky extracurriculars, watching her pace the unfinished floors in her stilettos, gesturing wildly and sticking Post-its with indecipherable handwriting on the walls. We lived and breathed by her imagination.

On Larch Road, we had a dining room ceiling that was covered entirely with glitter. On Payer Lane, my mother painted the door hot pink on her birthday (and never changed it back). On Elm Street, our driveway was made of crushed seashells (which sounds very lovely and romantic until you have to run out for milk in the middle of the night and can't find your shoes).

On Oceanside, we lived in a pillow fort for a week before the furniture arrived. On Green Street, we had a roof deck that my boyfriend insisted on sleeping on anytime he visited. On Old Oaken Bucket (yes, its real name) we threw an "Ugly House Party" before the renovations began. Everyone sat on the floor with pizza and drew on the walls, playing giant tic-tac-toe and tracing our deformed outlines against the rooster-themed wallpaper.

But it wasn’t all happily ever after. We had mold. We had mildew. We had mice. My mother spent an entire year on Chippawanoxet Road as an insomniac, delusional from the pitter-pattering of the raccoons in the attic. She threatened to buy a gun. We were constantly locking ourselves out, crossing electrical wires and inhaling too many paint fumes.

I tired of it and began inviting myself to friends' houses to steep in jealousy over their stable histories, to see their growth charts engraved in door frames, their holiday pictures all taken on the brick steps of their 3-bed, 2.5-bath Colonials. I contemplated putting up a classified ad ("Cleanly & smart 10th grader seeks normal family for general rearing, room & board").

Luckily, I grew out of my teenage contempt (and my Doc Martens, which made it oh-so-easy to stomp up the stairs, usually accompanied by a scream of "ONLY ALANIS UNDERSTANDS ME") and learned to embrace the crazy. I recovered from my contempt for those who didn't understand the difference between coniferous and deciduous woods. I even fell for someone who had never used a stud-finder ("Why do you need that when you have me?" Oh boy.)

And now, what of it? Now I get to play with power tools at will and throw cupcakes and call it work. Mom is so proud.

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]]> http://wistia.com/blog/non-sequitur-friday-growing-up-flipping-gypsy/feed/ 7 Building the Wistia Labs Framework http://wistia.com/blog/building-wistia-labs-framework/ http://wistia.com/blog/building-wistia-labs-framework/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:41:55 +0000 Max Schnur http://wistia.com/blog/?p=126507884 We recently explained how we built Wistia Labs with an all-hands-on-deck hackathon called Labstock. Working on Labs this way wouldn't have been possible without a lot of background preparation beforehand. The Old Wistia Labs If you're an old-school Wistia follower, you might remember the original Wistia Labs, which handled things like the Social Bar. Back [...]

The post Building the Wistia Labs Framework appeared first on Wistia at Work.

]]> We recently explained how we built Wistia Labs with an all-hands-on-deck hackathon called Labstock. Working on Labs this way wouldn't have been possible without a lot of background preparation beforehand.

The Old Wistia Labs

If you're an old-school Wistia follower, you might remember the original Wistia Labs, which handled things like the Social Bar.

Back then, we didn't have an organized way to add things to embed codes, so we just appended Javascript and HTML specific to the situation. It wasn't a very cross-compatible approach -- Labs worked with one type of embed code, they frequently conflicted with existing frameworks like jQuery, and we couldn’t use them in any place where Javascript wasn’t allowed.

After we built the SuperEmbed Builder, we dispensed with Labs because we were able to perfect the functionality they provided and work it directly into the product.

The Product Dilemma

Even though universally appealing functionality like Calls to Action and the Social Bar had been rolled into the SuperEmbed Builder, people continued asking for things that we didn't want to put into the product right away, or perhaps ever (for the most niche requests). We also wanted a place where we could experiment with functionality that might not yet be compatible across all of our officially supported browsers.

Twitter Lab

With a new Player API and embed codes at our disposal, we decided that we wanted to do a Twitter Follow Lab (to insert Twitter Follow buttons into videos), but we couldn't do it the same way we'd done Labs in the past.

All of our previous Labs depended on injecting Javascript, but our Twitter card is just an iframe, so you can only give it an iframe source, not put scripts inside of it.

The Plugin API

Our new embed codes consisted of a video ID plus a hash of options for that embed. Wouldn't it be cool if we could just list the Labs we were using directly in the embed code and have it work on iframes without any external scripts?

The first thing we developed was a way to load and execute plugin scripts in the right context, called the Plugin API. To do that securely in production, we had to migrate our iframe embed code sources from fast.wistia.com to fast.wistia.net (why?). To make it easy to add HTML around the video, we enabled "the grid" for all embed codes.

The Lab Tools Library

The Twitter Lab didn't use any kind of organized framework. It was originally just some regular expression parsing and jQuery bindings. I wrote a library called “labtools.js” to let us manipulate any type of Wistia embed code. It still used regular expressions and jQuery, but also leaned on our oEmbed endpoint. Now, it didn't matter what kind of embed code people were giving us: we could reliably inject Labs into them.

A lot of work went into Lab Tools, based on a combination of our Player API and jQuery, before the Twitter Lab, but it wasn't perfect - the scope was pretty small. In preparation for Labstock, we tried to generalize the structure of a Lab. Using the Twitter Lab’s design as inspiration, we created a blank Lab that accepted an embed code, added some dummy options, and previewed the new embed code.

That sounds easy, but existing frameworks like jQuery complicate matters. They can inject HTML or scripts, but when you combine external and inline script tags, the order in which they are executed isn't reliable.

When you preview an embed code in a Lab, we're taking the embed code that we output and displaying it both in the text area and on the page. That sounds easy, but existing frameworks like jQuery complicate matters. They can inject HTML or scripts, but when you combine external and inline script tags, the order in which they are executed isn't reliable. We had to write our own Javascript methods to inject the HTML and execute the Javascript in the proper order.

Thanks to Lab Tools, when we were developing Labs, we were getting a real-time preview on the Lab page if we made a change to the plugin script. However, in some Labs, refreshing the embed code for every change is a terrible experience. For those, we needed a solution that was more precise. The Presentation Sync Lab, for instance, created its own public Javascript interface and used an API embed for its preview. Instead of re-embedding for every change, we could tell it to add or remove specific slides.

We also took elements of the Wistia app, like jamjars and fonts, and applied them to everything in a standard framework. This gave Labs a lot of structure and unified the way they looked.

Snags

Lab Tools and the Plugin API were buggy to start. Most of us didn’t have many problems, but I was focused mostly on fixing the tools instead of helping with the development of individual Labs. Still, it’s good that we caught and crushed the bugs before release, and Labstock allowed us to find the issues very quickly.

Documentation could have been better: there were some Javascript functions that almost everyone needed, but aren’t part of the Player API and aren’t publicly documented. That was actually by design, but methods to inject dynamic CSS and scripts, for example, are so useful that we will likely make them public soon.

Poor planning for fully client-side pages was also an issue. To start out, if we wanted to update the header or footer, we had to make the change by hand on every single Lab page. This problem became obvious when we learned the Twitter Follow Lab’s original style was not the final design, and that all Lab pages would be getting both a header and subheader. We solved this with a Ruby script that injects the header into the proper location, but it would have been nice to have that in mind from the start.

Conclusions

Labstock showed us how much we could get done as a company in a short period of focused effort. While we were able to accomplish our basic goals, we learned what we could do better next time: document the most useful methods and plan a little further ahead.

It had side benefits, too. Everyone who created a Lab became familiar with the Player API and Plugin API, which makes their jobs that much easier on a daily basis. And since our customers are using these same APIs, we saw firsthand what we need to do to improve them.

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