Brightcove vs. Riverside.fm

It works very nicely for our company site because it can easily and seamlessly embed into the site and email HTML pages. It also has picture in picture, sharing, closed captioning (CC) as basic functions. It will also show the time of the video. Because these are short-term-use videos or might get updated frequently and also are just targeting a specific audience, being able to hide or not able to show the number of views or date published (unlike YouTube) actually helps us.

Incentivized

While Riverside.fm is good for creating videos, it's less well-positioned to create audio-only shows.

Incentivized

• Ability to easily output a JSON response for requested video data. This makes it easy to work with Brightcove as partner.
• The read APIs are very flexible and can the output can be easily customized using cgi args. This provides great customization of the output and sorting and filtering mechanisms to find the videos you're looking for.
• The ability to add captions to videos is good, especially with the regulations requiring video captioning. DFXP support works great as long as the player is given the exact XML format it is looking for.

• very easy to use
• great to have all video files in one location automatically
• the backup audio files are perfect to download and make sure all files are synced up for editing
• it's easy to get on as a producer and be there to help everyone else who is recording without being recorded myself.

Incentivized

• Online support could be more accessible to the layman (non-techy users can get a bit lost in the help resource library)
• Multiple user logins for the account (with different levels of access) would be useful - we work with many off-site videographers and editors
• The ability to link to an individual video within a player on our website would be great.

• Unable to upload multiple files at once
• For the beginner, while the layout looks good it is somewhat opaque as to how to get started
• Free account features an immovable tile asking for $15/month.

Incentivized

It took quite some time to upload and organize our video library. The amount of time it would require to relocate all this information outweighs any negative aspect I personally have with the experience. They have been pretty good to work with and from speaking with my Brightcove rep, I know some of the issues I have listed are currently being addressed and tested for future releases.

Very usable! I don't see any major flaws

There are a couple of small technical issues that can effect the quality of the videos produced that is keeping me from giving it a 10. It is far superior to any other tool to get a high quality video recording with multiple people over the internet, so it is hands down the best tool I have found for this use case, but I know it can be better.

Incentivized

We are notified often of downtime, and I have not heard from a support rep for over a year. It really makes it hard to learn what new things are coming out and how we can take our video to the next level when there is no contact from the team on a regular cadence.

Incentivized

I have not needed to use the Riverside.fm support that much, which in itself is a good sign of how good their product is, but when I have had to use their support it was prompt, and helpful, and the people were very kind. I am glad to know there is someone there to help quickly if I am having a problem.

Incentivized

Marketing department favors it because EVERYONE uses YouTube. Overall, YouTube offers decent features and functionality. But Brightcove offers the ability to brand and style players, and control what our users see (and so much more) and YouTube does not. For instance, on YouTube, users are presented with other videos (which could contain competitor videos).

Riverside is far better than trying to record on Zoom or Skype because on both of those platforms you are recording others' videos from over the internet, so you get any glitches that come from inconsistent connections that either you or your guest has. Riverside records locally and then uploads separately, so everyone's video quality is much greater.

Incentivized

• Again, there has been a huge cost savings which significantly improved our ROI
• There has also been less time spent on learning new technologies and training additional staff on maintaining a video server.
• Less time spent on the previous two points has allowed me to focus on other areas within the department that needed improvement.

• Since I need their platform, which again is actually pretty good, I had to waste money to sign up again, so that I had a workable password.
• from experience, wasted weeks of going back and forth with their support team - throwing off my podcast schedule.