Ensemble Video vs. PlayPlay

One of the main reasons we were drawn to Ensemble Video was it's emphasis for supporting multimedia in higher learning environments. Unlimited user accounts, security features and the ease of use has made Ensemble Video an effective solution. Prior to Ensemble Video we tested free sites like YouTube and Vimeo. However they didn't have the privacy settings we needed, especially for our user contributed content, and things were not in a centralized location. This made it more difficult to support and troubleshoot with our students.

For any company that wants to use more video in their content and marketing overall, PlayPlay is your best bet. Anyone can make a video--no expertise required. Honestly, it's really fun to do, and you feel like a creative genius afterward! If you are making long-form videos or need something for a TV commercial, PlayPlay doesn't make sense. But you can absolutely take snippets from other video projects and break them into smaller videos. That's what we love to do. Also, they just launched a podcast tool to help podcasters use video to promote their episodes.

• Ensemble is a really excellent video content management solution for organisations that want to deploy onsite, enjoy a perpetual license and all the features found in competitive products costing many times more.
• Ensemble does not try to be a monolithic application. Instead it leverages Sorenson Squeeze transcoder for ingest and Wowza's streaming media engine for playout. So it's pretty lightweight and is focused on content management tasks.

• Very simple-to-use but super professional looking video templates
• Intuitive platform for creating a story with video
• One-click resizing for social formats
• Amazing customer success--if you need it--offering recommendations to make your video look amazing
• Access to Getty Premier for video and image stock

• There is one issue where sometimes the 'Add' button to add new media disappears, typically once per week. The workaround is to restart the physical server. While restarting the server each week can be a good thing, it would be nice not to have to keep a reminder on my calendar.

• Product is very easy to use; I got a little stuck on changing font colors with text
• Automatic subtitling is amazing, but you do need to adjust the words per screen

The team at Ensemble Video is dedicated to supporting us and they offer prompt and reliable services.

Our campus has been using Ensemble Video since 2008. At the time we were unaware of Panopto or Kaltura, or other services. That said, I'm glad we picked Ensemble Video. Their team has been very supportive of us every step of the way. I'm not saying the other services would not be effective for our campus, but from what I've seen of those other services Ensemble best suits our needs and workflows.

• ROI is sometimes tricky because systems, once implemented, are never welcomed by end users and thus, the ROI originally foreseen was more idealistic than real. Ensemble Video is almost universally well received by end users and thus, there is a real ROI that mostly relates to institutional effectiveness.

• Huge ROI--we're saving thousands on editing costs
• It's another way to repurpose content
• Our staff has loved using the product--also less work for them