Niche Private Media Channel (discontinued) vs. Panopto

I'm not sure what the average user is looking for, but I can imagine a number of scenarios for which the platform offers a very flexible hosting service for a variety of users, with plenty of bells and whistles, for a reasonable costs that can protect content while offering a good interface between the publisher and their viewers.

The more I used it, the more I appreciated its ease of use. If I ever ran into a situation that I felt might be a learning opportunity at some point in the future, I would simply log in, record a session, and only allow access if/when it was appropriate later. Since the more recent versions also work on mobile phones, there really wasn't a time when I couldn't record something to review or present later. During covid, teachers didn't have access to their normal equipment, and students weren't always able to get access to a robust recording setup to do their recordings. Some students actually did recordings of presentations in their cars, or in the stairwells. Portability is powerful. I think that we all run into situations where our presentation didn't go quite as well as we had intended. As Panopto grew, they focused more on allowing the user to control their content and perform some basic (I would argue more than basic) editing, which made actions like awkward pauses easy to "fix" as you could create smooth, blended transitions easily.

Incentivized

• Niche customer support is second to none. They are always there when we need help
• The high quality video streaming is accessable world wide without the need to download software. Which is very important in our industry.
• The ability to combine video with attachments and secure encryption sets Niche apart.

• It captures multiple streams simultaneous (video, desktop, audio only etc) and is pretty smart when it comes to working with imported PowerPoint Decks.
• The end product can easily be shared in multiple formats and it has pretty rich content editing abilities for doing basic post-production clean up.
• They have recently introduced an in-line quizzing feature which can integrate with your LMS's Gradebook.
• The Analytics feature is very strong - we can get student level analytics when we integrate/embed the videos into our LMS.

Incentivized

• To get time stamps right in viewership analytics, time stamps appear to be delayed by 6 hours (I am -6 hours from UTC)
• Improve comments section to reflect actual dates, it says "about a year ago" when it is November 2015 (last month).

Incentivized

• Captions are always a problem for us. We would like to caption all our videos and currently, the automatic captioning is not very good.
• We would like integration with our VLE grade book to allow seamless submission and grading for students.

Incentivized

We really like the service

Because 10 is the best.

Needs some work, but I'm sure improvements will come over time

Incentivized

Immediate response from a knowledgeable rep - not a tier 1 automaton reading a script. I can, and have, reached them at all hours by phone, by chat, or by email. Responses are under 24 hours and frequently less than 1. And stuff gets DONE! I see things I request in almost every monthly release.

Panopto has been quick to answer any questions, but their rollouts and updates have caused issues where we felt a little blindsided by unexpected changes. Their development cycle is slow and often their promises for future updates have been extremely slow or never come.

Incentivized

It was direct and personal, aimed at solving the immediate task at hand while instructing me how the channel as a whole works in the process.

No, the support at Niche Video Media was very helpful during set up.

I looked at Wistia. I did not like that there was no way to call them. They answered all my questions via email and several times didn't even answer the question that I asked in the email. I had to write 3 times to try and get an answer 1 question. There was not a payment interface that worked with their hosting. I would have had to go to another company. Ruduzku: they appeared to have too much of their own branding on the course pages. Other companies: took a percentage of video sales and appeared to do marketing or sent my customers to other competitors. I did not need anyone to do my marketing. I read a ton of reviews for other companies. I picked Niche Video based on a single comment from a user who said they used it at their community college. That seemed to be a model that would work well for what I wanted to do. Then I approached them and had a demo and again I saw they actually answered their phones

Panopto has the best captioning features that I've seen for a video repository. This enables us to caption videos quickly and efficiently. It also has tags and chaptering which makes viewing videos easier. We can also link videos inside Panopto to outside entities without needing them to have a Panopto account. Panopto works best if you have a LOT of video content, but if you only have some or don't care about organization, SharePoint (or Microsoft Stream) might be a cheaper/more efficient option.

Incentivized

• Our impact is operational efficiency/employee efficiency. We don't need to upload a video in Dropbox and download and review for each person, and approve, follow-up on 100+ emails. This channel helps to keep all the internal communications review process in one place.
• Obviously, The channel help us with the security risk, we can't afford to let the video go out of the channel while it is in progress.

• During the pandemic, Panopto allows our faculty to quickly stage up lectures that were normally delivered in person, and these recordings reached thousands of students who could not come to campus for class.
• Both faculty and student report high satisfaction with the flexibility and convenience of having Panopto video content available in a course to watch and rewatch for learner reinforcement.
• Panopto's adaptable media distribution reduced impact on student technology and internet speeds when they might not have access to broadband connections, allowing them to continue to access essential course materials.
• Speech to text capabilities. increase accessibility compliance of media content.
• Archiving training materials in Panopto allows faculty, staff, TAs, and students to easily find recordings for reference.

Incentivized