Kaltura VPaaS Media Services (VOD, Live, Real-time, Media Analytics)

My main use case for Kaltura  involves video editing, captioning, and creating learning experiences. I often use Kaltura  to edit and enhance captions in online academic courses for students who are provided with lectures.

One of the best features Kaltura offers is the ability to caption content with machine captioning and then manually edit the captions. The ability to create hotspots with questions is also a great engagement feature.

The hotspots with questions help with engagement in academic courses, especially when I don't have time to build out expansive interactives, as I can embed questions as Easter eggs into lectures so that I know students are engaging. I can actually see where they're connecting, which provides nice stopping points in the middle of longer lectures.

Kaltura has positively impacted my organization as it has been the tool that my organization has continued to use since I arrived. The ability to request human captioning has helped with accessibility compliance when machine captioning is not sufficient. Additionally, the ability for students, professors, and our creative team to record content has made it a very accessible tool embedded in all Canvas courses.

I think Kaltura could be improved by providing clearer instructions or tools to record for the average person who has no idea what technology is. It is pretty intuitive if you work in that field daily, but it can be confusing if it is foreign to you.

I rate Kaltura an eight because while it does a lot, it is not 100% perfect. There are certainly areas for improvement, such as with the hotspots or better integration into an LMS  through LTI. I appreciate the tool but believe it could be better, which is why I don't rate it a ten, as I feel continuous improvement is a goal.

I have been working in my current field for ten years.

Kaltura is stable.

Kaltura is very scalable as long as the admins are aware of how to best host the data and provide the necessary training material.

I have not utilized customer support personally, but I believe those on my team who have had good experiences with the support team. I would recommend referencing the knowledge articles and the available database for those looking into using Kaltura.

I did not previously use a different solution.

I have no experience with pricing, setup costs, or licensing since I'm not involved on the admin side of things.

I was not part of the conversation for selecting Kaltura, as it was already the adopted program by the time I joined the organization.

I have no metrics and am unsure of the investment, but due to its ease of use, integration, and accessibility, I believe it offers a good return on investment. I don't think there's another tool that is quite as seamless to work within the LMS  and in the academic higher education setting. However, I have noticed that although the interface has not changed much in eight years, the accuracy of machine captioning has improved significantly.

While I do not have specific metrics, I can attest that the ability for all instructional designers to edit captions is incredible for accessibility. The capability to link YouTube videos into Kaltura to caption those that may not have a transcript available is impressive.