Decision and Analysis for a Video bank solution for the MCESA project.

Decision and Analysisfor a Video bank solution for the MCESA project

MCESA Video Bank

• Objective evaluation of multiple video bank systems that are being used in the industry to purchase a video bank solution for teaching and leading in action for training REIL district evaluation team members.

Needs

System Evaluation: Certified Evaluator Training• Content Evaluation rubric; writing educator growth plans;

inter-rater reliability training using videotaped lessons; artifact review of lesson plans, grade books; scripting; pre- and post conference training.

SUSTAINABLE: In-Person Reach Extension Remote Reach Extension• Each REIL School District will have access to an online

video library of exemplary classroom teaching.http://www.maricopa.gov/schools/webcontent/docs/reil_CloserLookTeacherPrincipal10-27-10_51.pdf

Video Viewing Requirements

• The stored video will need to be available to streamed to multiple devices, including Smartphones, iPads and PCs

• Users will need to be able to upload videos and index them.

• The videos will vary in length, and be anywhere from 5 minutes to spanning several hours.

Considerations

• Since Video Banking is a significant piece of the total system, which comprises a large portion of the overall budget, enough time needs to be allocated to the technical team to vet an appropriate video banking solution.

Assumptions

• Revisions and additional detail which may be added to the specification may greatly impact the desired solution.

• We proposed industry standard video solutions which differed from the specification.

Video 101

• There are many different formats that Video can be stored in MPEG-4, AVI, H.323, Flash, H.264, QuickTime among others

• The industry standard for streaming to disparate hardware platforms is H.264, which is displays a maximum resolution video of 30 frames per second

• Video Content and Audio content leveling ensures that the brightness and sound level are consistent among videos.

MCESA Solution

Video Bank Tools

Four video bank applications were shortlisted to evaluate for the MCESA project

Evaluation ApproachEstablished guidelines to determine which issues should be subjected to a formal evaluation process, then applied a formal evaluation process to these issues. This included:

– establishing the criteria for evaluating alternatives– identifying alternative solutions– selecting methods for evaluating alternatives– evaluating the alternative solutions using established criteria and

methods– selecting recommended solutions from the alternatives based on the

evaluation criteria

Ensemble Wowza

• Wowza includes a transcoder, which can accept the widest number of video types and format them to display high resolution video on all media devices presently available.

• The Ensemble Wowza solution is designed for academic content settings, including The University of Arizona Medical school and ASUs Engineering school.

• Dynamically modifies the video speed to accommodate the client’s present bandwidth.

• The ongoing maintenance of the combined with a third party academic content manager is estimated to take one FTE.

• Can be combined with video creation hardware for a complete solution.

Limelight

• Limelight would provide an interface to manage all video on the cloud.

• No additional hardware would need to be purchased to scale to as many concurrent users as ever desired.

• Low monthly cost to implement streaming to all web enabled devices.

• Limelight’s service is limited to displaying video. Editing, Indexing and transcoding would need to happen prior to transmission to their servers.

• Security and encryption services are available.

Cisco

• Encoding, video editing and editing are all provided by Cisco’s comprehensive solution.

• Supports display on most hardware.• Most widely installed industry package.• Industry estimates two FTEs required for

ongoing video catalog maintenance.

Adobe eLearning Suite

• Captivate, Adobe’s tool for creating learning content allows users to import and edit video in a number of different formats and create content, including quizzes based on the content.

• Users must have a Flash player installed on their device to be able to display any video.

• Contains workflow management software to assist in content creation.

Criteria

Evaluation criteria provided the basis for evaluating solutions. The criteria was ranked so the highest ranked criteria exerted the most influence on the evaluation. This criteria included:– Performance– Video Format– Scalability– Indexing– Road map and upgrade paths.

Performance

• Limelight’s capability of scaling to the client’s speed is limited.

• Cisco’s scalability metric means that packets will be dropped if the bandwidth drops

• Wowza contains current measurement of the client’s connection and scales the stream to match the highest possible transmission without dropping packets.

• Adobe does not include any streaming capability nor index storage management and it only displays the Flash video format.

Video Format

• Limelight will allow viewing on all browser capable devices.

• Cisco will display on most devices, but does not support Blackberry.

• Wowza supports displaying on all media devices.

• Adobe is only supported on devices where Flash can be displayed.

Scalability• Limelight provides infinite scalability without increase in either hardware or bandwidth

costs.• Both Wowza and Cisco have significant bandwidth and server costs when the use

increases. To estimate the bandwidth requirements, assume that for each concurrent user running a 10 minute video would be 512 kpbs per second for H.264 video.

• To determine how many Wowza servers would need to be configured, our estimates are one 8 processor 10 GB server would be required for 25-50 concurrent users and would need to scale from there, but that would be handled in the service agreement with Ensemble, so no purchase is required.

• For storing video, estimate for a full screen video 10 minutes in length stored in H.254 16 bit color format would take approximately 160 MB. Using this formula, once the number and length of the videos were known, you could calculate the amount of storage space needed.

• Adobe does not include any transmission in their product offering, which means that hardware would have to be purchased for storage, transmission and display of the videos. They also do not include any hardware management capability so this task would be the responsibility of MCESA and/or ADE.

Indexing

• Limelight does not natively support any indexing and assumes that all indexing will be handled by the users.

• Cisco includes an indexing solution to allow video indexing.

• Ensemble’s software is designed for academic content imaging.

• Adobe does not include any video management for the content created.

Costs

• The costs of the various solutions vary widely as different components comprise each solution.

• The cost of the equipment required for video creation is not included.

• Ongoing maintenance costs will vary greatly depending upon the hardware and bandwidth responsibility.

Cost continued• Ensemble Wowza Costs

– $12,000 for Ensemble Cloud per year including 1TB storage• Limelight

– One-time Integration Investment: $1,500 – $4,500– Ongoing Monthly Investment: $3,000 - $5,000

• Cisco– Cisco was unable to provide pricing

• Adobe eLearning Costs– Would be part of a larger solution since the only feature they offer is content

creation and display software.– Hardware, Bandwidth and Indexing costs would need to be established separately

from the software cost– Software costs $1,795 for each content creation license, but volume discount

licensing is available when further information is known. It is not possible to purchase Captivate separately as it is part of the suite.

Considerations• No matter what the solution selected, human intervention will be

required to ensure the video contains the appropriate subject matter.

• All video stored needs to comply with copyright laws, as part of Digital Rights Management (DRM).

• Video can vary in quality and acceptable content and needs to be reviewed to ensure standards are met.

• Unless the video is indexed in a logical manner, locating or preventing duplicate content may contribute to challenges in locating content specific to a person’s search/needs.

• Content releases must be obtained signed by the responsible parties for all minor participants for video recorded in a non-public setting such as a classroom.

Maintenance

• In addition to standard hardware support, ongoing video content maintenance must be provided.

• Support contracts are available for Cisco for hardware and setup support.

• Cloud based solutions require no ongoing support costs as that is wrapped in the service fee.

• Adobe does not offer any hardware support.

Assessment

• There needs to be a more comprehensive analysis of the tools to better tailor the solution towards the requirements.

• Develop an RFI to evaluate a targeted selection of vendors, which could include site visits to local video bank implementations at educational institutions.