Category Archives: Using VdoCipher

Video on Demand Platform with VdoCipher

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Video on Demand platforms have opened up a plethora of choices for viewers. Viewers no longer find themselves dependent upon what their cable network is broadcasting at a particular time. Channel surfing is replaced by informed decision making on VOD platform. Strong recommendation systems help show relevant content to users, thereby optimizing user experience.

Because of this ability to offer a personalized user experience, Video on Demand Platforms retain a phenomenal ability to engage viewers and keep viewers on their platform. Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have both been aggressively building a vast content catalogue. It is imperative for these Over-the-top (OTT) platforms to present just the right kind of content for different kinds of viewer preferences.

Index:

  1. A Case Study of a Video on Demand Platform – Netflix
  2. Identify your niche and create your Video on Demand Platform
  3. Why VdoCipher is best for your Video on Demand Platform
  4. Select a Tech platform to build your Video on Demand Platform
    1. WordPress/ Joomla/ Drupal/ Moodle Content Management Systems
    2. Develop your own website using Node.JS, PHP, ASP.Net, Python, Ruby
  5. Design your website
  6. Monetization model, Pricing and Payment Processing

A Case Study of a Video on Demand Platform – Netflix

Going back 10 years, Netflix was primarily identified as a DVD-by-mail business. The company had introduced its Video on Demand platform in January 2007 as a bonus for DVD subscribers. What began as a tentative step to build a slight advantage over competitors has now become the world’s biggest Video on Demand platform. In this period the company has consistenly worked to improve its technology stack and content catalogue. The company now has close to a 100 million subscribers, with the number only expected to grow.

Identify your niche and Create your Video on Demand Platforms

As internet connectivity across the world improves, demand for video streaming services will continue to grow. In North America Netflix  contributes to over 35% of peak internet traffic. In India broadband connections have become the norm in urban areas, whereas mobile networks led by Reliance Jio are making an aggressive push to enable internet connectivity across the country.

Compared to the costs of creating and distributing videos, revenues are not hard to attain. Setting up a video on demand platform is certainly one of the most attractive proposition for content creators and distributors.

Video on demand means so much more than movies and TV shows. YouTube, which is the world’s biggest VOD platform, enables creators to share videos on niche subjects. Users create videos covering anything from video games, film and music discussion and vlogging to educational videos. To get started you only need to reach out to a small subsection of your potential audience base.

Video content is 40 times more likely to be shared than other forms of content. This means that quality videos can generate an audience with minimal effort in marketing. You need to identify your niche, and offer top-quality content to ensure that your video on demand platform is a success.

Videos are also heavily being used for marketing and for product videos. Four times as many users prefer to to watch a video about a product than read about it.

Video is also revolutionizing E-Learning considerably. Instructors are using video to reach millions of people eager to learn. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) such as EdX, Coursera and MIT OCW have made quality higher learning accessible to anybody with a good internet connection. 

Coursera e-learning video on demand platform

You can setup your own video on demand platform, which would give you complete control over your video streaming application.You can directly communicate with your audience, and can interact with them help improve user experience, helping achieve a greater audience.

Setting up your own VOD platform, you can setup your monetization options, opting for either a subscription model or an advertising video on demand business model, as you see fit. You can make further customizations such as custom encoding to optimize bandwidth usage, and custom player skins to offer a customized viewer experience. 

It would also mean being no longer dependent on video aggregators like Vimeo and YouTube. YouTube for all its advantages offers limited monetization options. It does not leave the users much control over their content and their audience. Throughout playback viewers are completely free to switch to another video, meaning that meaningful engagement is hard to achieve.

Why VdoCipher is ideal for your VOD Platform

Streaming videos involves a large workflow process, which involves:

Import videos directly from Amazon S3 bucket to VdoCipher for secure video hosting

  • Video Upload and Transcoding
    • Upload to secure S3 bucket
    • Transcoding to different file formats, enabling multi-bitrate streaming
  • Video management through dashboard
  • Secure Video Streaming
    • Amazon Cloudfront and Akamai CDN network for fast delivery
    • Server-side encryption
    • Player authentication, through backend private key
    • Dynamic watermarking
    • URL whitelisting
  • Smooth video playback
    • Design custom skins and customize video player
    • Thumbnail customization
  • Plugins for WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, Moodle, and developer-friendly APIs
  • Multi-device compatibility
  • VAST ad insertion for Advertising Video on Demand platform
  • Access video playback analytics through API and dashboard
  • Pay per use model – pay for bandwidth and storage

The entire process of conceptualizing, storyboarding, and video production is extremely time and resource-intensive. To regain the investment that goes into making videos you need to ensure effective monetization from content.

Yet piracy presents a major challenge to monetization. Our statistical study shows that about 25% of the world population uses common video download tools to pirate content. 

VdoCipher’s large user base relies on our secure video streaming solution to ensure that their monetization opportunities are not affected due to piracy losses. VdoCipher video hosting solution provides the complete solution for video on demand platforms. Our full-stack Video DRM enables video content providers to secure their videos effectively, and set up their videos behind a paywall solution. In this blog we discuss why self-hosting is rarely a good idea.

Using VdoCipher means that you can continue to focus on improving your website experience and your content catalogue, while resting assured that your viewers are getting a smooth video experience. Buffering is the reason a lot of users leave videos – a study revealed that even for videos of length greater than 30 minutes, a delay of 30 seconds can lead to more than 60% of users leaving the video. Viewers have little patience and high expectations when it comes to streaming videos. VdoCipher has developed expertise in delivering high quality videos in locations with spotty internet connectivity. Video playback through the VdoCipher player is smooth and seamless, and time taken for buffering is minimal.

In this blog we discuss how to use VdoCipher to maximum effect to setup your video on demand platform. To learn more about how the VdoCipher feature set works out for different cases check out this blog on VdoCipher for business.

CMS and Programming Languages to Build your Video on Demand Platform

Create Video on Demand Platform with WordPress

WordPress currently powers over 25% of the websites on the internet. Some of the most prominent websites using WordPress because of its easy functionalities are New Yorker magazine and Techcrunch.com

Use WordPress for video on demand platform

Embed using Shortcodes

  • Create an account on VdoCipher. You will be mailed your client secret key.
  • Install the VdoCipher wordpress plugin, and enter your client secret key. You are all set to embed VdoCipher videos to your website.
  • Right-click on the video in the dashboard that you wish to embed to your website. Copy the video id to the shortcode format, replacing the 123456 in the shortcode below, and using a single parenthesis.  

[vdo id="123456"]

  • Add the shortcode to the page in which you wish to embed the video. Its a simple two-step process to embedding your video.

Dynamic Watermarking

To add a dynamic watermark go to the settings panel of the VdoCipher plugin, and add the text that you wish to add to your WordPress website. More details are given in this blog.

Themes for WordPress developers

WordPress supports a fantastic community of developers who create plugins and themes. This makes WordPress extremely useful for beginners looking to buy off-the-shelf solutions for their website. To create your own Video on Demand Platform there is a wide variety of themes and plugins that you can use to embed your videos to your websites.  Some of the best themes that we have found to offer great functionalities and easy monetization options are:

  • Vlog

Multi-purpose – can be used for vlogging or for news websites.
Supports Series plugin, which enables you to create playlists of videos
Integration with WooCommerce for monetization options
Enables Advertising Video on Demand by supporting banner ads on pages
$69 one-time purchase

  • VideoTube:

$49 cost
Easy integration with membership plugins enabling you to monetize your website as Subscriber Video on Demand

  • VideoPlus

$39 cost – includes 1 year of theme updates and 1 year of personal support

  • PremiumPress Video Theme

$79 cost
Whereas most video themes are designed to enable monetization from advertising video on demand model. PremiumPress’ Video Theme is designed to enable you to secure videos behind a membership plugin.

  • NewsMag Lite

This is free plugin that you can use to create your own newspaper-like or magazine-like website. You can use a combination of texts, images and videos for your site.

Membership Plugins for WordPress

You can manage user access rules using membership plugins. This includes partial protection of content on web pages to restrict content to only paid subscribers. Partial protection is implemented through shortcodes, and means that free subscribers/ non-subscribers can only see part of the page, while the remaining would be protected by a paywall. You can also protect entire sections and pages behind your paywall membership plugins.

WP eMember and Membership Pro 2 are two of the most popular membership plugins. An important feature that WP eMember offers is to prevent simultaneous logins. This stops users from sharing passwords with other people. Another plugin.

Create Video on Demand Platform with Joomla!

Joomla! is one of the most popular PHP-based content management systems. A vibrant community of developers has made Joomla one of the best platforms on which to build your video on demand platform.

Joomla! for video on demand platform

VdoCipher’s Joomla video plugin makes all the backend API calls, meaning that all you need to do to embed your videos is add the embed code. The installation procedure to integrate VdoCipher’s video plugin to your Joomla-based video on demand platform is:

  1. Dowload the VdoCipher Joomla Extension
  2. Upload the VdoCipher Joomla Extension to the Manage Extensions page
  3. Click on VdoCipher to open Parameters page
  4. Enter your client secret key, which you would have received in the mail on registration, in the given field
  5. On saving the settings you are good to go
  6. Get your video id directly from the VdoCipher dashboard
  7. Enter your video id to the shortcode, in the format (where you replace 123456 with your video id)

[vdo id= 123456]

Note that PHP5-curl needs to be installed on the server for this extension to work. Attributes for the shortcode include the display settings of height and width – for example if you require height = 350 and width = 700, you can add the following attributes to the shortcode

[vdo id=123456 height=350 width=700]

The shortcode is space-sensitive, so any additional space at the end of the shortcode before the brackets can cause an error.

Create Video on Demand Platform with Drupal

Drupal for video on demand platform

VdoCipher module for Drupal uses a shortcode to display videos inside any node, which may include articles and posts, besides custom content types. The shortcode is added to the WYSIWYG text editor, and the module handles the API calls. The client secret key is used for API calls between your Drupal website and the VdoCipher video dashboard. The plugin abstracts away the API calls, meaning that all you need to do get started is:

  1. Upload your video to the VdoCipher dashboard
  2. Download the VdoCipher module
  3. Upload the module file from the “Install New Module” page on your Drupal installation
  4. Click on the Configure link on the module page to complete your setup
  5. Copy the API Key from VdoCipher Dashboard -> Config -> General
  6. Enter your client secret API key.
  7. Get your video id directly from the VdoCipher dashboard
  8. Enter your video id to the shortcode, in the format

Required argument id for embedded video not found.

  1. Embed the video id to any content_type text field in your website

We are currently working on integrating the VdoCipher plugin with the Drupal media module. You can add dynamic watermarks to your video as well using these annotation code guidelines.

Video on Demand Platform with Server-Side scripting languages and Frameworks

We have also developed our API for use-cases with Python, Ruby, Node.js, ASP.NET and PHP. Together these backend-languages power much of the internet. Using our embed code and the API reference for the respective language, you can host your videos to deliver a truly unique experience for your clients.

Web Frameworks that are most popular currently include:

  • Django, Flask and Pyramid frameworks for Python
  • Rails framework for Ruby
  • CakePHP framework for PHP
  • Node.js framework for Javascipt

The utility of frameworks is in enabling developers to use boilerplate code, thereby avoiding having to repeat the same thing multiple times. Frameworks help you manage and enforce your web architecture. Using a framework also enables you to use vast a variety of libraries that are available.

For Web Hosting the most popular website hosting servers are DigitalOcean, Rackspace and AWS.

Create Video on Demand Platform with PHP

PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is one of the most popular server-side scripting languages used to build websites. The biggest utility for PHP is its ease-of-use, which has enabled blogging platforms such as WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal to emerge. The world’s largest encyclopedia – Wikipedia is also setup using PHP. Popular e-learning platform Moodle is yet another implementation of PHP. Facebook also uses PHP in its core codebase.

PHP is arguably the easiest language for beginners to make a basic functional website, and for that reason retains its popularity.

In our developer library you can find the embed code for integrating your VdoCipher videos to your website. Using this embed code you would need to add the video id to the embed code, and your client secret key to the API reference, and you would be ready to embed your videos directly to your website.

The developer library also includes sample code for enabling video uploads to your VdoCipher dashboard directly from your website. This would enable your users to directly upload videos without needing to open the dashboard. After the API call is made by your PHP application server, a video upload policy document is returned. You can use standard Javascript libraries to make the process of upload smoother – Angular, JQuery or Dropzone. The video upload should be made within 1 hour of the video upload policy document.

Create Video on Demand Platform with Node.JS

Node.js is currently the most exciting framework for server-side scripting. Its primary utility is its single-thread non-blocking I/O design, which means it is eminently suited for web applications requiring vast scalability. Some of the most popular transaction and event-based web applications currently using Node.js are PayPal, Uber and Netflix

The VdoCipher Node.js module enables you to handle your videos securely on your video hosting platform. VdoCipher’s secure video hosting

Using Node.js for server-side scripting means that both your frontend and backend use Javascript. Most Javascript frameworks are for frontend; Node.js is a singularity in that context. . The Node.js core itself is quite lightweight. There are numerous modules that are made available by an active developer community, adding powerful functionalities to Node.js programming. An active developer community means that for most purposes you could easily find a developer library to achieve a nydesired functionality.  

VdoCipher Node.js API

Class VdoCipher. Create a class instance vdocipher (client_secret_key). Instance method of the VdoCipher API include vdocipher.getOTP, which passes the video ID, and receives OTP. Instance method vdocipher.getSignature returns a signature authenticating the video playback.

For more information about the API reference please look up the API reference. Check out the embed code.

You can find sample code to generate OTP for a video on demand platform on WordPress, to authenticate video playback

The github reference can be found here.

Create Video on Demand Platform with Ruby on Rails

Hulu is a major video on demand platform built using Ruby on Rails. Other web applications built using Ruby on Rails framework are SlideShare, Github and Groupon.

Ruby is one of the most popular server-side scripting language. Popular for its developer-friendly structure, Ruby can be used with the Rails framework (Ruby-on-Rails).

VdoCipher gem for Ruby-on-Rails handles the API reference. Steps for integrating VdoCipher video player to your video on demand platform:

  • Add this line to your Gemfile in your rails application
gem 'vdocipher'
    • And in your controller file add these lines
require 'vdocipher'
...

vdo_api = VdoCipher.new(clientSecretKey: "CLIENT_SECRET_KEY");
@embedcode vdo_api.play_code("VIDEO_ID", "style=\"height:400px;width:640px;max-width:100%%;\"");
      • Now in your view file embed code where you would like to play videos

Create Video on Demand Platform with Python Frameworks (Django, Flask, Pyramid)

Most popular websites using the Django framework with Python are Instagram, Pinterest, Google. The biggest video on demand platform YouTube, although originally built using PHP, now also runs on Python.

You can see a sample file for integrating VdoCipher to your Python website here. You should break this file, which includes the embed code, player OTP call and API reference, according to your MVC architecture.

Design your Website’s User Interface

A great and intuitive user interface goes a long way towards building and retaining your audience. Here we bring tips from observing popular video on demand platforms, that you should implement to make your VOD platform a success.

      • Clean and Easy Membership system – a popup box can be used to login. You may also enable social login via users Google or Facebook accounts
      • These are the home pages of Twitter and Netflix – the similarity? Both of them give a glimpse of interesting content that you find on the platform. This would improve conversion of site visitors to subscribers.

       

      Netflix Video on Demand home page   Twitter home page
      • Personalized Recommendations based on ratings that you give movies and your watch history.  Netflix implements a Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down rating system – it aggregates user behaviour across different patterns of ratings. Using your viewership data Netflix recommends content that you are likely to watch.
      • Easy grouping of content helps viewers decide what to watch. This includes content based on your recent watch history, and content grouped according to genres such as Action & Adventure and Romantic Films.
      • Get your movie descriptions right – help users understand exactly what they are signing up to watch. Your users will appreciate it.
      • Multi-Device synchronization – For viewers constrained by time, it may be possible only to consume long-form content in small chunks. By providing synchronization across devices you enable your viewers to start from the last-watched locations, and stop in the knowledge they can resume when they want to on whichever device they wish to. This is one of the most important features to get right. Your video player should be able to synchronize your last played location on the video. VdoCipher gets this right by automatically saving the pointer to the last viewed location on the video, meaning that you can easily play back videos.
      • Get the balance between high quality and streaming on low bandwidth networks – It is important to provide a great experience for viewers with high-speed connections as well as for viewers with low-internet bandwidth. This is critical for VOD platforms in developing countries, where internet connectivity in rural areas is poor. Encoding optimizations can help viewers stream reasonably good videos even on 2G-speed internet connections.

Monetization Models, Pricing, and Payment Gateway

SVOD – Subscriber Video on Demand

Subscription Video on Demand is definitely the most popular monetization model used by most video on demand platforms. A recurring subscription gives users access to unlimited content on the VOD platform.

To target different kinds of users you can implement a tiered pricing model, wherein subscribers to the basic plan get the core content offering. Subscribers to higher payment plans can get access to additional content that supplements the core video offering. For example Netflix gives unlimited access to its complete library for its basic plan. However if you wish to watch Netflix simultaneously on multiple screens (share a subscription), you are encouraged to buy a multi-screen subscription at a higher price point.

Explanation of business models for video on demand platform

AVOD – Advertiser Video on Demand

As a monetization model this is the strategy that YouTube offers. Through this YouTube can share revenue with its content creators. In this case, content creators do not have a direct relationship with the video on demand platform, and therefore advertiser Video on Demand in YouTube’s case enables revenue sharing. AVOD is the optimal strategy when you are expecting a lot of users to tune in to your website.

The only caveat to basing your business model exclusively on advertising is that it is viable only when you have a large audience. Revenue from a single ad is often very low – you need to have a large enough audience to be able to generate meaningful revenue. For videos on subjects of broad interest the inherent virality of content is extremely critical. In such a case YouTube is often the ideal platform for building and connecting with their audience. If you are looking to build your website with the target of earning revenue from advertising, you should at least target million plus page views per month. 

TVOD – Transactional Video on Demand – Pay per view or buy the content

You can make specific content accessible for users on payment of a fees. This is for one-time content created which you want to monetize. Most online tutorials fall into this category. You can package your videos individually, or as part of a bigger package. The difference between subscription and pay-per-view content is that users pay for access to specific content only. TVOD is ideal when you have differentiated content offerings which have value by themselves.

Payments Gateway and Processing

You need to setup a payment gateway solution so that you can receive payments from across the globe.

Instamojo, PayU and CCAvenue are some of the most popular payment gateways in India. Internationally PayPal and Stripe are both widely trusted payment processors.

Comparison of International Payment Gateways – PayPal and Stripe comparison

PayPal Stripe
Ease of use Easy embed code which can be downloaded from PayPal website Requires a separate coding framework to integrate Stripe
Fixed Monthly Costs PayPal Standard account is free,
Advanced Account costs $5
Pro account costs $30 per month – Advanced and Pro offer native integration with website		 Stripe does not charge any monthly fee
Transaction fees 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
Customer Support Better customer support – Quick Answers & Community forum, besides KnowledgeBase and Email support KnowledgeBase and Email support

Comparison of Indian Payment Gateways

Instamojo Setup Fee – 0 Commission Per Transaction – 2% + Rs.3
PayU Setup Fee – Rs. 4,900 – 29,900 Commission Per Transaction – 0.75% – 2.90%
CCAvenue Setup Fees – Rs. 7,500 – 40,000 Commission Per Transaction – 3% – 7%

All Indian payment gateways – Instamojo, PayU and CCAvenue offer integrations with WooCommerce Platform for WordPress. By using any of the free plugins offered by these payment gateways you can get your Video on Demand platform to accept payments within minutes of setting up.

The onboarding process of tying up with the Payment Gateway can take some time though. Most of the payment gateways require scanned copies of documents.

Setting up Payment Gateway for Video on Demand Platform

  • Install WooCommerce and the free plugin for the Payment Gateway –
  • WooCommerce Settings Page -> Checkout -> Payment Gateways
  • Click on the Payment Gateway of your choice after downloading and installing the plugin
  • Rename the payment gateway Credit Card/ Debit Card/ Internet Banking
  • Configure your payment gateway by adding your merchant ID and Merchant Key
  • You can finally select a redirect URL – the page on your website where customers will be taken after the transaction

Individual process for these payment gateways vary. If you opt for any of the payment gateways for your WordPress website it would be a good idea to first integrate it with your WordPress installation to make sure that the plugin is compatible with your WP themes.

If you have more queries on VOD platform, please give us a shout at info@vdocipher.com. A free trial to secure stream videos for your video on demand platform is available at vdocipher.com

Secure Hosting for Flipped Classroom Videos

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Secure Video Hosting for Flipped Classroom

The model of flipped learning has the potential to revolutionize classroom teaching. In this methodology learners are assigned videos to watch before a class. By delivering basic instructions through a flipped classroom video, students are much more informed about the subject before class begins. This makes for a much more engaging classroom discussion, ensuring that the passive learning in the traditional classroom is now replaced by a much more active model of learning.

In this blog post, I seek to explain factors you should consider when hosting Flipped Classroom videos. Designing flipped classroom videos is not straightforward. Prior to flipping you need to map out how you are going to be using your video resources, and how the videos would inform your classroom. You would also need to develop a system to ensure that teachers and parents are able to monitor how students follow the video lessons. Tracking how learners interact with the videos is important in making sure that learning from your flipped classroom videos is effective. A custom secure video hosting solution would enable you to tailor your videos and the technical platform for maximum learner engagement.

Free Resources to Use

There are a large number of free videos that teachers can recommend to students for viewing in Flipped Learning. Some of the most popular resources are KhanAcademy.org and MIT OpenCourseWare. There are a large number of channels on YouTube offering quality videos for education.

Creating Your Own Flipped Classroom Videos – Security

You may wish to create your content for students to watch as part of flipped classroom videos. These videos may be of previous classes, or they may be specially made for the flipped classroom. There are many reasons to consider video security seriously when hosting your flipped classroom video content

    • Information security – When making flipped classroom videos, you need to protect details of learners participating in courses, or special details that you may mention in the course. For videos classes made for a specific audience the information security concern is very much relevant
    • Protection of Intellectual Property
    • Controlling access – You may wish to control access to only the students enrolled in a particular class.
    • Protecting Privacy – You can get students to make videos as part of Project-Based Learning. This encourages an entrepreneurial spirit, as such a project would require them to work collectively and collaboratively through the different stages of video creation. It is necessary to protect the privacy of students making the video.

Stages of security in Secure video hosting

Different parts of secure video hosting for flipped classroom video

Different parts of secure video hosting unpacked

  • Video Storage in Cloud – If the file is not encrypted, anybody with a publicly shareable URL to the file on the cloud can download without requiring authorized access.
  • Encrypted Transmission – Ensuring that while streaming the videos cannot be downloaded and viewed by unauthorized entities, such as during man-in-the-middle attacks.
  • Authentication & Whitelisting – The authentication process involves a key being exchanged between the streaming server and the video player (on the viewer’s computer). This key is used by the video player to decrypt the encrypted stream. Private key transfer is necessary to ensure that only learners logged into your system can access the content. Backend Authentication is one implementation of private key transfer
  • Watermarking – The final stage of video delivery is video playback on the video player. Any analog screen recorder can record this stream, and there is no effective way for a DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology to stop this. Viewer Specific Watermarking is a strong deterrent to screen recording videos, as viewers would be deterred from sharing content that has their IP address or contact details on it.

There are numerous paid solutions in the market currently offering security for education providers. When evaluating DRMs for hosting your videos you should consider the above factors, and how the features offered by Online Video Platforms (OVPs) succeed in providing a complete solution. For example RTMP streaming is used by many companies for securing content, RTMP does not involve local storage of video data, and can be encrypted. However the process of backend authentication iUse Learner Analytics in Flipped Classroom Videos not completely secure, as toolkits such as RTMPDump can be used to give access to third-party applications. Here is a guide to implement variety of secure video hosting technologies for your site/app.

Learner Analytics

Research done by T.Lucke et al is inconclusive about how effective flipped classroom method is in contributing to better performance. Flipped classroom videos need to be assisted by developing learner analytics, to better understand the effectiveness of the technique and what further steps may be taken for more effective and engaging learning.

Interactive Video – In-video quiz and surveys

You can add video quizzes to learn how students engage with video. Results from student performance in the quizzes will be a good indication of how effective the videos are in communicating concepts to learners. Participating in quizzes in the flipped classroom video also contributes to knowledge retention. Students who have an understanding of a concept before class would engage more in the classroom, making for active classroom learning. Besides, teachers can incorporate surveys in the video, for feedback from students and also feedback from school administrators. Interactivity features can be implemented by adding an HTML5 pages within the video – most OVP (Online Video Platform) s can offer this functionality.

Use In-video Quiz for effective learning using Flipped Classroom Video

Use In-video Quiz for effective learning using Flipped Classroom Video

Tracking Offline Learning Using Tin Can API

In Project-Based Learning students engage in activities outside the classroom. It is important to be able to track student learning outside of classroom. The emerging paradigm of Tin Can API links up a learning record store (LRS), in which students are able to record their activity. The syntax in which an activity is represented is:

Person A Did Activity

Noun – Person A (Name of student)

Verb – Did (or any verb, such as watched in case of video, or read for lecture)

Activity – Details of video, or text

Analytics on students watching videos can be measured by integrating video player with Tin Can API.

Support for Secure Hosting for Your Flipped Classroom Videos

For custom video hosting solutions, support services are very important in ensuring smooth transition to using video hosting and in integrating with current IT systems. It is important to evaluate the support services that your OVP offers.

Louis Deslauriers et al published findings from 850 Physics Undergrads at University of British Columbia, in which learners in the traditional classroom technology had an average score of 41%, whereas learners in the flipped classroom program had an average score of 74%. Videos are becoming increasingly important in aiding classroom teaching, and it is very important that you get your flipped classroom videos right!

Set IP Geo restriction on videos via API/Dashboard: VdoCipher DRM

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VdoCipher provides a complete DRM with encryption, backend licensing and viewer specific watermarking to safeguard video content. Sometimes owing to the rights and permissions to distribute a video, businesses look to white-list or blacklist content for certain geographies & IPs. Here is an API guide to do IP & Geo restriction for your VdoCipher account. This should allow you to configure any complicated setting of IP and country restrictions.

Rules are defined by a JSON string called rule-set. This JSON contains an array of rule objects:

  1. Every rule is an object containing action, ipSet and countrySet
  2. Each matching rule overrides the previous matching rule.
  3. Action can be either ‘true’ or ‘false’, whether to allow or deny
  4. ipSet and countrySet are string arrays.
  5. Subnet CIDR block can also be set in ipSet string array.
  6. Both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and subnet are allowed
  7. countrySet has two-digit country codes (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2.).
  8. Empty set matches everything of that type.
[
  {
    "action": "false",
    "ipSet": ["122.0.0.0/16", "49.323.23.56"],
    "countrySet": []
  },
  {
    "action": "true",
    "ipSet": [],
    "countrySet": ["IN", "GB"]
  }
]

The first part of above code will block your videos from playing in the mentioned IP addresses. The second part of the code will allow the video to play only in countries – UK & India. As mentioned in point 2 , the second rules is the dominant one for common users. Thus as an example, if some user has IP – 49.323.23.56 and resides in UK, his videos will not play. So various combination of codes can be used to create custom restrictions. If there is any confusion, drop us a mail and we can provide sample codes.

Benefit of subnet restriction is that you don’t have to write specifically multiple IP addresses. You can configure it to restrict a group of IPs under subnet.

API for setting IP-Geo restriction is the same as the video update API as provided in docs.

Here is a sample HTTP Request:

POST https://dev.vdocipher.com/api/videos/______________
Content-Type: application/json'
Accept: application/json
Authorization: Apisecret ____________

{
  "ipGeoRules": "string_containing_json_encoded_ruleset"
}

Dashboard interface for IP & GEO restriction

*This feature is also present in dashboard. Please click on the top right circular button on any video to open video settings. In it, there will be an IP/geo restriction section. Using above documentation, you can add any restriction.

Let us know at info@vdocipher.com for queries & doubts.

IP & Geo Restrict Video DRM

Streaming Video Hosting to Improve Market Reach

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Streaming video hosting is a great way for you to communicate with your clients. Videos offer a way to increase the interactivity of your content, besides helping you develop a personal connection with your customers. Authentically presenting yourself and your product to the customer helps develop customer trust. Customer trust is one of the most important elements of ensuring customer retention.

When should you consider Streaming Video Hosting?

For starters, you should try to understand how effective the combination of visual, audio and narrative is in delivering your message. Does a video send across a better message qualitatively than just text? You can also explore whether if the combination of static visuals and texts in infographics can communicate your message. Understanding the value addition that video offers will help you use videos more effectively. You can then put a much more directed effort towards creating your videos. You can start with storyboarding to conceptualize how the visual, audio and narrative elements of your video come together. When used strategically, Streaming video hosting offers a great way to add value to your message.

Streaming Video Hosting for Storytelling increases engagement with users

Streaming Video Hosting for Storytelling increases user engagement

How to Increase the Interactivity of your Streaming Videos?

You can embed tests and in-video quizzes to increase the interactivity of your course streaming video content. Embedding scripts in your streaming videos can enable you to enhance your message. You can include e-mail capture forms within the video, through which videos can complement your e-mail marketing campaigns.

When considering what content to create through video, a suggestion is to create content that directly answers your audience questions. Try to get audience feedback, and use it to directly answer Frequently-asked questions through videos. When you directly answer audience queries through video it helps you build a better connection with the audience, helping you build customer trust with your brand.

How-to videos are one of the most effective uses of streaming video medium. These videos can be used to explain complex concepts to your audiences. You can use features such as screencasting and whiteboard animation to create great how-to videos.

Streaming video hosting allows for great interactivity

Increase the interactivity of your streaming video content

Factors to consider when deciding which streaming video hosting provider is right for you

  • The first criteria is to understand how the Online Video Platform help you communicate your brand values. How well does the streaming video hosting option reach your customers? YouTube is currently the most popular video hosting site. However, there are many negatives to using YouTube. Because YouTube’s first priority is to keep viewers on its own platform, for which reason it can make other videos available to your viewers. There are considerable distractions to watching videos on YouTube, which can dilute your brand message. For this reason most professional streaming video providers look for custom solutions. VdoCipher offers completely secure and private video hosting, which ensures that you can communicate directly with your audiences.
  • Security – Considering the costs that go towards great videos, opting for security in video hosting is very important. Whether you create content for marketing or for paying subscribers, you would want full control over who can access your control. With VdoCipher’s DRM technology you have full security for your video content, right from the point of streaming video hosting to the time of viewer playback.
  • Customizability – Does the video player allow customization? This comprises of integrating video player theme with your website. VdoCipher offers integrating of custom player skins, to match your website theme.
VdoCipher feature set for Streaming video hosting

VdoCipher feature set for Streaming video hosting

Which Streaming Video Hosting Provider has maximum reach?

  • Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are networks of storage points, which cache your video content. Video caching locations enable fast delivery of streaming video for all geographical locations. VdoCipher uses Amazon AWS + Akamai CDNs, ensuring that both localized and global populations are served.
  • Devices – Does your video player optimize encoding for mobiles and for desktop. VdoCipher encodes separately for mobile and desktop streaming video, ensuring smooth and seamless experience across both.

How to get Actionable Insights from Streaming Videos?

Streaming video hosting for actionable insights

Get actionable insights from streaming video hosting

Streaming video analytics help you to understand viewer response to your video content. You can learn which videos are more viewed, and also what is the most effective length of videos to maximize customer engagement. Actionable insights from video analytics will help you fine-tune your video message, and to target it more effectively to your customers.

VdoCipher offers streaming video hosting for the case of video on demand. We have a wide range of clients interested in streaming video as part of their services. This includes education and corporate training, marketers, and independent creators. As explained, we offer customized solutions, according to the requirements of our clients.

Signup on VdoCipher for a free full version free trial.

Import Videos From Vimeo Pro, Google Drive and Dropbox

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VdoCipher’s secure video hosting platform enables educators, publishers and marketers to host their video content online for business use. Our award-winning DRM creates multiple layers of security. These include secure video storage, encrypted video streaming, backend authentication and dynamic watermark, ensuring that your videos are completely secure from illegal downloading.

A large number of our customers have shifted from other video hosting sites. This is mostly because the feature-set of many other online video platforms does not completely satisfy customers’ requirements. We are committed to ensuring that your transition from another OVP to VdoCipher is smooth and seamless. For this we have set up direct import from online video platforms Wistia and Vimeo Pro. You can also import videos from cloud hosting solutions including Google Drive and Dropbox.

Also here we guide you how to easily import videos from your S3 bucket to your VdoCipher account.

Import Video from Vimeo Pro

  1. Go to the VdoCipher dashboard
  2. Click on the “Import from …” button. In the drop-down menu click on “Import from Vimeo”
  3. Click on the “Connect Vimeo” button in the new page
  4. In the next page you can give your VdoCipher account permission to import video from Vimeo
  5. The dashboard will then give you the link to import the videos that you have hosted on Vimeo
Import Video directly from Vimeo Pro for completely secure video hosting

Import Videos directly from Vimeo Pro for completely secure video hosting

Import Video from Wistia

  1. Go to the Import from Wistia page in VdoCipher dashboard
  2. Login to Wistia and go to Account Settings
  3. Click on API access in the right panel
  4. Click the “New token link”
  5. Mark the checkbox “Read all project and video data”
  6. Copy the newly generated token
  7. Enter the Wistia API token at the top right of the page to import video from Wistia
Import video directly from Wistia for secure video hosting

Import videos directly from Wistia for secure video hosting

Import Video from Google Drive

  1. Go to the VdoCipher dashboard
  2. Click on the “Import” button. In the drop-down menu click on “Add from Google Drive”
  3. Give your VdoCipher account access to the contents of your Google Drive
  4. Select the video for import.
  5. You’re done!
Import video directly from Google Drive for secure video hosting

Import videos directly from Google Drive for secure video hosting

Import Video from Dropbox

  1. Go to the VdoCipher dashboard
  2. Click on the “Import from …” button. In the drop-down menu click on “Import from Dropbox”
  3. Sign in to Dropbox from the Pop-up window
  4. Select the videos to be imported to VdoCipher
  5. You’re done!
Import video directly from Dropbox for Secure video hosting

VdoCipher interface to import videos directly from Dropbox for secure video streaming

Import Video from Box.Com

We’ve added support for importing videos from Box.com. Check out our step-by-step guide to importing videos from this service.

Please feel free to communicate video hosting requirements to our customer support team.

 

Import videos from S3 bucket with “Import from AWS S3”

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Import videos directly from Amazon S3 bucket to VdoCipher for secure video hosting

Import videos directly from Amazon S3 bucket to VdoCipher for secure video hosting

AWS is the most popular cloud service provider at the moment and a lot of our customers have their videos stored in their S3 bucket. Their usual method of import was to generate temporary download URL and using them to import videos. This usually involved a bit of programming to AWS S3 API. With this new feature, we plan to make import videos from S3 to VdoCipher process a lot easier.

Steps to import videos from S3 Bucket

Import from AWS S3 for Secure Video Streaming

Interface for Importing video from AWS S3 Bucket for secure video hosting

  1. You need to create a new IAM user in your AWS account with the permission to do action ListObjects and GetObjects in the desired bucket. AWS IAM console will give you the aws_access_key_id and aws_secret_key.
  2. In your VdoCipher dashboard, click on import and chose the option to “import from S3”.
  3. You can enter the region, bucket, key_id, and secret_key. Upon connecting, you will see a list of your root objects and you can navigate around like a regular file browser.
  4. On clicking the import button, our backend will create temporary download URL for the video object and add it to your list of videos. You will be able to see the video id and current status.
  5. Once you have the videos imported, you can go back to the dashboard to set correct title, description, and tags for the video. Adding tags is recommended because it helps to sort and manage your videos. The files should now be processing. Give the video some time to process. Once their status is ready, you can embed it in your website or mobile app.

Any file with video extensions will have an import button. Currently, we support five extensions (MP4, AVI, FLV, WMV, MOV). Let us know, if you like to have another file extension in this list. learn more about using the dashboard

Permission required for IAM key

AWS recommends creating a new IAM user for every purpose. In this case, you should create a new user with permission to ListBucket and GetObject. Here is a sample policy file that you can use for this purpose. Replace the NAME_OF_BUCKET with the real name of your bucket.

Find details on importing videos from Box.com

Details on importing from other video hosting services and from cloud video hosting providers can be found here

Using Tin Can API in video: Complete Documentation

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Tin Can API is a specification for learning technologies that enables Learning Management Systems to collect data from various learning activities that a student may undertake. Tin Can API has succeeded SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) as the new standard for learner analytics.

tin can api in video

Requirements for Tin Can API

In Tin Can API any learner activity on the web may be integrated and logged to the LMS. This includes activities such as reading a blog and watching a video online. For Tin Can API to succeed, all learning activities that a learner performs should be able to transmit learning data to the LMS.

Statements in the Tin Can API are rendered in the form Noun Verb Activity. For example if Learner A has completed watching a video on “Machine Learning: Supervised Learning Part 1”, the corresponding Tin Can API statement would be:

  • Learner A completed Machine Learning: Supervised Learning Part 1

Tin Can API with videos

The motive of Tin Can API is to have maximum feedback for user experience and act on to improve the key metrics. As in case with video, fetching in side video data becomes quite tricky owing to the variety and scale of actions performed by viewers on a video.

VdoCipher as a part of its secure video hosting service,  currently provides viewer data points on all the relevant analytics requirement for Tin Can API

Below are some of the prominent actions of viewers on video (start, pause, end, seek, progress, repeat, load, buffer, view) which are a part of Tin Can API and VdoCipher provides direct JavaScript codes for them.

It is interesting to note that there is always a debate amongst content creators and marketers on what should be taken as a view for the video ? Should just clicking on the play button be considered sufficient to be counted as a view ? Some times it is decided to take say 10 seconds of playback or 2 mins of playback as a view. With the information collected by VdoCipher’s start and progress event trackers you can easily collect viewer information for your particular definition of a video view.

Start, End, Pause, Mute, Unmute events on video player

Please check this javascript code to capture the play and pause events from the embedded video player:
<script>		
function onVdoCipherAPIReady(){
    console.log("VdoCipher API init");
    var videoObjects = vdo.getObjects();
    var video_ = videoObjects[videoObjects - 1];
    video_.addEventListener("resume", function(){
        console.log("ready event called" , video_.time);
    });
    video_.addEventListener("pause", function(data){
        // document.getElementById('totalPlayed').value = video_.totalPlayed;
    });
    }
</script>
You can similarly listen for “start”, “end” and “mute”, “unmute”.

Time Calculation per video playback

<div id="vdo<?= $OTP ?>" style="height: 300px; width: 520px;"></div>
<input type="text" id="totalPlayed" value="" />

/// this is the embed code

<script>
    (function(v,i,d,e,o){v[o]={}; v[o].a = v[o].a || function V(a){ (v[o].d=v[o].d||[]).push(a);};
    if(!v[o].l) { v[o].l=1*new Date(); a=i.createElement(d), m=i.getElementsByTagName(d)[0];
    a.async=1; a.src=e; m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m);}
    })(window,document,'script','//de122v0opjemw.cloudfront.net/vdo.js','vdo');
    vdo.a({
        o: "<?= $OTP ?>",
    });
</script>

/// this is the script

<script>		
function onVdoCipherAPIReady(){
    console.log("VdoCipher API init");
    var videoObjects = vdo.getObjects();
    var video_ = videoObjects[0];
    video_.addEventListener("ready", function(data){
        console.log("ready event called" , data);
    });
    video_.addEventListener("progress", function(data){
        document.getElementById('totalPlayed').value = data.totalPlayed;
    });
    }
</script>
 
Note: The function wrapper with onVdoCipherAPIReady is needed only when it is part of the document load. If this script is to be run after document load, you can run it directly.
Let us know for any custom tracking functionality you require. Most of them are possible with a combination of the above scripts.

WP eMember as WordPress Membership Plugin: User Management Tutorial

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In this post we will describe in detail one of the most popular WordPress membership plugins – WP eMember. Membership plugins are necessary to manage users. Each membership corresponds to a user role, which determines access to content and other features on your website. 

Using this WordPress membership plugin would help you in deciding what content to provide to which category of learner. Control of access to content eventually determines that you are able to monetize your content. We discuss how to implement Per user restriction on login time and preventing unauthorized access so that one paid member has maximum restrictions from sharing their access credentials.  We have given the links to plugins at the end.

The biggest utility of membership plugins is to protect content in a Learning Management system. For suggestions on free LMS plugins to use in WordPress check this blog on Free WordPress LMS.

Specific case of protection for video membership site is also written in brief at end. Overall aim of the article is to ensure that maximum revenues from your content reaches you while you are able to continuously grow your subscriber base. 

WP eMember, WordPress membership plugin

WordPress user access management

Membership 2 WordPress Plugin

WordPress Membership plugin is one of the most popular free membership plugins. This is the wizard page in the plugin, and guides you about how to set up your eLearning site.

WP eMember

WordPress eMember is a plugin that helps you manage memberships to your content. eMember offers various customizations – including integration with WordPress so that any account created for eMember would automatically make a corresponding WordPress account. You may make multiple membership levels depending on the level of access decided for the user. For example for a basic trial access to the site you may give users free access to a certain amount of content, or for a limited period of time. For this a free membership may be created. 

WP eMember plugin - a WordPress Membership Plugin

Selective content protection and access

To protect content you can use two methods

  • Enabling custom protection and access through dashboard
  • Using shortcodes
Custom Protection
  • To enable general protection, go to the “WP eMember” button on the WordPress sidebar, and in the drop down menu go to “Membership Level” button.
  • From here go to the “Manage Content Protection” tab. Click on “Custom Posts” to see all the posts that make up your content. To protect some or all of these posts, select them and click on the “General Protection” option in the drop down menu at the top of the page. General Protection restricts access to all the posts that you select (you can select all posts or pick specific posts for protection). 
  • After access restriction, the next step is to grant access according to the membership levels. For this go to the same drop down menu as the General Protection option, and select each membership levels. The resulting files will be files that are restricted from access.
  • You can select the files for which you want to grant access , and after selecting, click the “Grant Access” button. You can make various membership levels, each differentiated by the number of pages that access is granted to.
Using shortcodes

Alternatively, partial content protection may be implemented using this wordpress membership plugin. For this you can make use of shortcodes to grant partial access to pages. Suppose you have two membership levels, Membership Regular and Membership Lite. You might wish to grant access to only the Membership Regular users, having level id 4. For this you can use the shortcode:

“[emember_protected for=4]”

“[/emember_protected]”

Suppose that level id 3 corresponds to Membership Lite. You can grant access to a section to both Membership Regular and Lite users. To do that you can enclose it in this shortcode:

“[emember_protected for=3-4]”

Note that membership levels to which access is to be granted are added using the dashes. Without specifying the membership ids, ie “[emember_protected]” – content is limited to logged in users only, including free registered users.

General eMember settings

WP eMember offers multiple options using which you can customize membership experience of users. These include the option to:

  • Decide if you wish to grant free memberships
  • Offer attractive login page – so that a popup appears rather than redirecting to a login page
Limited muliple logins To Your WordPress Membership Plugin
  • Limiting number of IPs used from a membership per day, so as to discourage password sharing
  • Disabling simultaneous login, again to discourage password sharing
Encouraging Membership Renewals

eMember also has features that encourage memberships renewals upon expiry. These include

  • Triggering auto expiry email notifications shortly before account expiry date
  • Allowing expired memberships to move to free membership status, to protect continuity
  • Generating special renewal membership links.

Besides this, eMember offers options for integration into wordpress, so that logging in to eMember would automatically log you into wordpress. The very large number of customization options that WP eMember offers makes it one of the most useful WordPress membership plugin.

Drip Content

You can structure access to your learners so that the release of course material is done periodically. This method of releasing course material, called drip content management, limits the amount of information accessible at once to the user. This prevents your learners from being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the course. The auto-upgrade feature in this WordPress membership plugin allows for dripped content management, although this entails making multiple courses.

Auto-upgrade feature

According to this feature, using WP eMember you may upgrade a member taking Module 1 of your course to Module 2 automatically after a thirty day period (or a 7-day period, according to how you wish to structure your course). So, if there are say 5 modules to one course, each module to be accessed 30 days from the previous module, you may time the auto upgrade feature so that

Module 1 -> 2: 30 days from start of course
Module 2 -> 3: 60 days from start of course
Module 3 -> 4: 90 days from start of course
Module 4 -> 5: 120 days from start of course

Pros and Cons of Drip Content Management

There is a debate regarding the merits of drip content management policy – a negative of this approach is that it dictates that learners follow the particular pace with which you have structured the course. The other side of the coin is that you are ensuring that you do not overwhelm your learners with too much information.

Prevent Concurrent Login plugin with WordPress Membership Plugin

A major concern for eLearning site managers is the possibility that their content may be shared by multiple users using a single login. Password sharing is a problem that eMember does address, through the previously mentioned settings of limiting number of IPs and the option to disable concurrent login.

In case the WordPress membership plugin that you use does not have the option to prevent simultaneous logins, a plugin that that specifically prevents concurrent login is the “Prevent Concurrent Login” plugin. This is a plugin that you only need to activate, and store in the Must Use category of plugins, for it to run silently in the background. It then by default prevent access to your membership system from multiple systems at the same time. You may use this plugin with any wordpress membership plugin, including the widely used WordPress Membership 2 plugin, and Wishlist Member, both of which rival WP eMember in popularity.

Video Membership site with eMember

For many premium video businesses like elearning & media , the necessity to protect video content from piracy by so many free downloaders, plugins , hacks is a must. Most of video streaming providers like youtube, vimeo, or self hosting doesnot allow for any protection. To restrict the access of your video content to only only your subscribers on wordpress, VdoCipher has come up with a secure video streaming solution based on encryption and watermarking.

The plugin enables you to use a custom short code. You can use the plugin and the shortcode with any wordpress membership plugin. Also as explained in the eMember section protection code, you can design your course to allow free registered access to trial learners and paid membership for the video. For this you only need to place the VdoCipher shortcode inside the sectional protection shortcode.

Links:

WordPress page for the e-member plugin

Prevent concurrent Login plugin

VdoCipher secure video streaming account signup, 5 GB Free Trial

WordPress course plugin to make course website – Sensei tutorial

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Building a course website in WordPress is a great way to monetize your education content. It is being done quite effectively by individuals and companies across the globe. In this blog post we shall walk you through the steps necessary to install the very useful Sensei wordpress course plugin. Using Sensei, you can set up WordPress to sell online courses. By using the plugins features and integrating them with secure Vdocipher player for videos, you can sell online courses to your target audience more effectively.

The quality and security of videos is the USP for most companies that wish to sell online courses. VdoCipher provides the required necessary offerings so that you may not lose customers to piracy and your students have a great experience.

Installing Sensei as a wordpress course plugin

It is assumed that you have WordPress already installed on your system. Sensei is a paid plugin. To buy the course plugin you would have to buy the course directly from their parent site WooCommerce here. Prices as of October 2016 for the Sensei plugin are $129 for the single site version.

makes Sensei to sell online courses, along with VdoCipher for secure video hosting

Use Sensei to sell online courses

On buying the Sensei WordPress course plugin you could download the plugin file in zip format. To activate the plugin you would need to copy the license key that you will find in your Woothemes account to the wordpress interface for activation. After activation you will get this:

wordpress course plugin for secure video hosting

List of wordpress plugins

Using Sensei – Courses, Modules and Lessons

Sensei allows for a layered structuring for courses – each course can be divided into multiple modules, which can contain the relevant lessons. A module can itself be divided into sub-modules, and therefore this LMS allows for considerable flexibility in how you might wish to structure and present your course.

The first step is to therefore create a course. After creating your course, you can create a module, and select the relevant course in which the module is to be integrated. Lessons can then be created within the modules, and you can easily integrate videos within lessons using the steps given below.

Lessons are easily designed to help sell online courses

Setting up a lesson

As shown above, the interface to create a lesson is quite straightforward in Sensei. The ease with which a multi-layered course can be built using Sensei is why we recommend that you use this LMS to sell online courses.

For managing learners, Sensei has tabs for Analysis, Grading and Learner Management. Using Sensei you can track the updates to the course through the Data Updates tab. The simplicity of these options mean that teachers and site administrators can easily manage learners taking their courses. Because of this as a site administrator you can improve your site more effectively using learner feedback.

Quiz implementation in Sensei

Quizzes for grading learners can be added onto the end of the respective lessons. Using Sensei’s interface you can make multiple questions, decide whether passing the quiz is necessary to complete the course and the passing criteria. You may add questions directly to the lesson or add questions from a question bank. Questions may also be presented in a random manner.

Customization offered by Sensei to sell online courses

Sensei offers an additional WordPress course plugin – the Sensei Course Progress plugin – free of cost for monitoring course progress by lessons within a course (or within a module)

Sensei offers you control over who to allow to access the course. Access can be limited to registered users through their wordpress accounts, otherwise if you are using another plugin such as eMember or eShop to control access the feature to restrict access directly on Sensei may be left unused. We recommend using eMember to control membership access because of it allows you to create multiple membership levels depending on level of access.

Further customization allows for private messages between learners and teachers – enabling this functionality may depend upon the targeted size of learners and the ability of teachers to participate.

Sensei offers Javascript functionality in terms of a dynamic bar providing information about percentage of course completed, while My Courses tab also uses Javascript. These functionalities may also be disabled.

Have a look at the following screenshots to learn about additional customization offered by Sensei.

sensei wordpress course plugin

Sensei Shortcodes

Sensei offers a number of shortcodes by which you can remind learners of all available courses, accessible by categories such as teachers. You may also add shortcodes for courses being taken by the learner, additional courses that the learner may take, and user messages.

All available courses [sensei_courses]

Courses per user [sensei_user_courses] (the previous shortcode [usercourses] is no longer supported)

Course page [sensei_course_page id = “123”]

Unpurchased courses [sensei_unpurchased_courses]

Secure Video Streaming in Sensei

To prevent illegal video download , sharing and provide best streaming experience to your viewers, we at VdoCipher provide ready to use video wordpress course plugin. The plugin runs at backend and allows encrypted streaming + viewer watermark player embed on your site. It is compatible with any other plugins you use in your wordpress. VdoCipher has education customers all across 6 continents using us. To install VdoCipher plugin on your wordpress account, you first need to create an account at VdoCipher.com. A trial account at VdoCipher can be made for free. You can upload & stream upto 5GB worth of content for secure video streaming. With each video that you would have uploaded you would have a corresponding video id.

The video can then be embedded onto the lesson by applying the following code: [vdo id="id_of_video"] For example: [vdo id="123abc4d56e7fg89shi12"]

User Registration, Analytics, Themes, Grading with Sensei

Sensei is a complete e-learning suite and involves easy to use management features to do the above implementation.

A note on Woocommerce

WooCommerce is an ecommerce wordpress plugin and necessarily works at backend of Sensei. So, first installation of Woocommerce is needed and then sensei. It is free and is compatible with all major plugins including ours.

Important Elearning blogs from VdoCipher

Why not to self host videos for your course web site?

How to make money from education videos: Some models & key considerations ?

Encrypted Video Streaming: How VdoCipher is far ahead of Others in Security ?

Watermark user/time specific dynamic variables on WordPress videos

For a free full version 5 GB  free trial at VdoCipher , Register.

VdoCipher package Workflow and demo – Secure video streaming

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Here is a brief video detailing the features that we offer at VdoCipher, supplemented by screen demos.

 

Here is our statistical research on the prevalence of piracy – we studied usage of piracy tools worldwide in terms of number of unique downloads from video hosting sites. Every 4th computer seems to be using video download tool to pirate content from video streaming sites.

Register for a free full version secure video streaming trial at VdoCipher.