Recently we came across an article called ''Top 15 interactive video software'' written by Spott. Most of you who are familiar with interactive videos would probably know Spott, they are into interactive videos as well and doing a very decent job on it.
Spott has endeavored to analyze at least fifteen platforms, which at the very least demonstrates that they are tracking the market, which is a respectable quality. However, the amusing aspect of the "interactive video market" is that, like comparing apples to pears, businesses with very limited simple interactive features and those with extremely comprehensive high-end solutions and high-tech platform offerings are sometimes lumped together.
Cinema8 is an interactive platform
‘’Cinema8 is an interactive video platform, which supports many kinds of video interactivity and user engagement on linear & 360 videos. The company also has a strong focus on interactive video software for education and adding gamification elements to its videos." As said by the Spott team.
Features include:
⦁ Add to basket
⦁ Image/ video
⦁ Clickable hotspots/buttons
⦁ 5 different question types
⦁ Action and conditional action
⦁ Drag-and-drop functionality’’
Yes, the aforementioned is accurate, albeit insufficient. The problem, though, is that this isn't the key quote: "Features Include"; this means that only some features are listed, not all of them. Therefore, why don't we at least begin by assisting our Spott colleagues in phrasing the aforementioned features correctly?
*Add to basket: Yes, you can do that, along with shoppable videos, product marketing, e-commerce content, and such. But adding to the basket isn’t enough is it – you can use the webhook function to realize it. Oh, there’s also a function for advertising that works just like Youtube.
*Image/video: What about HTML, after-effect imports, animated text, drawing, audio, countdowns, implementing other interactive videos, jumping to certain points in the video, subtitles, etc.?
*Question types: Actually, there are 6 and they are customizable. There are ready to be used different templates along with a toolbar for the client to create their question templates as well. But we shouldn’t forget about the introduction or form designer tools in which you can create surveys, lead generation, questionnaires, and such.
*Drag & Drop function: Yes, all interactive elements can be dragged and dropped into the video which provides excellent UX. No need for tech. knowledge, anyone can use it. There is no coding required and you get the embed code or the URL of the video immediately; no need for rendering or what.
While reading the article, we were curious about what sort of features were defined for the other 14 firms in the list. Some of them are:
*Dashboard: Really? Isn’t this like a fundamental must anyway 😊?
*Branching: It is no surprise that this wasn’t mentioned in our features as it is such an easy function within Cinema8 that we rarely bring it up in our client demos or meeting.
*Built-in analytics: We would have liked to have seen this on our list as we surely have the most bone-deep analytics there is. Starting with the bigger picture statistics you can dig down to a certain viewer’s answer to a specific question and download it for analysis. Whether you want to see the performance of the video or whether you want to track the viewers’ engagement – we’ve got it. Not to mention that we provide heatmaps to show what’s going on within the video each second.
*Support of multiple platforms: Cinema8 is a strong, economic storage & streaming platform. We have a globally spread infrastructure, working with the same vendor as Youtube does, hence giving the best quality when it comes to streaming videos. If the client is working with other streaming platforms, all can be integrated into our platform.
Cinema8 uniqueness
Now, I do believe we can talk about what matters – the Differentiators. Since there are so many, one gets confused about where to start to be honest.
Widgets: It is hard to explain what widgets are so please have a look at this link. In short, any interactive function you can think off can be defined as a widget. Cinema8 already provides you with unique +200 widgets and possibly that number is going to be 1000 by the end of ’22. However, clients can also write their widgets as well. Now that is called customization, differentiation, great service, and capability.
Hotspots? That’s mentioned in the article as well, but it is not defined as what a hotspot means. The sticky hotspot feature in Cinema8 includes an AI algorithm that works in the background and enables object segmentation & object tracking. Did you know that the Cinema8 technology can separate and differentiate items automatically so that you can put sticky hotspots for any of them to track & trigger any actions?
Talking about interactivity, but we haven’t spotted any features indicating AR/VR in the article! Well, our URLs work on headsets and as of Q4, you’d be also able to use the interactivity within this world as well. Doesn’t that kind of imply that we should be upper on the list?