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What is an OTT CMS?
An OTT CMS, or Over-The-Top Content Management System, is a vital solution that enables content owners to ingest, manage, and distribute their content to an OTT audience. It serves as the control centre for the end-to-end OTT workflow, offering a comprehensive set of functionalities. With an OTT CMS, content owners can gain insights into workflow status, integrate vendors across the value chain, and ensure seamless content delivery.
Why is an OTT CMS crucial in OTT video streaming services?
In this article, we focus on clarifying the role and significance of an OTT CMS in building a successful OTT video streaming service. As the OTT industry is rife with terms such as Online Video Platform, Video Streaming Platform, and Content Management System, it's essential to understand the key distinctions. This understanding is crucial because the terminologies used in requests for proposals (RFPs) and vendor comparisons can vary, making it challenging for prospects and customers to evaluate solutions effectively.
According to a Frost & Sullivan report, a lack of understanding of the value proposition of an Online Video Platform (OVP) is one of the top challenges in the industry. The report emphasises the need to clarify what constitutes an OVP, given the multitude of features associated with the term. While the definition of an OVP is a good starting point, it alone does not answer the whole equation. Therefore, we will delve further into the meaning and significance of an OTT CMS.
Defining OTT and OVP
Before we explore the concept of an OTT CMS, let's briefly clarify the terms "OTT" and "OVP." OTT refers to over-the-top media services delivered directly to viewers via the internet, bypassing traditional cable, broadcast, and satellite television platforms. On the other hand, an Online Video Platform (OVP) is a fee-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that empowers content owners to ingest, transcode, store, manage, protect, publish, syndicate, track, and monetise online video content (Frost & Sullivan)
Now that we have a foundation in place, let's delve into the specifics of what exactly constitutes an OTT CMS.
The end-to-end OTT video streaming service
Your end-to-end streaming service is, of course, more than just an OTT CMS. But since the OTT CMS plays a central role in controlling and connecting many services to work together end-to-end, let's start with a quick look at the areas typically included to offer a video streaming service to consumers.
- First, you need end-user applications that let you engage with consumers and enable them to find and watch your content on any device.
- You want the consumer to become a registered user and subscribe to your service, and, depending on your subscription model, you might need a way for the consumer to pay. Maybe it is ad-based, and you will need an integration with an ad server.
- You might want to use a recommendation engine to promote the right content to your consumers based on their previous behaviour.
- You want to track user behaviour in your service to gain insights, so you need the data to be sent to an analytics platform.
It is essential that the OTT CMS be easy to integrate with, and, perhaps more importantly, that many integrations are already in place so you can easily assemble your preferred end-to-end ecosystem.
The OTT CMS acts as the control centre for your end-to-end workflow and is required to provide a clear overview of the status of many of the surrounding services in your solution. You want a single place to monitor the entire workflow.
The Scope of an OTT CMS
Let's describe the basics of what constitutes an OTT CMS. Basically, you need to be able to do three things, in addition to being the control centre:
- Get content into the system (ingest). The content is primarily metadata, images and video.
- Work with the content (content management). Structure, curate, promote, and enrich it to add information that serves its purpose for the end user: building engaging and compelling end-user experiences.
- Publish and make the content available for distribution in multiple outputs. Create the business rules that define availability across regions, languages, and multiple devices, blend in personalisation, and ensure you adhere to your content rights.
Let's look a little deeper into the basic functionality
Ingest of content
Ingesting content needs to be intuitive and straightforward.
There are multiple ways of ingesting content. The easiest way for non-technical staff is to create it through a user interface (UI). You type in all the relevant metadata, such as title, descriptions, and genre, and you upload images and the original video file, which then sends it through the transcoding pipeline. The upside is that it is easy; the downside is that it takes time as a manual task.
Another approach is to use a drop folder for the video file, along with an additional XML file containing the metadata. In the case of an AWS S3 bucket, you can use S3 Event Notifications to trigger the ingest workflow when a file is uploaded.
Yet another is through a feed ingest mechanism, where an MRSS file describes a collection of video assets, and with a reference to where the video file is located. The system will then retrieve the video file and send it through the video transcoding pipeline. By doing it programmatically, you can also use the available management APIs directly to ingest. This approach is often used when the OTT CMS is integrated with an upstream broadcast system or a Media Asset Management System (MAM).
* A MAM is also a system for managing media content, videos and metadata. The metadata is quite often more technical in its description of the video content. The MAM system also stores the original video files, in addition to those prepared for distribution to OTT services.
The latest addition to all of this is through content connectors. Content connectors are ready-made plugins that make it easy to search and import content from third-party systems directly into the OTT CMS. You get presented with a preview of the available content in the system you are integrating with. Through the UI, you just mark the ones you want to ingest.
Manage your content
Once the content is available in your OTT CMS, you can work on it through the UI.
Typically, you want to enrich your content with additional metadata, perform quality control by reviewing the various video formats available, ensure that all episodes are available in the season, and that all subtitles in all languages are present, and promote your content for end-user applications by curating it and building curated lists.
You might want to add time-based metadata to your videos as well, such as creating chapter marks for each goal in a football match or marking the different news stories in your 9 pm news. Or you could even be more creative and mark the start of the most action-filled scene in a James Bond movie, enabling functionality to jump to that scene in your highlights reel. Maybe you also want to add trailers and additional material to the main video asset.
For the editorial team, adding time-based metadata can be a vital part of creating a more engaging user experience. To truly empower the editorial team to improve the viewer experience, they need data and insights into how the various pieces of content perform. For an OTT CMS that does not also handle end-user traffic, this data will not be available to build insights from.
This is key in defining the value proposition of an OTT CMS: Editorial staff can add additional value to the services by improving the end-user experience through metadata enrichment, specialised for the OTT services
In addition to work performed manually by the editorial team, you also want automation. The purpose of automation is to eliminate mundane, repetitive tasks. An example is to make the portal live through scheduled publishing or to ensure updates to the curated and featured lists of content throughout the day. Here, flexible and well-documented workflows and APIs are key.
You also need to ensure that you adhere to content rights, meaning that content is published or unpublished according to the rights you have acquired. Can the content also be available offline? Do you need to add DRM protection? Geo-blocking? All of this is typically controlled by an OTT CMS, with integrations with services providing the core functionality.
Content also needs to be structured and categorised. If you are to monetise content, you need to package the content and map it to the products you sell. You want to define product packages, their prices, and map the relevant content to the respective packages. And when a consumer hits play, you need to verify whether the user is authorised to watch the content.
Make the content available and distribute
Once you publish the content, it needs to be available in multiple outputs. The APIs need to offer business rules that define availability across different regions, languages, platforms, and devices, and to adhere to content rights windows. And of course, personalised based on your usage of the service.
You need efficient, flexible APIs to enable the discovery of content available in your system. In today's market, you need flexible, scalable APIs to reach a global audience. These APIs are used to build your consumer-facing apps and web portals, and need to be cost-efficient. It is worth noting that not everyone defines these scalable APIs as part of the OTT CMS. The reason is that the non-functional requirements are fundamentally different from the backend editorial workflow. An OTT CMS with scalable consumer APIs will enable you to collect valuable usage data and gain insights into your consumers. A key differentiator in OTT services is the ability to know, in real time, exactly how much content has been consumed from your catalogue.
The control centre
The ability to control the various components that make up an OTT CMS is one of its key benefits. The OTT CMS needs to be flexible and offer well-documented APIs for integration. It also needs the ability to easily add new components and third-party integrations, and to enable flexibility in choosing the various best-of-breed components that you want in your service.
But what about other features that are typically associated with an OTT CMS?
What about transcoding - is that included?
Not the actual transcoding itself, but the workflow of starting the transcoding process, connecting the video outputs to the asset metadata, and ensuring status monitoring from retrieving the mezzanine file through distribution to a CDN. Again, controlling the flow of activities is needed to make the video available in the formats required.
Vimond VIA's orchestration features come with a pre-integrated video pipeline using AWS MediaConvert and AWS MediaPackage.
What about live - is that included?
Here, the answer will definitely differ between the vendors. Surely, on the metadata side, it can be treated and ingested much the same as for VOD content.
You can import the EPG (Electronic Program Guide) for linear live channels as asset metadata, make it available, and add information about when the program is live. Typically, you only reference the output of a live stream encoder to distribute the live content. You can also do it similarly for ad-hoc live events. But viewers typically expect you to also have built-in live-to-VOD capabilities.
Once the live event is over, you should be able to watch it on demand. Or even if you are 5 minutes late, you should be offered the option to see it from the beginning while the live event is still happening. So the level of integration with the live encoder varies, hence also limiting the functionality and control you have in the OTT CMS.
We call it VIA Live. VIA Live supports AWS MediaLive as an encoder and includes live-to-VOD capabilities.
In addition, we support referencing external encoders and live streaming services, where we handle and manage the metadata and can reference your existing live video setup directly.
End-user facing APIs and services
As mentioned earlier, because of differences in the non-functional requirements of a backend system and an end-user-facing service, some vendors do not offer scalable end-user-facing APIs. This can be worth noting if you are comparing two vendors. Even when APIs are well-written and cost-efficient, they remain a significant cost driver for any streaming service.
Vimond VIA comes with a cloud-native, cost-efficient, robust and highly scalable Content Delivery API, as we see it as an important component of an OTT CMS, giving you access to valuable consumer behaviour data.
Your place in the ecosystem and the marketplace
An OTT CMS needs to play well in an ecosystem of suppliers. Most streaming service solutions do not want vendor lock-in and demand that your OTT CMS building blocks work within an ecosystem of many other best-of-breed vendors. Being a central piece in the value chain where you are controlling the workflow, ease of integration is key.
Back in April 2012, AWS launched their AWS Marketplace, where you can find and buy pre-configured software for the AWS Cloud. It serves as an online store that makes it easy to find, compare, and start using the software you need for your business immediately. We also see this is happening in the OTT space. One example is the Accedo ONE Marketplace. Stein Erik Sørhaug, SVP AMECS, says:
“The Accedo ONE Marketplace gives customers that perfect one-stop shop for all the best-of-breed technologies that you need to build a successful OTT service.”
That clearly shows that ease of integration and interoperability need to be key criteria when choosing an OTT CMS.
Focus on your uniqueness - Let the OTT CMS handle the rest
Let the OTT CMS handle all the complexity of video streaming and content management, from ingestion and transcoding control to media management and video playback.
Our focus is to make it easy for you to ingest, manage, discover and distribute your content. Through well-defined, well-documented APIs, UIs, or content connectors, we are here to speed up your time-to-market for your content and streaming service.
We have everything you need to build a compelling, engaging video streaming service on top of our OTT CMS.
Broadcasters and media companies are embracing multiscreen OTT strategies. If you are looking for a full end-to-end solution, with devices ranging from web to phones, tablets, Apple TV, Roku, and CTVs, we have partnered with Accedo and its Accedo ONE platform.
If you have a preferred choice of live streaming product, VOD orchestration tool, DRM provider, CDN, subscription management product, recommendation engine or more - we are either pre-integrated already, or it is easy for you to do the integrations yourself. We do not need to control all the components; our core is the control centre for your content metadata and its workflows.
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1 Frost Sullivan - Global Online Video Platforms Market, Forecast to 2023
2 http://www.vodprofessional.com/2021/08/30/ott-question-time-41-ott-content-management-systems/
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-top_media_service