Mogulus and Ustream are two of the most
interesting web based live video streaming services available to
budding live web broadcasters.
Together with other similar (but not quite as accessible) tools
such as Stickam,
Operator11, Kyte.tv, they offer
infinite
bandwidth and storage space to broadcast your live
video stream over the Internet with no audience limits.
Almost everyone interested in live
video streaming has asked me at one point or another whether
Mogulus is better than Ustream and what I would recommend using.
While the others also have very interesting features
and
capabilities, my preference so far has gone to Ustream
and Mogulus
for a number of different reasons:
- They have a more professional and credible marketing
strategy. - They have specific feature sets.
- Both companies have made
themselves open to conversations and exchanges. - They have provided direct
support. - They have done their best to engage in a sincere two-way
conversation while trying to further improve their product.
It is possible that some of the competing services I am not
focusing
on here, have made significant improvements and changes to their
services, and that they have surpassed the two services I have selected
for comparison, in some specific respect.
If you have access to this
type of information, please feel free to contribute your own comments
and opinions at the end of this article.
Here is my personal review of how
Ustream.tv and Mogulus.com
stand against each other on all of the critical functionalities,
features, and management aspects of their free live video broadcasting
services.
Choosing which one is most appropriate between
the two for your own use is really a matter of cases; it
all depends on what you want to do.
While Ustream is a perfect match for those seeking simplicity
and
immediacy as they focus mostly on purely live events, Mogulus’ ideal
users may include web TV channel providers wanting to focus on creating
“compilation-based” thematic channels.
Or those people who have a deep interest in using
multiple cameras and for having live video guests on-air while
providing a more pro-tv-like viewer experience.
Ustream Vs. Mogulus: Live Video Streaming Challenge
Text Chat
Ustream: Ustream integrates a
full text chat
facility that can also be easily embedded on any web site or blog web
page. The embedded text chat facility suffers from few minor hiccups
including text chat login and the text chat help system which is all
automatic. If they work they are fine, but when they don’t it’s real
frustration.
No auto-URL support (when you type a URL in the chat it
automatically
becomes a clickable URL) no chat saving or history capabilities.
Mogulus: No text chat facility
available.
Audio / Video Controls
Ustream: Ustream
provides easy and well organized controls to start and stop recording,
to start and stop broadcasting as well a specific facility to monitor
reception and fine controls for video quality, frame
rate and audio volume and quality too.
Mogulus: Mogulus provides only
the basic default
A/V controls that are embedded by default within the Flash player.
There is no additional interface layer or control, outside of a video
quality setting that allows for three possible levels:
Video Recording
Ustream: A full audio and video
recording facility
is available inside Ustream since the early days. For many independent
online publishers this is a vital tool, especially if, like in this
case, it allows me to take my video recordings out to other video
sharing sites without too many problems.
Recordings are saved in .flv
(Flash video) video format and with the appropriate procedures this can
be easily converted to other formats, edited and uploaded to major
video sharing sites.
Ustream does an excellent job also of archiving
and making it easy to access all recorded video clips to both the
broadcaster as well as to his/her video community.
Mogulus: Mogulus
has added recording only recently
(Sept. 14th 07) and judging from the positioning and accessibility of
this feature, full recording is not really as much a key priority for
Mogulus as it is for Ustream.
In fact, while Ustream makes it easy for
you to record and download any recordings of your video broadcasts you
do, Mogulus had hidden its recording facility under a hard-to-remember
keyboard shortcut until two weeks ago.
Now that it has made
recording fully available through a new addition to the interface it
prohibits you from being able to download such video recordings to your
own computer and to edit or re-publish them to other sites.
Mogulus
wants to build its walled garden of quality content coming from its own
publishers, but while the idea may hold promise, harsh reality shows
user frustration and the broadcaster circumventing Mogulus restrictions
by recording the shows in open formats via self-managed means (as by
using Techsmith
Camtasia).
On the positive side Mogulus makes it easy to re-broacast any
of the
live programming you have recorded and to easily schedule it inside an
easy to manage playlist of videos.
Multiple Cameras
Mogulus: Mogulus was born and
designed with the
idea of re-constructing the scenario and facilities available to a
traditional small TV broadcaster, including a small video switcher
facility allowing the broadcaster to easily cue in and send on-air any
other selected live Mogulus broadcaster.
Ustream: Does not offer this
capability natively.
To be able to do so you need to add additional low-cost commercial
software like WebcamMax. It is true that if multiple cameras are
connected to the same broadcasting computer, it is possible to simply
switch from one to the other.
What is not possible is to invite other
online video broadcasters to join into a show and to mix them into the
live show.
Video Quality
Ustream: You as a broadcaster
have a lot of control
over the video quality of your stream as Ustream provides you with fine
controls for video frame (1-25) rate as well as for video
compression
level (1-90).
In the near future, and already now on Robin Good TV and
a few selected other Ustream video streaming channels, new video
encoding components provide video quality that is indeed significantly
better (smoother motion, higher frame rate) than what competing
services are offering now.
Mogulus: Only the basics are
provided here with a
control slider offering only three positions to control video quality:
low, mid, high. It is not specified within Mogulus what variables are
affected and how by this control.
Titling and Branding
Mogulus: All. Mogulus goes out of
its way in making
it as easy as possible for the live video broadcaster to insert titles,
scrolling credits, information ticker, a station logo and more to fully
brand and professionally title all broadcasts as it is done in the
mainstream television industry.
If you want your live video streaming
channel to take advantage of these advanced features Mogulus really has
all you need in this direction and keeps improving it day by day.
Ustream: None. Ustream does not
offer any facility
to title the live video stream as it is being broadcast, nor it offers
any way to easily brand one’s own video channel.
Video Aggregation
Mogulus: Mogulus provides a full
dedicated facility
to create and edit video playlists. The video clips can be either
uploaded directly from your computer or they can be selected from video
clips already available on YouTube.
This allows any Mogulus broadcaster
to easily compile quality thematic channels with any number of
pre-selected video clips and to easily program them for broadcast into
scheduled compilations.
Ustream: None.
Interaction Features
Ustream: On the interactivity
front Ustream has
long been providing viewers with the possibility to chat back, rate,
comment and join broadcasters via a series of simple to use links
available on each broadcaster web page on Ustream.
More recently
Ustream has also added a live polling facility and an applaudometer
which was meant to provide viewers with a real-time feature to express
their appreciation of a show at any moment during it.
Mogulus: None. No text chat, no
comments, no rating or polling facilities are now available on Mogulus.
Service Performance
Ustream: Historically, Ustream
has always been,
very simple, straightforward, and easy to use. Performance, outside
short server upgrade pauses that Ustream has endured in the past, has
always been very good. Fast and responsive just like you would expect
it.
No heavy interface to load, no heavy processing or complex
code to
be run on your machine.
Mogulus: As Mogulus had built a
bad reputation for
itself when it came to performance and accessibility, it has now been
working hard in the last two months to significantly improve these
critical aspects of its web-based live video streaming
service.
While
in the past, many computers could not handle the processing
requirements that Mogulus would hand down to your innocent machine, now
things are indeed much better.
Mogulus performance is much more snappy
and moving around the different
modules and facilities is now within the reach of most any
recent computer.
Business Model
Ustream: Free. I really wonder
how they are going
to pay back for all the good they are giving out, but what I can say
for sure is that they have not charged me a dime so far for all that I
have done with their service.
Mogulus: Free for now. Paid in
the future depending
on traffic and bandwidth use.
Though Mogulus has not published or
officialized anywhere its business model strategy for the future, both
in my original interview with Max Haot, CEO of Mogulus and in later
unofficial talks I have had with him, he has confirmed that Mogulus
will offer both options.
There will be a free option that will insert ads inside
programming,
every so many minutes (this is really something I do not welcome at
all) as well as a paid one based on the amount of bandwidth your live
video streaming channel needs.
Community
Ustream: Ustream has strong
community features
built-in into its service since it inception. People can comment, join
a broadcaster, rate, comment and send messages directly to each
other.
Though a visual shareable widget showcasing each broadcaster
own
community (as MyBlogLog does) would be a much welcome and useful
addition, Ustream has certainly at this time a strong lead in providing
each broadcaster with tools and facilities to further involve, inform
and market video content to your own community of fans.
Mogulus: None.
Show Promotion
Ustream: The editorial newsroom
behind Ustream does
a heck of a job daily in spotting great live shows and bringing them to
the home page of Ustream, while also promoting, at their own cost and
expense the best and most interesting shows broadcast by their
community.
I have always been very impressed with Ustream ability to
market and promote my own programming without me even asking for it.
While I am sure they cannot do this for everyone, I see them extremely
open to user contributions and advice and therefore if you have a great
show and want to promote it on Ustream you need only to let them
know.
Follow the links provided in the Ustream home page and look at
how
other broadcasters are promoting their own shows. Collect some good
pictures or design a good promotion box for your own show and send it
in to the Ustream guys.
They will be more than happy to gve visibility
to anything new that is interesting and unique.
Mogulus: Mogulus has a “Watch”
page in which you see listed some of its “top”
broadcasters. Unfortunately there has been very little promotion for
the individual broadcasters so far outside of the individual posts that
Mogulus CEO Max Haot makes from time to time on the official
Mogulus blog.
The Watch page is also accessible only to registered users
that are
logged in, something that Ustream on the other hand does not impose on
its viewers.
Sharing – Distribution – Embed Player
Ustream: A standard embeddable
player, resizable to
most any size you need is always available for any Ustream video
recording you complete. Ustream provides with a piece of code that you
need only to copy and paste in your web page.
The embedded player
provided by Ustream has a trasparent background, and providers viewers
controls that include audio muting, number of viewers and the option to
pause the video stream.
Mogulus: Mogulus does allow to
share and embed your
own video channel using a standard widget-like approach very similar to
Ustream. Mogulus embeddable player is not as flexible as Ustream and
requires a little more setting up to be configured to work the way you
want to.
What is next to impossible to do natively with Mogulus is
recording a clip during a live stream and make that video clip
available on other video sharing sites like YouTube. Mogulus does not
provide a downloadable file, and the video recordings you complete can
only be used inside a Mogulus channel.
Support
Ustream: Great help and prompt
feedback
characterizes the people at Ustream support. They always go out of
their way to help out and they do listen openly to all feedback and
criticism provided.
Mogulus: The support team at
Mogulus is also
responsive and attentive to feedback but it appears less reactive, and
probably a bit overloaded by too many issues to deal with.
Technical
suggestions and feature advice I have provided in the past has always
been taken into serious consideration and more than one of my desires
has already turned itself into a new Mogulus feature.
Notwithstanding
these good notes I have caught Mogulus jumping a few of its own set
deadlines, delivery times and feature release schedule.
This doesn’t
mean they are not making progress, but it certainly signals that at
least for the recent past they have had incurred in lots of
organizational and development issues.
When Is It Better to Use Mogulus and When Is It Better to Use
Ustream?
- For live shows with you, the presenter only,
nothing beats Ustream
in my humble opinion. - For live shows where you want to coordinate
and broadcast multiple reporters from different places,
nothing beats Mogulus. - For aggregating video clips from different
sources and to create highly thematic non-live video
content channels nothing beats Splashcast,
but Mogulus
comes as a great second. - For doing your own live show in which you
want to play video clips of news, or other contributed
content in between your own introductions and comments, Mogulus is the
tool to adopt.
Editor’s Recommendations
My personal feeling is that both these live broadcasting video
services have their use and application and their unique
characteristics make them not direct competitors but rather
complementary tools for different uses.
For those of you more interested in creating
your professional
looking
web television channels, especially if you want to do branding, use
pro-looking titles and captions as well as having multiple cameras
contributing or live guests connecting from other locations, Mogulus is
positively the service choice.
Mogulus is also the service of choice for those of you, who
may
prefer to create on-demand thematic video chanels where selected video
clips are aggregated from selected sources.
On the other hand, Ustream is the service of
choice for those looking for a simple,
straightforward, immediate and easy to use live video streaming service
that does all of the basics, provides fine controls for audio and video
quality and gives you everything you need to share, download and
republish your best video recordings wherever you want.
Ustream is also great for impromptu
streaming as in
launching rapidly a live video session from the middle of nowhere with
just a couple of clicks. This is why I have selected it always in the
past when operating with my
mobile live video streaming setup, the Robinpad.
Depending on what you need to do,
you may find either one of these two great live video streaming
services better fitting your own online broadcasting needs.
Originally written by Robin Good for Master New Media
and titled: “Ustream
vs. Mogulus: Which Live Video Streaming And Broadcasting Service Is
Better?” on October 8th 2007. Some Rights Reserved.
