How to monitor user-generated content in a video world

Monitoring user-generated content

Unchecked user-generated video can create security problems. Monitoring the content of a video is as important as managing where it's published, Maldow said. If an unmonitored video is published, it could result in sensitive company information becoming public, he said.

Monitoring user-generated content primarily focuses on ensuring the video content is appropriate for the organization. Content needs to be monitored for factors like language, private information and potential copyright violations. Organizations should have a review system to avoid publishing unmonitored content.

Vendors that specialize in video streaming, management and distribution, such as Kaltura and Mediasite, enable organizations to set permissions for actions like publishing a video. Placing barriers, such as a designated person to approve video, prevents unvetted content from being published, Maldow said.

In addition to setting publishing permissions, video vendors can provide provisioning for access to published videos. Video tutorials or training material make sense for everyone to have, but not everyone in an organization needs access to a recording of a meeting that discusses quarterly projections, Maldow said.

Provisioning access to published content enables organizations to ensure videos with sensitive information are only seen by the appropriate parties, Lazar said.

AI management for user-generated content

Though not yet widely available, some vendors are exploring how AI can help with user-generated enterprise video management. Media management company Cloudinary, for example, uses AI to monitor and edit videos, auto tag videos, provide structured metadata and search video libraries. AI can also analyze video network traffic.

"Video files are huge; they take up a lot of space," Maldow said. "If someone posts a video and it suddenly starts getting a lot of traffic, it can eat up all of your bandwidth and prevent people from sending emails."

Some video platforms, such as Kaltura, offer AI-driven analytics for bandwidth and storage. These dashboards can track how much bandwidth video uses over time, as well as how storage space is being used for video. The information from these analytics tools enables organizations to better manage video traffic.

User-generated video needs storage and search functionality

Organizations that support user-generated video need to make uploaded videos easily searchable. Video is only effective if it's readily available when needed, Lazar said.

For example, someone could shoot a video tutorial explaining how to navigate a tool, instead of answering repeated emails from team members. Video needs to be tagged and stored in a way that's easily found, Maldow said. Tagging enables users to give a video searchable context by ascribing keywords about its content.

While some organizations have turned to consumer video hosting sites, like YouTube -- with its tagging system, playlist capabilities and familiar interface -- for their video hosting needs, they aren't the ideal option for enterprise video, Maldow said.

YouTube is a public site, and while videos on a channel can be set to private, it lacks the security measures and cohesive branding that an enterprise video channel will likely need. But video platform vendors, such as Mediasite, are including many of the same sought-after features, such as tagging and playlists.