With Ensemble Video’s collaboration and sharing features, you can easily create a video showcase Web site for your organization. If you have lots of compelling content across your organization, a showcase Web site can be a real winner! ABC.

Many organizations that use Ensemble Video find that video is being created and used by several different departments or individuals throughout the organization. Video is a powerful medium, and tools for creating good quality video are now inexpensive and easy to learn and use.

As your organization builds out its media libraries, you can maximize the value of your investment in video by building a single searchable video repository where users and departments from across the organization can share and publish their video content. This is referred to as a “video showcase” Web site, and this concept was one of the initial drivers behind the publishing and sharing capabilities of Ensemble Video. The Syracuse University Video Showcase is a well-known example of this phenomenon: http://video.syr.edu 

Example situations where a showcase Web site can be useful include:

• A high school teacher wants to organize contributions from across her school district to create a shared library of educational content around a specific discipline.
• A university wants to create a multimedia research resource with contributions from multiple academic units engaged in a multidisciplinary research initiative.
• A K-12 consortium wants to create a shared, searchable repository of regional professional development sessions to cost-effectively extend professional development opportunities across the region.
• A state government agency wants to coordinate content contributions from across state agencies to create a single multimedia destination that supports economic development or some other strategic initiative.
• A large corporation which has several Web sites -- where marketing, public relations, and other external content is published -- wants to create a single central repository of institutional content.

Setting Up a Video Showcase

To create a showcase Web site, an Ensemble Video “department” creates a Web-site video library using QuickPublish, the Ensemble HTML Plug-In, or the Simple Publishing API. Let’s call this Ensemble department the “showcase department” – this showcase department then gives other Ensemble Video departments permission to share content with it, so it can be published to the showcase Web site.

To assign permissions, a content administrator in the showcase department goes into the Administration tab and, through the Sharing control, adds a Share for every department that will be allowed to contribute to the showcase Web site. This grants permission to these departments to share content with the showcase department.

Once this has been done, every time a contributing department publishes a video, it will have the option to also share it with the showcase department, via a check-box in the Sharing form in the video Add/Edit wizard.

When departments choose to share a video, it will show up in the Shared Library tab for the showcase department, so content administrators in the showcase department can publish it to the showcase Web site.

At Syracuse University, where the video showcase concept was first deployed, just about all of the Ensemble Video departments have been given access to publish directly to the Syracuse University Video Showcase. You can see a list of all contributing departments here: http://video.syr.edu/Contributors.aspx

If you create a showcase Web site, and you trust the departments you’re working with, you may not want to to take time to view and publish shared videos yourself. In that case, you can grant other departments Direct Publishing permission, so they can publish to the showcase Web site without your intervention.

To grant Direct Publishing permission, first make sure you add a Share for the department (see above), then using the Direct Publishing control, which is also in the Administration tab, grant them access to publish directly to your Showcase Web site.

Once you do that, then when these departments go to Share a video in the Add/Edit wizard, they will see a checkbox for your department, plus checkboxes for the Showcase Web site and categories.

Summary

A showcase Web site enables you to build a valuable resource that can also speak volumes about the great things that are going on throughout your organization. It is very easy in Ensemble Video to set up the permissions for the required sharing. Different approaches are available depending on the filtering you want to exert before content goes live on your showcase Web site.