Video Reviews

This is what I have been researching and testing for the past 3 days, I thought it would be quite simple to find a product that I could use for the Social Media Conference that was beginning on Thursday the 14th, January 2010.

Well it wasn’t quite that simple – so I am going to review a few for you so you don’t have to. Overall is was a very frustrating to find one that I felt would work. I was looking for a Video Webinar Platform, where not only just for the Conference, for my interviews for HeartJam.

What do Video Conferencing companies offer:

Multiple participants – usually up to 25 people
Upload slide presentations
Chat like IM
Polling
Video presentations
Monitor and manage participants
Multi-media, audio, webcams, chat,
Presenter sharing
Customer support – it varies, most often there isn’t
Recording the calls/video

Dimdim.com
My 1st choice was DimDim because it was recommended to me by several people.
The front end and demo’s were very good, you would think the backend would match. Here’s why it didn’t work for me:
1.My computer screen kept freezing this isn’t good if you are the moderator/host,
2. There was a 5 min delay in conversations
3. Bad echo’s
4. Customer service does not exist -What did exist were E-mails please read this article. Or we never have had these problems before. On their end, everything worked very well. From a Customer’s point of view it sucked. Even their survey asking me if I thought that they had knowledgeable articles? Truthfully, customer service is what I wanted, not answers via an e-mail and sending me to read an article. It’s a good thing that I did a couple of dry runs to test it. It would of been a nightmare during a live session with clients. I was very disappointed, I really liked what they were offering.
Pricing: 30 day Trial plans from $25.00 and up for 50 person meetings 2 webcams. Very reasonable pricing.. A free account is 2- people, 1 webcam (standard support, not sure what this means).

Sight Speed
They at least list what is required for equipment to run on their platform. They say you can run a MAC, however the browser must be Explorer 6 or higher. Mac’s don’t run Explorer. They do offer live support during business hours, until 6 pm. There isn’t a demo available on the site – frankly not very much information about how it works, other than listing their features. You buy a License to use their software. Also in the fine print Internet call rates apply, see their rate sheet. I didn’t demo it.
Pricing: A demo for 30 days with 10 people.
# of Seats Monthly Contract Annual Contract
1-4 Seats $19.95 per seat $189.95
5- Seats $89.95 per pack $895.95

What’s up with Video Conferencing Platforms?

This is what I have been researching and testing for the past 3 days, I thought it would be quite simple to find a product that I could use for the Social Media Conference that was beginning on Thursday the 14th.

We’ll it wasn’t quite that simple – so I am going to review a few for you so you don’t have to. Overall is was a very frustrating to find one that I felt would work. I was looking for a Video Webinar Platform, where not only just for the Conference, for my interviews for HeartJam.

What do Video Conferencing companies offer:

Multiple participants – usually up to 25 people
Upload slide presentations
Chat like IM
Polling
Video presentations
Monitor and manage participants
Multi-media, audio, webcams, chat,
Presenter sharing
Customer support – it varies, most often there isn’t
Recording the calls/video

Dimdim.com
My 1st choice was DimDim because it was recommended to me by several people.
The front end and demo’s were very good, you would think the backend would match. Here’s why it didn’t work for me:
1.My computer screen kept freezing this isn’t good if you are the moderator/host,
2. There was a 5 min delay in conversations
3. Bad echo’s
4. Customer service does not exist -What did exist were E-mails please read this article. Or we never have had these problems before. On their end, everything worked very well. From a Customer’s point of view it sucked. Even their survey asking me if I thought that they had knowledgeable articles? Truthfully, customer service is what I wanted, not answers via an e-mail and sending me to read an article. It’s a good thing that I did a couple of dry runs to test it. It would of been a nightmare during a live session with clients. I was very disappointed, I really liked what they were offering.
Pricing: 30 day Trial plans from $25.00 and up for 50 person meetings 2 webcams. Very reasonable pricing.. A free account is 2- people, 1 webcam (standard support, not sure what this means).

Sight Speed
They at least list what is required for equipment to run on their platform. They say you can run a MAC, however the browser must be Explorer 6 or higher. Mac’s don’t run Explorer. They do offer live support during business hours, until 6 pm. There isn’t a demo available on the site – frankly not very much information about how it works, other than listing their features. You buy a License to use their software. Also in the fine print Internet call rates apply, see their rate sheet. I didn’t demo it.
Pricing: A demo for 30 days with 10 people.
# of Seats Monthly Contract Annual Contract
1-4 Seats $19.95 per seat $189.95
5- Seats $89.95 per pack $895.95

VoxWire
It’s built on Flash, which is a problem for some computers.. it takes a lot of memory. Even though they say it works on Mac, it really doesn’t.. We tried both Safari and Firefox browsers to connect to the service. My computer has more than enough capabilities to use their service and my system was checked by their system check.

I invited 2 other people in the meeting and we couldn’t connect or if we did, one person couldn’t hear what the other person, or one person couldn’t see the other. What it came down to was have one person be the presenter and the other people listen. We couldn’t get beyond the test, finally one of the testers dropped out in frustration.

My mouse kept freezing up because, Mac’s don’t seem to work well with flash, you need to unplug any speakers so you don’t get the echo. They at least have better customer service. Bob came on to answer a couple of questions and said “If we have any questions someone would respond in a hour, via e-mail.

Pricing: A 30 day trial, however they do have $1. service charge to try it out. after your 30 days they start charging your card $39.00 per month. you are limited to 20 people per meeting.

Mikogo.com
I am just watching the videos 1st. http://www.mikogo.com, It doesn’t look like it does it what I want it to. My tester said, “No it doesn’t – and it’s limited to 25 – they’re offering other stuff that you’d have to pay for.”  I will be testing this later this week. They say it’s free..?? Some of my friends love it!

VivU.com
ViVu provides web-based solutions for event organizers to create, conduct, and manage large-scale high quality video events as effortlessly as they do with audio conference calls today. Viewers can participate from any platform (PC or MAC) without any proprietary downloads right from their browser. ViVu’s event platforms are easily scalable and can support large events with thousands of participants.

Their customer service is a forum.. no posts as of yet. I didn’t demo it, I however sent the Sales team a couple of questions via a form on their website on 2 days ago and have not gotten a response as of yet.

Pricing: A free trial for 30 days after you buy a License for $49.95/ month only 20 people per meeting.

Things you need to ask about:
The equipment, memory or bandwidth, what their platform is built on. What customer service they have. Test it out for yourself, to see if it will work on your system or not.
Don’t rely on what they say..test, test, test.

It’s built on Flash, which is a problem for some computers.. it takes a lot of memory. Even though they say it works on Mac, it really doesn’t.. We tried both Safari and Firefox browsers to connect to the service. My computer has more than enough capabilities to use their service and my system was checked by their system check.

I invited 2 other people in the meeting and we couldn’t connect or if we did, one person couldn’t hear what the other person, or one person couldn’t see the other. What it came down to was have one person be the presenter and the other people listen. We couldn’t get beyond the test, finally one of the testers dropped out in frustration.

My mouse kept freezing up because, Mac’s don’t seem to work well with flash, you need to unplug any speakers so you don’t get the echo. They at least have better customer service. Bob came on to answer a couple of questions and said “If we have any questions someone would respond in a hour, via e-mail.

Pricing: A 30 day trial, however they do have $1. service charge to try it out. after your 30 days they start charging your card $39.00 per month. you are limited to 20 people per meeting.

Mikogo.com
I am just watching the videos 1st. http://www.mikogo.com, It doesn’t look like it does it what I want it to. My tester said, “No it doesn’t – and it’s limited to 25 – they’re offering other stuff that you’d have to pay for.”  I will be testing this later this week. They say it’s free..??

VivU.com
ViVu provides web-based solutions for event organizers to create, conduct, and manage large-scale high quality video events as effortlessly as they do with audio conference calls today. Viewers can participate from any platform (PC or MAC) without any proprietary downloads right from their browser. ViVu’s event platforms are easily scalable and can support large events with thousands of participants.

Their customer service is a forum.. no posts as of yet. I didn’t demo it, I however sent the Sales team a couple of questions via a form on their website on 2 days ago and have not gotten a response as of yet.

Pricing: A free trial for 30 days after you buy a License for $49.95/ month only 20 people per meeting.

Things you need to ask about:
The equipment, memory or bandwidth, what their platform is built on. What customer service they have. Test it out for yourself, to see if it will work on your system or not.
Don’t rely on what they say..test, test, test.