Ultra Mashup Studio Tour

Softech Ultra Mashup Player plays the Rich Media Mashups created using Ultra Mashup Studio. Ultra Mashup Player consists of a Mashup Player as well as features such as Viewer Comments, Ratings, Favorites, Report as Abuse, Related Mashups, Author details, etc.

Elements that form the Ultra Mashup Player:

1. Mashup Player
2. Add to Favorites
3. Report Abuse
4. Comments on Mashup
5. Viewer Ratings on Mashup
6. Related Mashups
7. Author Details

Distributed Content

Mashups created using Ultra Mashup Studio can consist of multiple videos, audios, images, captions and feedback forms. The media content types among these, that is videos, audios and images, can be easily sources from external sites, and included into a mashup by referring a URL.

The Ultra Mashup Player plays such Mashups with contents from external sites, by downloading or streaming such contents from their original location. In other words, a local copy of the media file need not be maintained for the player to function correctly.

This feature of streaming or downloading media from multiple locations simultaneously, and synchronizing them to play a single mashup, delivers a great value for users: they do not require to house expensive, redundant infrastructure to store external data!

Responding to Feedback Forms

The Ultra Mashup Player is not merely a media or video player. Along with its capability to merge and play multiple content simultaneously, both from local storage and external sites, it also has a powerful additional ability: Feedback Forms added to mashups are displayed in the player and awaits user action before rest of the mashup is played.

In essence the Player is a host for a Rich Internet Application that gathers user input and has the capability of additional processing, as our feature set improves over time.

Ratings, Comments, Reporting Abuse, ...

• Add a Mashup to their collection of favorites. This collection is accessible via a "My Desktop" feature
• Mark a Mashup as Inappropriate... one that violates Terms of Usage
• Provide qualitative feedback, ask a question or remark about any part of the Mashup via the Comments feature.
• Score the Mashup's quality and effectiveness on a scale of 1 to 5. This Rating is visible to other viewers.

Screenshots
Click thumbnail for larger view

Player Events

The Ultra Mashup Player tracks a viewer's actions and the various events that are generated. In specific, the Player records a viewer's actions:

• When the user uses the Play button to play the Mashup
• When the user uses the Rewind button to rewind the Mashup
• When the user uses the Forward button to fast forward the Mashup
• When the user uses the Pause button to pause the Mashup
• When the user uses the Stop button to reset the Mashup to initial position
• When the user uses the slider to drag over to a specific point in the Mashup sequence
• Amount of time a user took to submit a feedback form.

The above information is useful in scenarios when the content provider requires the information as to what parts of the videos were watched, and what parts were skipped and by whom. Typical applications are Advertisements. Tracking how many people watched an inserted Ad and how many skipped over it can be linked to billing. Another situation is that of training. It may be required, for example for compliance reasons, to monitor who watched an entire training. Yet another scenario can be where the content author wishes to know what parts of his mashup did the viewers find interesting.

Providing tracking to this level of detail is truly a first in Rich Media scenarios!