Click on "Videos" in the website header!
December 1, 2022 by Orion Burt in Livewire, Other with 0 comments
We are excited to announce our new video library hosted directly on Ultiworld.com! We have been laying the groundwork for this all year and are eager for our viewers to try out the new viewing experience we’ve built.
When Ultiworld first started in 2012, we were mostly known for our writing and reporting. Even though video was a small portion of our coverage, we could tell fans of the sport were eager for more. Since then, our video team has steadily improved the quality and quantity of their work while keeping pace with the incredible advances in video hardware and software. Today, video coverage is just as core to our business as written coverage and access to our video library is one of the most popular benefits of our subscriptions.
We have used a number of different third-party video hosts over the years, but as our library grew, we began to realize a lot of the one-size-fits-all services did not meet our needs. Given that our website had already grown to house a variety of content and data types like teams, events, and podcasts, we decided that video was the natural next step.
Our new video host, Mux, is a wonderful API-first platform that has the flexibility to handle our specific video needs and the tools to integrate video more deeply into our website and subscriptions than ever before. If you’ve been following along this year, you may have already experienced part of our new viewing experience: all of the paywalled videos from WUCC, Pro Championships, and the Club National Championships were powered by Mux.
Here are just a few of the benefits of the new video library and viewing experience:
- Videos can be found alongside our other content on the website, including in the site search
- Related events, teams, and videos can easily link back and forth to each other
- Filter dropdowns in the library let you quickly narrow down what you want to watch
- New video player has auto-generated live captions, picture-in-picture, casting to Google Chromecast and Apple AirPlay, and playback speed controls
- Video Download button is available on video pages for subscribers with a relevant Team Pack
- Livestream recordings will be watchable immediately after any event ends
- Paywalled videos are more descriptive about exactly what type of subscription they require
- Subscribers no longer need to use a special shortcut or sign into another website just to watch videos!
While we still have a lot of work left to do updating metadata like tags, dates, and teams on every video in our archives (over 2,400!), every video is now available at ultiworld.com/video. If you know exactly what you are looking for but can’t find it with filters right now, try searching for it by name.
Over the coming days we will be phasing out the old video archives (video.ultiworld.com) and ensuring everyone can access the new video library. If you notice any bugs with the new viewing experience or if you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to contact us by email at [email protected].
