Kaltura usage metrics are the quantities that Kaltura’s own reports use to describe how much of its video platform an account consumes. Kaltura does not publish a price list; an Order Form states what was bought, and the customer sees consumption in dashboards of the Rich Media Content Management System, the Kaltura Admin Console and, for customers with several accounts, the Multi-Account Management Console.[3] Reading those dashboards is how a licence manager checks consumption against an entitlement. The definitions below are Kaltura’s own, and the dashboards are the closest public statement of what is measured.
The unit of measurement: the Publisher ID
The Overview dashboard shows usage per Publisher ID (PID), the identifier of a Kaltura account. When the figures are shown for a parent Rich Media CMS account, the information is aggregated for the PID and all its child accounts.[1] The Customer Agreement’s rule that a customer may create only one account per legal entity unless it activates a Kaltura Multi-Account therefore affects how consumption is rolled up and which entity bears it.[4] The default view is the current month, and the dashboard shows the current month and the 12 months up to the current month.[1]
Metrics on the Overview dashboard
For the current month the Overview dashboard defines these quantities.[1]
| Metric | Kaltura’s definition |
|---|---|
| GB Stored Media | The average storage in the current month |
| GB Outbound Bandwidth | The bandwidth consumed when data is transferred from Kaltura |
| Transcoded hours | Click to see data on flavors (HD, small, large, etc.) |
| GB Transcoded Media | The volume of transcoded assets |
| Managed Entries | Total number of entries in the account |
| Active Unique Users | Number of unique users that had an action (API call) during the time period |
| Live Viewing Hours | For Webcast and real time communications |
| Recording Hours | KME recording hours storage |
| Interactive Videos | The number of interactive videos |
| Delivered Video Streams | Total number of video streams in the account |
| Enrichment Credits Spent | REACH credit spent this month, with detail in the Services dashboard |
The usage-over-time graph reviews stored media, outbound bandwidth, managed entries, active unique users, live viewing hours and recording hours, in daily or monthly granularity.[1] The catalog has a row for each of the main quantities: GB Stored Media, GB Outbound Bandwidth, Managed Entries, Active Unique Users, Live Viewing Hours and Recording Hours.
Active Unique Users
The definition of Active Unique Users is narrow. A user is counted when it had an action in the form of an API call during the period, and each unique user is counted once.[1] The definition does not describe a person who has an account but takes no action in the period as counted. The dashboard does not state whether views by anonymous viewers are included. Where an Order Form is written in users, the contractual definition of a user, not the dashboard, governs.
Credits
The Overview dashboard includes a figure for REACH credit spent in the month and refers to the Services dashboard for detail.[1] REACH credit has its own allocation, expiry and overage fields in the REACH profile, described in REACH credits and the AI Addendum.[6]
Storage and bandwidth reports
The publisher bandwidth and storage dashboard reports bandwidth, storage and transcoding consumption over time and the accumulated bandwidth and storage. Its graph tabs are Bandwidth Consumption, Average Storage, Peak Storage, Added Storage, Deleted Storage, Bandwidth and Storage Consumption and Transcoding Consumption, available in daily or monthly granularity.[2] Peak storage is the highest storage capacity point over the entire period and for each month or day.[2] The dashboard can compare different periods.[2]
Kaltura states that usage data is refreshed periodically: storage data may be delayed by up to one day and bandwidth data by up to two days.[1][2] A usage figure read at the start of a billing period may therefore not yet include the last day or two of the previous period.
Because storage in the Overview is an average and the bandwidth and storage dashboard also reports a peak, a customer whose Order Form allowance is written in terms of capacity should confirm in the contract whether the average, the peak or an end-of-month level is the measure. The knowledge center does not say which one the invoice uses.
Transcoding usage
Transcoding is measured differently from storage. Kaltura defines transcoding usage as the volume in MB of transcoded assets that are the output of transcoding. It is measured and billed one time per transcode, unlike storage, which is measured and billed repeatedly for the consumed storage even if a new entry is not added.[3] Failed transcode jobs are not counted, even if the failure was due to a corrupted source file or a Kaltura malfunction.[3]
Kaltura gives two worked examples.[3]
- A partner uploads 10GB of source for transcoding and the transcoding outputs seven flavors of 25GB in total, including the source. Transcoding usage is 15GB, being 25GB less the 10GB of source files.
- A partner uploads 10GB of source plus 2GB of ready-made flavors that are not for transcoding. The total storage is 27GB. The partner then deletes 1GB of flavors, leaving 26GB. Transcoding usage is still 15GB, being 27GB less 2GB less 10GB.
The page adds that deleted flavors and ready-made flavors do not affect transcoding usage.[3] Because usage is billed once per transcode, a new transcode produces new usage, while deleting renditions does not reduce usage already incurred. The row is Transcoding usage.
The transcoding usage report appears under the Publisher Bandwidth and Storage Report in the Rich Media CMS, under Publishers’ Usage in the Kaltura Admin Console, and under Usage Reports in the Multi-Account Management Console, but not in the End Users’ drill down.[3]
Packages and quotes
Kaltura says it offers pre-defined packages of bandwidth, storage and transcoding and refers customers to their Kaltura representative.[3] The pricing page lists solutions as available by quote or by plan and shows no price for any of them.[5] The sizes and prices of packages are therefore not public, and the unit prices for exceeding a package are in the Order Form, if at all.
Contract terms that interact with metering
Three terms of the Customer Agreement bear on how the metrics are used.
- Usage limits and quotas. A customer may not use the Service Offerings in a way intended to avoid incurring fees or exceeding usage limits or quotas.[4]
- Minimum commitments. Order Form minimum commitments are based on services purchased and not actual usage, and cannot be decreased during the term.[4]
- Storage after suspension. A suspended customer remains responsible for applicable data storage fees and for fees for any Service Offerings it can still access.[4]
These are described in Kaltura Customer Agreement, Order Forms and trials.
Using the dashboards for a licence review
- List every PID and any Multi-Account structure, and map each to the legal entity that signed the Order Form.
- For each metered product, take the contract metric and the commitment, then find the matching dashboard figure from the table above.
- Read the current month and the trailing 12 months, allowing for the stated one-day and two-day delays.
- Distinguish storage, which is measured repeatedly, from transcoding, which is measured once per transcode, when estimating cost of future content.
- Record credits separately, since REACH and AI credits have their own balances and expiry dates.
Out of scope
This article does not cover the analytics metrics for engagement such as plays and views, nor Kaltura’s content delivery and eCDN arrangements. It does not state any price or any entitlement, because Kaltura publishes none, and it does not reproduce the Advanced Analytics Terminology article that the dashboards reference.