The Cloud Usage chart, accessed by clicking the Cloud Usage Hours card on the Administrator’s Dashboard, provides an overview of usage based on the amount of data the institution (tenant) sends to users accessing EchoVideo.
Hover your mouse over each bar for a more detailed breakdown of the usage for that month.
Click on the Data Type in the Legend to show only that data in the graph.
Use the Organization and Department drop-down lists located at the top of the Dashboard to filter Cloud Usage data as needed.
When viewing the cloud usage data, note the following
- When filtering the chart for an Organization or Department, you will only see VOD-Org / Dept data. This is because VOD-Institution, by definition, does not fall under an Org or Dept, and Live and Other are only available for institution-level viewing.
- Org / Dept filtered data is displayed from the time the org / dept level data categorization was implemented, approximately Jan 10-15, 2018, onward. February is the first full month of data.
- All data in the institution-level chart prior to mid-January are shown as VOD-Institution; data usage was only placed into the Org / Dept categorization beginning in Jan 2018.
Defining Usage
Usage is our term for data delivery. Any and all outbound data from your tenant in the EchoVideo cloud to a user counts toward cloud usage. This is typically discussed in terms of content delivery, but it applies to any data you provide to your users.
The Cloud Usage chart shows usage in terms of hours, which is actually a conversion of data delivery size to usage hours as follows:
One Usage Hour = 310MB of streamed / downloaded content or otherwise accessed data.
310MB is the average size of a one-hour-long Audio-Video-Display capture. Even for content viewing, the hours shown in the chart do not directly reflect the actual hours of content viewed, because different types of content vary in size.
For example, if a user watches an hour-long Audio-Display capture, this activity is translated into a Cloud Usage measure of less than one hour because the A / D capture file is smaller than 310 MB.
Furthermore, as noted above, content viewing is not the only activity that requires outbound data movement. Users (all users – not just students) downloading files, accessing different pages in the interface, using notes and discussions, administrative use of the system outside of terms, etc., also require the outbound movement of data. All of this usage is rolled up and calculated using the above equivalent, and shown to Administrators as hours in the Cloud Usage chart.
Data included in usage calculations
The EchoVideo service continuously tracks the data, as delivered in bytes, from the licensed tenant (your institution) to any user. The major drivers of Cloud Usage include:
VOD-Institution: This is made up of video-on-demand (VOD) content and presentation slides that have been viewed either outside of a section/class (using a posted link to the video or an embedded video in a portal or LMS) OR content viewed inside sections / courses that are not associated with an Organization or Department. Essentially, VOD-Institution is usage data for media viewing that cannot be put into a bucket for an Organization or Department.
VOD-Org/Dept: This includes both video-on-demand (VOD) content and presentation slides that have been viewed in sections / classrooms that are associated (through their course) with an Organization or Department.
Both types of VOD data usage include content viewed through a browser or via the EchoVideo mobile app. This also includes user downloads, as described below.
Live content: This includes classes streamed to viewers in real time. Once the class is finished and the recording is processed, it becomes a VOD capture, and subsequent views are counted as on-demand content as described above or as downloaded content if a user downloads it for local viewing.
Downloads: Users can download content for later viewing. This includes both VOD and presentations / PDFs. Only the size of the download itself counts toward the bundle; views of downloaded content are local and not streamed from the cloud.
Other: This includes all the other data transmission from the cloud to registered users. This might include delivering application web pages, exporting configuration or system usage information for use with external systems, or other data downloads or exports.
These other activities, combined, are usually quite small relative to content viewing or downloading, but they do occur and are counted. This might explain why your chart shows usage during between-term months or other periods of downtime, even though you generally believe the content is not being accessed much, if at all.
What is in a Cloud Usage Bundle? Rather than charging for incremental storage, media processing, database, and streaming costs separately, we consolidate these into a single Cloud Usage Bundle that covers them all.
Data used by each content type
It is impossible to be exact about these figures, but we have already provided a general idea of the file sizes (per hour) for the different types of capture profiles (content). Refer to the table in the help topic On-Demand Playback Data Rate and Usage.
The data figures shown for each capture type can help you make basic calculations of data usage for each. Keep in mind that multiple online views of a capture by a single student will generate multiple instances of that data stream.
Also, remember that those figures are averages; if the video is low-light and/or high-movement, the data rate may be higher. If the video is a more static feed (e.g., a professor speaking at a podium) the data rate will be closer to average or possibly even below.
But use those averages to help make the necessary decisions about capture types and inputs, to find the balance that works best for your institution.