Case Study: SUNY Buffalo State College achieves streamlined video workflows and improved accessibility with Ensemble Video

Ensemble Video in the Classroom and Beyond at Buffalo State College

SUNY Buffalo State, a comprehensive college serving about 11,000 students, faced an outdated homegrown media server that required time-consuming manual transcoding, restricted access to certain devices, and made securing and captioning academic video difficult. The Instructional Resources team needed a scalable, secure platform that would integrate with the campus LMS, support closed captioning for accessibility, and let faculty manage and publish their own media with minimal support.

Buffalo State piloted and adopted Ensemble Video (pilot 2011, campus adoption 2012; SUNY-wide deal 2013), hosted by SUNY ITEC, using built‑in transcoding, CaptionSync for automated captioning, and a Blackboard integration for easy publishing. The new system centralized secure media, empowered faculty (80+ faculty, ~100 media libraries, 3,000+ videos and 50,000+ views), removed manual workflows, improved device compatibility and accessibility, and positioned the campus to scale streaming to thousands more students.

SUNY Buffalo State College

Melaine Kenyon

Director of Instructional Technology