Live videos are full of the speaker stutters and the video itself often has buffering issues. Especially in poor-bandwidth areas. People get tense/irritated if they miss out on something important during the live event.
Pre-recorded videos (e.g. YouTube) feel alienated with the audience itching to ask a question to the author, but unable to do so.
Pseudo-live videos where pre-recorded videos are played as if it was a live video, asks every member the audience to synchronize to view that pseudo-live video as it starts. Without adding much additional value (except that stutters and other noises are removed) Again, the actual author is often missing.
A geminar is one where viewers can come and go and see the video at their own pace. If three of the viewers beckon the author, a notification is sent to the author and then that author can step in and interact with the viewers.
The chat system on the geminar is continual. So future viewers can also see what others had chatted before.
All in all, a geminar is a gem of a webinar. While being simple, graceful and empathetic to both the viewers and the author.
People are getting tired of subscriptions. One common problem: After subscribing, often the subscriber does not take full advantage for the next few months. That leads to feeling of “unfairness” and wastage of money. All kind of users are benefitted with a pay-as-you-go system. If the amount of credits are not sufficient, the usage of that geminar merely gets suspended and not banned.
You cannot use any video from YouTube here. One main reason is that it is not legally allowed. Embedded videos require to use their own branded player – which has several limitations. Including distractions such as showing a set of related videos when the video being played reaches the end.
Secondly, Geminars can only use videos that are publicly accessible from a link that directly accesses the mp4 file of the video. And YouTube never gives us such a link.
A geminar can be placed into 3 “states” – If it is “published” that means anyone can reach it. If it is “unlisted” then it is not listed on the main page. But if you share its link, it would be visible to those people you shared it with. The author has no control, on who exactly knows the unlisted geminar's link. i.e. If that unlisted link is shared with others, you would have no way of knowing.
If the state is “archived” then nobody other than the author can see it. This is equivalent to “private” at YouTube. The author can then later edit any of the seminars that were created; including archived ones.
We have tried our level best to reduce the chance of downloads of videos from our platform. However, please note that it is quite impossible to totally prevent download of any video on the Internet. At the very least, someone can stand in front of a computer playing a video, and record it using a phone or a camera. So if you are worried that someone may download your video; then you must upload it with some watermark so that you have at least a claim on what was shown.
To change the password, you need to go to the login page (Click on the arrow at top right) and then click on Forgot Password That will send an email with a link; which when clicked, will show a page to change the password.
You cannot change your username, once you have registered. However, you can change your full name from your profile dialog.
We have something even better: Any viewer can tag any of the geminar they are watching with their own tags. Such a tag is equivalent of a “playlist”.