FAQ: plans and pricing

What plans do you have?

We have different monthly plans depending on the solution you need. For our default plans, you can order a quote through our pricing page.

A custom plan for a longer duration or for a specific event or purpose is possible too.

How do I order a plan?

See our pricing page to order a quote for a monthly plan. Fill out the form and click submit. Note: We require prepayment, which is possible via bank transfer (send us a copy of the receipt) or Paypal. When we receive (proof of) payment, we’ll set up your account asap.

Do you provide interpreters (T@H), subtitlers or correctors (closed captions)?

Yes, on a project basis. The cost for this services includes the fee for interpreters, subtitlers or correctors, a premium support fee and a project management fee.

Do you provide event / premium support?

Basic support (email, best effort) is included in all plans.

We also offer Premium support for a guaranteed response time outside CET office hours (evenings, nights, weekends). Premium support comes with a custom Slack channel, through which you can directly contact our support engineers. The cost depends on the days and hours during which your event takes place and the expected level of service (e.g. permanent monitoring or on-call availability). Please provide us with this info when contacting us for an offer.

Please note that if you hire your own interpreters and/or subtitlers, then our premium support doesn’t include managing them. We can give you advice and help you troubleshoot interpreter/subtitler issues (as far as possible), but you are responsible for communicating with them and testing in advance. If it turns out during the live stream that a freelancer’s connection or equipment isn’t good enough, there’s not much we can do.

We can also provide simultaneous interpreters and/or closed caption subtitlers and correctors for you. In that case, premium support and project management is part of your custom plan.

Yes. Our data is stored on our own servers located in private racks in several separate ISO 27001-compliant data centers within the EU. All hardware and software is monitored 24/7, with automated alerts for possible threats or malfunctions. We use encryption technology to secure the transmission of sensitive data and to protect information stored on our systems. Data is never shared, nor is it accessible to third parties.

Clevercast Player does not use tracking technologies. Some settings are stored in local session storage in the browser, such as the audio level of the player, but they are not linked to a user ID or other user information. IP numbers are not stored. Only the data necessary to generate statistics (IP address, browser, operating system and screen resolution of the viewer) are encrypted by Clevercast player and sent to our servers. This data is not stored itself, only used to generate statistics. All of our statistics are aggregated data which do not refer to personally identifiable information.

The Clevercast web application is only accessible via HTTPS (SSL encryption). Any data supplied by administrators in the back-end is only used for the functioning of the web application (securing access to the web application, login of administrators with specific roles and permissions). The password per administrator is stored encrypted (Hash encryption). An administrator can change his data and password at any time.

In our role as a data processor, we ensure that all our employees are perfectly aware of everything GDPR entails. For more info, we would like to refer to the provisions of the data processing agreement on our website, which will form an integral part of any agreement.

What is data traffic and how to calculate it?

Data traffic is the total amount of bytes delivered to your viewers when they watch the live or VoD streams.

To calculate it, you need to know the total duration of your live stream(s) and estimate the average number of simultaneous viewers for this entire duration. Note: this number is often overestimated, since customers are usually focused on the unique number of viewers.

The third factor that determines the amount of data traffic is the average bitrate of the stream received by your viewers. This is primarily determined by the highest resolution of your stream along with these factors:

The average screen size and bandwidth of your viewers. Since Clevercast uses adaptive bitrate streaming, some viewers (small screen size, slow connection) will not see the video in its highest resolution. For example, if you stream in 1080p, the average bitrate will typically be halfway between 1080p and 720p. It also depends on the size of the embedded player on your site or platform. For example, if the embedded player has a width of 480 pixels, it will receive the 480p stream by default (the resolution of the stream changes automatically when a viewer watches fullscreen).
The kind of content that you’re streaming. For example, dynamic video filmed with high-end cameras will lead to a higher bit rate than images from a virtual meeting (which often only uses parts of the screen). Also, streams containing a lot of animations, slides, intros and outros will result in lower data traffic.
Whether or not transcoding is done beforehand. For VoD and simulive streaming 2-pass transcoding is done beforehand, which allows for a much higher degree of video compression. A live broadcast requires cloud transcoding in real time, resulting in a higher bitrate and data traffic.

To estimate the data traffic for a live stream, you can use our data traffic calculator. Since the calculator takes into account the effects of adaptive bitrate streaming, results will be quite accurate for live streams with an average to good video quality.

Note that for VoD and simulive streaming the amount of data traffic will be 20% to 50% lower than a broadcasted live stream, depending on how well your video can be compressed. For example, video consisting of talking heads with a computer-generated background (like Zoom or vMix meetings) allows for easy compression. In that case, data traffic may be up to 50% lower. Long animated intros (e.g. countdown clock) shouldn’t even be taken into account.

What are live processing and VoD transcoding hours?

Since Clevercast does adaptive bitrate streaming, both live and VoD video streams need to be transcoded in multiple resolutions before they can be delivered to your viewers. For live streaming, the transcoding is done in real time. In case of multilingual live streaming, this is combined with real-time transmuxing.

Live processing hours are the hours of video you send to an ingest server.

Notes:

Live processing hours are counted when you are broadcasting, regardless of the event status (i.e., not only when your event is set to Started).
When a main and backup broadcast are simultaneously sent to an event, live broadcasting hours are counted only once.

VoD transcoding hours are the hours of video that Clevercast converts to Video on-Demand. The source can be a cloud recording or an upload to Clevercast.

How are live processing hours calculated for events with more than 8 languages?

Live processing hours are recorded and totaled for blocks of 8 languages. Therefore, if an event contains more than 8 languages, you need to multiply the broadcasted hours by the number of '8-language blocks'.

For example, an event with 14 languages contains two '8-language blocks'. If you use such event for a one-hour live stream, Clevercast records 2 live processing hours.

This applies to both audio and closed caption languages. If an event contains multiple languages for both audio and closed captions, the higher of the two is used. For example: an event with 6 audio languages and 12 closed caption languages is considered an event with 12 languages (and thus has two '8-language blocks').

What are ‘AI hours’? How are they calculated?

Live Events with AI captions and audio languages

AI minutes are used when closed captions are generated by speech-to-text conversion or text-to-text translation, even if your event is on preview or paused. Usage doesn't depend on the number of AI caption languages: an hour with two AI caption languages costs the same as an hour with four AI languages.

Important:

AI hours are not only used when your event is Started, but also when your event status is in Preview or Paused.
When a main and backup broadcast are simultaneously sent to an event, AI hours are counted only once.

Custom plans support events with more than 8 languages. If an event contains more than 8 AI closed caption languages, the AI minutes will be multiplied by the number of (started) sets of 8 languages. For example: an event with 14 AI languages contains 2 sets of 8 languages. Therefore the AI minutes will be multiplied by two. If this event is active for an hour, you have consumed 2 AI hours.

Note: AI speech translations are not counted, only the AI caption languages that are used as their source. For example, an event with 6 AI audio languages, automatically also has 6 AI caption languages. For the calculation of AI hours, this is an event with 6 languages. So if the event is active for an hour, you have consumed 1 AI hour.

AI captioning for VoD items

AI minutes are also charged when using AI to generate VoD captions. For each language for which VoD captions are generated, one-fourth of the video duration is counted as AI usage. For example: if you generate English and Chinese captions for a one-hour video item, 30 minutes of AI will be charged (= 15 mins for the English captions, and 15 mins for the Chinese).

Note: every time you generate VoD captions, at least one AI minute is charged, even if the video is less than 4 minutes long.

What happens if my plan contains insufficient data traffic or other resources?

You are free to choose the amount of data traffic, live processing hours and VoD transcoding hours included in your plan (in advance). If these don’t suffice, we will charge overuse afterwards based on the overuse prices in your plan (see the quote and invoice).

As a rule we never stop your live stream, regardless of the amount of overuse. If you are not a regular customer and the overuse is totally disproportionate to the amount of data traffic included in your plan, we may decide to contact you. Only if you can’t be contacted and the overuse is very high, we reserve the right to stop your live stream.

Can I add data traffic or live processing hours after my plan has started?

No, unless explicitly allowed by us in advance. We only allow this in a few exceptional cases, for example if the event drastically changes during the course of a plan. Even in such case, overuse that has already been used will be charged as overuse.

Our plans have volume discounts for data traffic starting from 20 TB. This means that you’ll get a lower price per TB and a lower overuse price in proportion to the data traffic included in your plan.

Do I get a refund for unused data traffic?

No. We recommend making a cautious estimate of your data traffic and pay overuse costs if necessary. Try not to overestimate the average number of simultaneous viewers.

Do annual plans also have monthly overuse?

For annual contracts with prepayment, there is no monthly overuse. You can freely use the resources included in your annual plan throughout the year. If these prove insufficient, you can add new resources based on their price in the plan (which is not an overuse price).

For annual contracts with monthly payment, there is still monthly overuse. But in that case, the overuse prices will be lower than the overuse prices of a monthly plan.

Can I get a custom quote?

If your request is too complex for our plans, you can ask for a custom quote.

Try to provide us with as much information as possible, so we can properly assess your request.