I just tried to watch some presentation videos from Wikimania.
Some had very weak sound, some had no sound in the first minutes,
some only played the first minute and then stopped. I don't think
the Wikimania videos are unique in having such problems. Video is
new to Commons, and the expert contributors are more familiar with
still images.
How can we learn to make better videos? Are there some good
instructions? Perhaps a free instruction video (Wikibooks, but a
video instead of a book) on how to produce good videos is what we
need. In fact, the English Wikibooks has a title on "Video
Production", http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Video_Production but it
doesn't have a clear focus (pun not intended). It starts out with
discussing satellite TV and has long sections on file formats in
different operating systems.
There is a help page on Commons for converting video to the Ogg
Theora format, but that is only the last step in a long chain.
Given that video is new, how can we find and rate videos, nominate
"good/featured videos", and give advice on how to improve quality?
Is the Commons village pump enough for this? Commons has a
separate graphics village pump. Do we also need a separate video
village pump?
Current digital video cameras use hard disks or memory cards,
instead of tape cassettes. Many new models cost less than 300
euro (or dollars), some as little as 120 euro (memory card perhaps
not included). Some have a special "Youtube mode", and I guess
that kind of usage is what drives the price down. What models are
good, and what should one watch out for?
We can find free still photos on Flickr and copy them to Commons.
Is there somewhere we can find free videos and copy them? Yes, at
the Internet Archive. Somewhere else?
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Wanted to do a quick mention of the updated mwEmbed gadget and subtitles
support on the email list(s) in case people have missed its mention on
the village pump [1] or other venues.
* On commons the "Commons:Timed_Text" and "Template:Closed_cap" have
been started.
* oggHandler has been patched to support "itext" [2], [3] output so that
it would not need to hit the api to get the list of available subtitles
when we are embedding locally. Remote embedding outside of wikimedia
domain grabs the up-to-date list of available tracks via an api call.
* A basic "Add timed text" interface is accessible from the "cc" button
letting you "upload" an srt file.
* If you enable the mwEmbed gadget on English wikipedia ( or other
wikipedias ) it will display commons subtitles in the respective
wgUserLanguage. ( Interface translations are temporarly dissabled per
bug 21947 which should be "resolvable" as soon as the release is branched.
* Even with extremely limited exposure the number of subtitle files is
starting to grow: [4]
* The timedText display supports inline "wiki-text" so persons names,
subjects and place of interest can be linked to their respective
wikpedia articles in their respective languages from the srt text. [5]
* Gadget feedback has been very good. Big thanks to all that have helped
test and especially User:84user with his very detailed reports ;)
And finally .. I imagine it ~may~ take some time before the mwEmbed
stuff makes its way through code review and on by default deployment
because of release branching and mwEmbed includes quite a few other
components ... But similar to usability beta, and other gadgets we could
let people do a much easier opt in. Which I will continue to look into
in the mean time.
peace,
michael
[1]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Improved_Close_Capti…
[2] http://www.annodex.net/~silvia/itext/
[3] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/60458
[4]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AAllPages&from=&to=…
[5]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yochai_Benkler_-_On_Autonomy,_Contro…
**
Thomas Dalton just volunteered for something. Anyone got favoured V&A
exhibits we don't have a pic of? Get back to him with room,
collection, cabinet, etc :-)
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>
Date: 2009/12/5
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Anyone visiting V&A with a camera soon?
To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
I have an afternoon to kill in London this Thursday and I own a
digital camera. I'm not sure I've ever been to the V&A, so I wouldn't
mind a visit. Give me a list of things to photograph!
2009/12/4 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>:
> I just wrote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphonicon . I notice
> there's one in the V&A, and the V&A is quite happy to have people
> taking photos to put in Wikipedia ... anyone stopping by any time
> soon?
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia UK mailing list
> wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
> WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
>
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Dear all,
As part of the Multimedia Usability project, we are currently doing what
is called "Domain research". Basically, it means that we look at how
similar websites work and how they deal with the same issues we
encounter. Since our goal is to make Wikimedia Commons more usable, we
want to look at other media sharing platforms, such as Flickr, Youtube,
Fotopedia, Picasa web, Panoramio, etc.
I would like to ask for your help to accomplish this research. It can
take a lot of time if only one person is doing it. On the contrary, if
ten or twenty people step in and all do a small part, we can collect
helpful data very quickly. Besides, it is always better to have several
people with different perspectives look at the data we collect, in order
to better see the “big picture”.
Your help is crucial in order to move quickly towards the requirements
definition phase and the actual development. I have already prepared a
list of websites and a few questions we are asking ourselves; they
should facilitate the collection of data that can then be used directly
by the team.
Please join us and make your contribution to the Domain research page on
the Usability wiki;
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:Domain_research/Upload
Many thanks in advance for your help.
--
Guillaume Paumier
Product Manager, Multimedia Usability
Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate