Commons-l February 2014

commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org

12 participants
10 discussions

Video skills and equipment
by Lars Aronsson 16 Apr '25

16 Apr '25

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

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Lower-resolution .ogv video transcodes coming
by Brion Vibber 23 Feb '14

23 Feb '14

I've taken the liberty of enabling[1] lower-resolution .ogv video transcodes, at 360p and 160p in addition to the 480p we already generated. [1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61690 These will be useful for older or slower or mobile machines which need to use non-native software decoding fallbacks (such as the existing Java applet, or the JavaScript or Flash alternatives I'm working on in research time) and may not be able to decode a full 480p file made from an SD or HD video original. Files should gradually populate at the smaller sizes as they get referenced and the new sizes are automatically added to the transcoding queue. Please give a shout if there's any problems. -- brion

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Media Viewer Update + IRC Chat on Friday
by Fabrice Florin 21 Feb '14

21 Feb '14

Greetings! We are making good progress on Media Viewer (1), our new multimedia browser -- and we invite you to test the current beta version v0.2 in coming weeks, so we can get it ready for wider release. We’ve recently developed a number of new features, which are listed at the top of our discussion page (2) for Media Viewer. We would love it if you could try the ones labeled ‘ready for testing’. You can also review our specifications for features that are ‘coming soon’ — and hope you can help test them as well later this month (we release new code every Thursday). We also invite you to join our Media Viewer Chat on IRC (3), this Friday, February 21, 2014 at 18:00 UTC. This is a good opportunity to talk about these features together -- and our development team will be ready to discuss your questions and suggestions over Wikimedia's Office IRC Channel. We’ll send more updates on this product as it develops. Our goal is to release the current version of Media Viewer v.0.2 by the end of this quarter on a few pilot sites — with a wider release next quarter. We are also starting design work on the next version v0.3, which would support more media file formats such as audio and video, to be developed next quarter. (4) We look forward to discussing this project with you on-wiki and via IRC very soon. All the best, Fabrice on behalf of the Multimedia Team (5) (1) About Media Viewer: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer (2) Media Viewer Discussion page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer (3) Media Viewer Chat on IRC: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#Upcoming_office_hours (4) Media Viewer Next Version v0.3: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer#Next_Version (5) Multimedia Project Hub: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia _______________________________ Fabrice Florin Product Manager, Multimedia Wikimedia Foundation https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)

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Position of Wikimedia Spain about URAA
by Santiago Navarro Sanz 19 Feb '14

19 Feb '14

Hello. Wikimedia Spain members wrote an open letter to BoT where we show our position about the URAA and we support Wikimedia Israel. The letter says: ================== We, the members of Wikimedia España, the chapter of the Wikimedia movement in Spain, support the concerns expressed by our fellow Wikimedia Israel and other places around the World about the legal norm known as URAA. That norm, based on the legal status quo, has the effect of extending the copyright of cultural works for periods even longer than those already in force. We do not object in any way to the right of people to live out of the results of their work, be it in manufacturing, service industries, agriculture or any other human activity, but those works form the core of culture as the sum of human knowledge, and their use by all Mankind has to be protected too. While it is entirely understandable that painters, writers or photographers have the right to sustain themselves with their works, it is not reasonable that people who did not author anything should be allowed to make money out of the works of people who died fifty, seventy-five or even hundred years before. Furthermore it has to be taken into account that under the excuse of protecting the authors' rights, an unduly burden has been charged on the users of works of unknown authors, anonymous works or the ones of people who simply did not intend to claim any right at any time at all. The Uruguay Round Agreements were negotiated by 123 countries. Somebody who came across some anonymous work that could be dated at anytime in the last century, could be required to find a negotiator among the more than seven billion people on Earth, since, otherwise, he/she could be violating some state copyright law. Another aspect that URAA does not pay attention to is the fact that many works remain unattended. When talking about books, it means that they are not reprinted and are not available anymore. But it does not mean that somebody could just reprint them in order to make them known to the public. In that way people can neither buy copies of works nor make them themselves. Who is profiting by that? In other cases, photographs, pictures, rolls of film, etc., just sit rotting -literally in some cases- in storerooms, not only forgotten, also forbidden. Is there any benefit from it? So, in spite of all legal terms, we, the Wikimedians from Spain, support not just our Israeli companions, but the right of all the Human Race to have a chance to enjoy what has been done by authors. And so we expect the Wikimedia Foundation, as a provider of free knowledge sources, will do their best and fight for the shortest copyright terms possible, restricted as closely as possible to the author's lifetime. Yours sincerely, Wikimedia Spain ==================== *Wikimedia España Blog http://blog.wikimedia.es/2014/02/postura-de-wikimedia-espana-sobre-la.html *On Meta in different languages: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Espa%C3%B1a/Letter_to_the_BoT_reg… We encourage you to create a debate about it and work for free knowledge. Thank you and regards -- Santiago Navarro Wikimedia España http://www.wikimedia.org.es/

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Reminder: Wikimania 2014 scholarship deadline 17 February
by Katie Chan 11 Feb '14

11 Feb '14

If you were thinking of applying for a scholarship from either the Wikimania Foundation, Wikimedia Deutschland, or Wikimedia Österreich, the deadline is end of the day UTC this coming Monday. Don't miss it! Katie On 08/01/2014 17:37, Katie Chan wrote: > Hi all, > > Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2014 in London are now being > accepted. Applications are open until the end of the day UTC on 17 > February. > > Wikimania 2014 scholarships is an award given to an individual to > enable them to attend Wikimania in London from 6-10 August, 2014. > > Only a single type of scholarship will be available from the Wikimedia > Foundation for Wikimania 2014. A Wikimedia Foundation scholarship will > cover the cost of an individual's round-trip travel costs as arranged > by the Wikimedia Foundation travel agency, shared accommodation as > arranged by the Wikimedia Foundation, and registration for Wikimania. > > Applicants will be rated using a pre-determined selection process and > selection criteria by the Scholarship Committee, who will determine > which are successful. To learn more about Wikimania 2014 scholarships, > please visit <https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships>. > > To apply for a scholarship, fill out the application form on > <http://scholarships.wikimedia.org/apply>. It is highly recommended > that applicants review all of the material on the Scholarships page > and the associated FAQ before submitting an application. > > If you have any question, please contact > <wikimania-scholarships(a)wikimedia.org> or leave a message on > <https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Scholarships>. > > Katie Chan > Chair, Scholarship Committee > -- Katie Chan Any views or opinions presented in this e-mail are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the view of any organisation the author is associated with or employed by. Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine

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RFC: UploadWizard — scale to sister projects
by Gryllida 10 Feb '14

10 Feb '14

Hi all, Apologies for cross-posting; please read and share thoughts: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/UploadWizard:_scale_to_… Gryllida

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online survey invitation
by zhuangziyun 10 Feb '14

10 Feb '14

Excuse me, could you please help me with my paper by filling out a questionnaire? I am currently doing a project about personality traits and knowledge sharing in Wikipedia. The survey will take about 5 min of your time. Link: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1538439/Wikipedia-Survey-Personality I need about 200 respondents, so your little help counts A LOT to me and I would GREATLY appreciate it! Thank you so much in advance! PS: If something is unclear or difficult to understand (English is not my first language), please tell me. I will fix it immediately.

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Multimedia Viewer: How to not fall over...
by Gryllida 09 Feb '14

09 Feb '14

In the Beta tab, you'll probably have already noticed a big fat Media Viewer tick-box. All, please participate in discussion at its feedback page, with potential creativity required to keep the feature useable, transparent and open in conveying file info to the readers, and interactive. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer Surprisingly, the Multimedia team are not actively participating at the talk page at the moment; if you're on this list, please do!

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Data mining for media archives
by Samuel Klein 07 Feb '14

07 Feb '14

John Resig has just published some excellent data analysis combining TinEye, image archives, and image clustering and deduplication to identify identical and similar images across a large corpus. http://ejohn.org/research/computer-vision-photo-archives/ Are we doing any commons analysis like this at the moment? Is any similarity-analysis done on upload to help uploaders identify copies of the same image that already exist online? Or to flag potential copyvios for reviewers? I'm sure TinEye would be glad to give us high-volume API access to enable that sort of cross-referencing. SJ

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Proposal For Better User Interace For allowing smoother and easier Wikimedia Commons pictures discovery
by Aalekh Nigam 03 Feb '14

03 Feb '14

Hello I have been looking for different projects for contributing to wiki community better during the this upcoming summer of code and came across Bug:57805 which could produce a significant difference in user interaction with mediawiki commons ....please go through a rough proposal i prepared explaining my aim to the project .....this idea implements lightbox interface The link to the proposal is :https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sFGtjxgk-KlzaOxO--_G37SDkefxBvBX1IhhKoV927Y/pub  I request all members to go through the proposal idea and give your valuable feedback as your feedback could help me improve idea for better user interaction of commons Thank YouAalekh Nigam"aalekhN"New Delhi

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Commons-l February 2014