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
Hi all,
We are delighted to announce that our IEG renewal application for the Commons
app <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.free.nrw.commons>[1] has
been approved! Thank you so much to everyone who supported us – reading
all of the wonderful comments on our proposal has been extremely meaningful
and encouraging for us.
We have been hard at work getting version 2.6 of the app out; there was a
bit of a rocky start with the first few beta iterations, but we finally
have v2.6.5 in production. \o/
Several UI improvements have been made in the current version:
- New login screen
- New design for the list of nearby places that need pictures
- New navigation drawer design with username displayed
- The upload screen has been remodeled to include tooltips for title and
description fields, as well as an explicit copyright declaration and a link
to Commons policies
- Improved media details view with links to the selected license,
categories and image coordinates
Other improvements include:
- Category search - fixed major bugs, improved ordering and filter for
categories
- The "nearby places that need pictures" feature has improved GPS and
refresh handling
- Several privacy improvements - new privacy policy, switched to using
Wikimedia maps server instead of Mapbox, and removed event logging
- Reduced memory leaks and battery usage; fixed multiple other crashes and
bugs
- Various improvements to navigation flow and backstack
- Added option for users to send logs to developers (has to be manually
activated by user)
For more information on the new version, recent screenshots, and
upload/deletion statistics for 2017, please see this blog post
<https://cookiesandcodeblog.wordpress.com/2017/12/24/commons-app-update-vers…>[2].
Feedback, bug reports, and suggestions are always welcome on our GitHub page
<https://github.com/commons-app/apps-android-commons>[3].
Cheers, and happy holidays. :)
Best regards,
Josephine (@misaochan)
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.free.nrw.commons
[2]
https://cookiesandcodeblog.wordpress.com/2017/12/24/commons-app-update-vers…
[3] https://github.com/commons-app/apps-android-commons