[Commons-l] We should permit Flash video playback

[Erik Moeller]

Last week I met with John Killy, the COO of the Mozilla Corporation,
and with Brewster Kahle, ED of the Internet Archive. Mozilla intends
to support video playback in Firefox using the new <video> tag [1],
but such support is not likely to arrive before late 2008 according to
John.

The Internet Archive currently does not transcode to Ogg Theora, but
has a transcoding pipeline in place for other codecs. They have
recently started embedding the Flash-based open source "Flow Player"
for playing back FLV files directly in the browser, and have added FLV
to their transcoding pipeline.

The Archive is happy to support us with video hosting in any way. If
we can find a useful hosting arrangement with them, they would also be
willing to add Ogg Theora to their transcoding pipeline.

Imagine that we could easily embed any currently hosted video from the
Internet Archive into Wikimedia projects, but also make use of their
immense hosting capacity for future video uploads beyond the current
20 MB upload size limit.

Video has tremendous potential educational use, and we should not let
the Wikimedia projects fall behind when it comes to hosting video
content. One should not underestimate the big role that ease of use
played in the success of YouTube: thanks to embedded Flash video,
users no longer had to worry about some plugin possibly hosing their
Windows installation, or about Real Networks' eternal "Buffering ..."
message showing up. It just worked [tm].

We must achieve the same ease of use in Wikimedia projects. In my
opinion, inconveniencing users is the worst possible way to raise
awareness of free content & free software. I therefore propose that
1) we immediately begin serious discussions with the Internet Archive
about hosting some or all of our video content on their servers;
2) All uploaded videos should be transcoded to at least Ogg Theora & a
Flash-compatible codec.
3) we add video support to MediaWiki that will, as intelligently as
possible, fall back to any of the following methods
- embedded open source Flash player
- Java player
- VLC plugin
- (in the future) <video> support.
4) We support the open source Flash project Gnash to ensure that it
can be used for video playback on Wikimedia servers.

Having an open source Flash implementation & an open source Flash
player does not address the patent issues with Flash video, but those
who are concerned about violating software patents (which are not
universally applicable anyway) could still use the provided Theora
files. We could also add a clear message to this effect at the bottom
of every embedded Flash video.

Such a solution would be a reasonable compromise between trying to
provide "free as in speech" video wherever possible, but also
minimizing hassle and maximizing ease of use for typical Windows users
looking for free educational content. We should continue to evangelize
& use Ogg Theora, but not at the expense of usability.

[1] http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/section-video.html

-- 
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.