+correct content-type this time ;) Note this has already been merged,
but still worth mention for visibility.
On 2/1/13 12:10 PM, Michael Dale wrote:
We are about to merge in support for audio derivatives
to Timed Media
Handler (TMH). The big value here, I think is encoding to AAC or MP3
and adding a /listen to this article/ feature to the mobile app.
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/39363/
This can really help with improving accessibility of Wiktionary
pronunciation media files as well.
Also AAC / m4v ingestion, could make audio recordings a lot easier to
import into the site, i.e a "record a reading of this article" mobile
app feature #2 ;)
There are already thousands of spoken articles, with some promotion
their could probably be a lot be more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_articles
The software patent situation for mp3 is sad, considering how long the
mp3 format has been around:
http://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/
I think AAC is a similar situation, encoder wise:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding#Licensing_and_patents
But fundamentally Wikimedia is not "distributing" these encoders and
there are no royalties for media distribution. Likewise we are not
shipping decoders ( the decoders are in browser or the mobile OS )
I don't know why Wikimedia's commitment to being accessible in royalty
free formats, somehow also precludes making content accessible for
folks on platforms that ~don't~ decode royalty free formats. But
hopefully we can change that over time.
Not sure if this is the right forum for this, but I hope we could come
out of this thread with rough consensus to enable these formats to
help increase the reach of audio works.
peace,
--michael