If I understand the popular sentiment correctly, it is that:
a) the foundation is committed to preserving knowledge it gathers in open formats, and
b) knowledge should be presented by foundation projects using exclusively open formats
Some people assume that a) and b) are inseparable. I would beg to differ. Let's:
- allow uploads only of ogg files, or other open formats, and
- allow downloads of these ogg files AS WELL as transcode into flash-presentable formats
We say we want to encourage adoption of open formats. That's fine and dandy -- let's only allow open formats in uploads. But a large part of our mission is delivering content and I feel that we've been burying our head in the sand by pretending that there's no problem with access. I would venture to say that the vast majority of our users cannot watch or hear any multimedia files off of our websites. I would also suggest that they are not likely to, in the next several years at best.
I suggest that if we change our attitude and allow alternative, actually-workable presentation of our media, we will be more correctly fulfilling our mission. Let's allow Flash for audio and video.
-ilya haykinson
On 9/28/06, SJ <2.718281828@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm an outspoken fan of fixing and improving Theora, and I think this
sounds like a fantastic idea. We should do similar low-res versions
of audio into something other than .ogg -- but make sure that the
high-res version we archive and strongly encourage is, in both cases,
the free-format Ogg version.
There is *no* widely-used completely free audio or video format. We
should not allow our strong support for Ogg to prevent our media from
being used by the overwhelming proportion of our audience that cannot
(or don't know how to) play those formats.
At the same time, we should use our extra free-format-friendly
energies to promote those formats, educate our audience about how to
play them, develop and host instruction manuals and documents to help
with that last point, and regularly survey users to find out how many
of them can and do play free format media... to know, for instance,
when we can start deprecating in-browser flash in favor of in-browser
theora plugins.
Oh, yes -- and we can push the Mozilla Foundation to integrate ogg
players into the default firefox distribution. <pokes MozFound about
writing in libtheora support>
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Firefox_Ogg_Support
-- SJ
On 9/28/06, Jason Spiro <jasonspiro2@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Click this link:
http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/SynBERC:MIT/Lab_video_tours
>
> It's far different from most video on Commons: it's Flash streaming
> video and it works in 99% of web browsers. (The VLC web browser plugin
> is supoosed to support Flash video too, though I've never tried it.
> Also I don't know if Flash video is based on patented codecs or not.
> But assuming that no such problems come up...) Perhaps we should put
> in a MediaWiki feature request:
>
> MediaWiki should convert all our videos to low-rez Flash Video format
> for streaming previewing as soon as the .ogg original is uploaded.
> This way, more people will be able to view our videos, so we'll get
> more uploads.
>
> Agree or disagree?
>
> Cheers,
> Jason
>
> --
> Jason Spiro: computer consulting with a smile.
> I also provide training and spyware removal services for homes and businesses.
> Call or email for a FREE 5-minute consultation. Satisfaction guaranteed.
> 416-781-5938 / Email:
info@jspiro.com / MSN: jasonspiro@hotmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
>
Commons-l@wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
--
++SJ
_______________________________________________
Commons-l mailing list
Commons-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l