This is a drastic policy change that affects all projects, and so needs wider discussion than just wikitech-l.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com Date: 20 March 2012 01:24 Subject: [Wikitech-l] Video codecs and mobile To: Wikimedia developers wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
As some may know, we've restricted videos on Wikimedia sites to the freely-licensed Ogg Theora codec for some years, with some intention to support other non-patent-encumbered formats like WebM.
One of our partners in pushing for free formats was Mozilla; Fire fox's HTML5 video supports only Theora and WebM.
The prime competing format, H.264, has potential patent issues - like other MPEG standards there's a patent pool and certain licensing rules. It's also nearly got an exclusive choke hold on mobile - so much so that Mozilla is considering ways to adopt H.264 support to avoid being left behind:
http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/03/18/video-user-experience-and-our-miss...
Is it time for us to think about H.264 encoding on our own videos?
Right now users of millions of mobile phones and tablets have no access to our audio and video content, and our old desktop fallback of using a Java applet is unavailable.
In theory we can produce a configuration with TimedMediaHandler to produce both H.264 and Theora/WebM transcodes, bringing Commons media to life for mobile users and Apple and Microsoft browser users.
What do we think about this? What are the pros and cons?
-- brion _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Am 20. März 2012 18:18 schrieb David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
This is a drastic policy change that affects all projects, and so needs wider discussion than just wikitech-l.
Thanks for forwarding the discussion.
I wonder whether we should rather use our strength in users' demand in order to make pressure on manufacturers to support free-software codecs than adopting the costly and patented codecs. I mean, it's not only about content. MediaWiki and Wikimedia should remain free from a technical point of view, too.
Regards, Jürgen.
On 21 March 2012 08:17, Jürgen Fenn schneeschmelze@googlemail.com wrote:
I wonder whether we should rather use our strength in users' demand in order to make pressure on manufacturers to support free-software codecs than adopting the costly and patented codecs. I mean, it's not only about content. MediaWiki and Wikimedia should remain free from a technical point of view, too.
The actual problem there is there's not enough video content on Wikimedia sites as yet to make this a user pressure issue.
So we need to be able to *ingest* anything that comes in from a camera or a phone, even if we save it as Theora or VP8.
(This is harder than it sounds, but is apparently in progress, in the coming-some-day Timed Media Handler.)
At that point we can start on serious programs to add video. Every article on a street should have video of the street, for example. Video of athletes in action [1]. Etc.
- d.
[1] and boy will *that* be interesting for egregious overreaching claims of copyright by sports leagues, but anyway.
On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 08:41, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Every article on a street should have video of the street, for example.
I can't say I find that a particularly exciting prospect. Especially not, as perhaps I wrongly conjure from context given by this discussion, video shot on mobile phones.
I'm picturing wonky-cam, shakey footage that someone has taken walking down a less than visually impressive sidewalk.
I think I would find Google Street view a lot more useful and engaging as it gives me a means to explore and decide where I'm 'looking'.
Bodnotbod
On 22 March 2012 15:39, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
I can't say I find that a particularly exciting prospect. Especially not, as perhaps I wrongly conjure from context given by this discussion, video shot on mobile phones. I'm picturing wonky-cam, shakey footage that someone has taken walking down a less than visually impressive sidewalk. I think I would find Google Street view a lot more useful and engaging as it gives me a means to explore and decide where I'm 'looking'.
True. But I do think it'd be an improvement on nothing, and will get better with time.
- d.
Am 22.03.2012 16:41, schrieb David Gerard:
On 22 March 2012 15:39, Bod Notbodbodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
I can't say I find that a particularly exciting prospect. Especially not, as perhaps I wrongly conjure from context given by this discussion, video shot on mobile phones. I'm picturing wonky-cam, shakey footage that someone has taken walking down a less than visually impressive sidewalk. I think I would find Google Street view a lot more useful and engaging as it gives me a means to explore and decide where I'm 'looking'.
True. But I do think it'd be an improvement on nothing, and will get better with time.
- d.
I would be in favour of such a proposal if it is not a one way road. Every video uploaded (no matter what the original format is) should be available in a free video format. For mobile phones it could still provide a h264 version for playback. But the more interesting part would be the licensing conditions for h264, which could be just a grave for money.
nya~
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 15:41, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
True. But I do think it'd be an improvement on nothing, and will get better with time.
Just after posting, my inbox pointed me towards this in a moment of pleasing synchronicity:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile/video/kings-cross-streetstories-app-video
Bod
On 21 March 2012 08:41, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
(This is harder than it sounds, but is apparently in progress, in the coming-some-day Timed Media Handler.)
At that point we can start on serious programs to add video. Every article on a street should have video of the street, for example. Video of athletes in action [1]. Etc.
Every article on a non extinct animal species is a somewhat viable and useful goal (and it keeps us one step ahead of web of life)
On 23 March 2012 20:13, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Every article on a non extinct animal species is a somewhat viable and useful goal (and it keeps us one step ahead of web of life)
Goodness yes. My 4yo loves videos of animals, and there's e.g. just about no fish that can be filmed that someone hasn't filmed and put it on YouTube. We should have that stuff.
The key thing is that this is highly wiki-friendly, i.e. even crappy phone videos will be an improvement on nothing and we can improve from there.
At that point, we can in fact keep to distributing unencumbered formats and wait for the purveyors of mobile appliances to catch up.
So ... about having the technology to ingest anything ... how's that coming along?
- d.
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