while it doesn't fix the underlying problem (missing free high quality codec) it fixes the practical problem for us exchanging high quality footage for collaborative editing and re-use:
The video editing server.
See the specs: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiTV/Schnittserver/Specification
Hopefully Dan, a kdenlive / MLT developer gets his offer approved by the university of Lüneburg so it can be implemented in the next weeks (bidding ended on November 4th).
Interesting. This is the first time I've seen that page.
Part of it confuses me a little:
"Because all online video formats utilise lossy compression, published videos cannot be edited further to correct or update them, and they cannot be re-used by others for different projects – unless one is willing to accept a dramatic degradation of quality. Making original quality raw footage available for re-use is still a very rare and laudable exception...Because of the community consensus to prefer no MP4 support, storing raw footage within the Wikiverse is not possible. Wikimedia Commons permits uploading of video files only in the patent-free formats WebM/VP8 and Ogg/Theora."
This is kind of confusing, as MP4 is usually used in lossy mode (Just like webm), so neither is exactly ideal for video editing. Both WebM/VP9 (Which currently cannot be uploaded for technical reasons, but there are no political objections) and MP4 support a "lossless mode", however in practice I don't think its usually used (Maybe I'm wrong. I have no idea what consumer-grade video cameras actually output. It would surprise me if it was actually lossless video).
I imagine (but have no evidence), that VP8 would be just as acceptable as MP4 for this use case if the quality option was cranked way up. (OTOH the first generation of the video content would be in theory best, but perhaps the difference is negligible...)
--bawolff