Hmm, is Motion-JPEG no longer a thing, or does it not scale to the quality
or bitrates needed nowadays? Used to be pretty standard back in the days I
was fiddling with video editing 10-15 years ago (MJPEG would be packaged
usually in .avi or .mov depending on the platform's preferred video
container).
In general I'd recommend:
a) Seriously consider a non-US-based hosting platform for original files to
stay outside the extra-scary US patent regime. (IANAL etc)
b) Store original-format files whenever possible for archival purposes.
c) Provide conversions from anything ffmpeg/avconv-supported to a lossless
or near-lossless common intermediate format, whatever it may be.
d) Allow originals to be used as transcode/editing sources for server-side
processing if feasible, otherwise use common intermediate format.
e) Make lossy transcodes at lower resolutions available for on-web playback
(potentially including playback of clips in an on-web preview & editor
tool, with the high-res source or intermediate-format versions used
server-side to produce high-quality output from the EDL)
f) Provide "one-touch publishing" from the video upload & editing suite to
Commons, sending a high-quality WebM transcode of the full-quality original
file or edited output over to Commons. (Probably sideloading via URL.)
-- brion
On Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 1:56 PM, bawolff <bawolff+wn(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/4/14, Sebastiaan ter Burg
<terburg(a)wikimedia.nl> wrote:
Hi Bawolff,
for someone that's claiming not to be an expert you sure seem to know
what
you're talking about. On the sharing the high
quality footage: the idea
is
not to dump it on commons, but to set up a
separate server
<
https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.nl/presentation/d/1sS8WnMO6iFidEPkyNMk2…
where
we can share Wikimedia related footage (at first) with each other. For
example: interviews with Wikipedias, b-roll shot at events,
screencaptures
of instructional videos, timelines and more of
that kind of stuff.
Choosing
one codec would be the easiest at first, but if
licensing would allow it
it
could be more economical to share the out of
camera files. In other
words:
no use to upload ProRess422 when I shot a video
in AVCHD... The AVCHD
files
will be much smaller and the edit suites I know
don't have a problem
rendering these files to a more edit-friendly format again.
Any ideas how we could get an answer on the licensing question for
hosting
certain formats?
Best,
Sebastiaan
AVCHD = MP4 = H.264 (+ AC-3), so on that front we essentially have an
answer, its just not a very popular answer (In this particular group
anyways). The RFC was pretty conclusive, although there may be a
little wiggle room about converters on say the tool labs (unclear), it
seemed pretty decisive about not allowing H.264 content on Wikimedia
servers in general. Perhaps there's wiggle room on unofficial servers,
but than its not an official project.
In my comment about format's, I meant more that there's probably other
lossless formats which we could probably use, at the expense of very
large files. (Maybe anyways, it would need to be explored. I don't
really know).
Keep in mind also, that converting AVCHD -> Proless/some lossless
thing/etc -> AVCHD is going to cause quality loss, in a similar
fashion as if someone repetitively converted JPEG -> PNG -> JPEG. Of
course at this stage that's probably a minor concern. The bigger issue
is getting anything up and running.
One of the problems we're facing with the
renewed video initiative is a
codec to share high quality footage with each other. I've emailed Apple
several times to ask if there are any restrictions in sharing files -
solely sharing without playback - on a public server, but they haven't
responded yet. That's why this initiative caught my eye.
I'm not sure what grounds Apple would have to restrict sharing such
files (Unless they had you sign an actual NDA before giving you a
product that could make such a file).
Sure if they had a patent on it, they could restrict the use of
products which create, convert or play the file (Do they [or other
people] actually have a patent on any of the ProRes stuff? Anybody
know?). But I'm not sure how they would have any ground to restrict
the distribution of such files. If they somehow had a copyright claim
on the resulting file, perhaps - but that sounds absurd to me. After
all the file is created entirely by a mechanical process, while the
mechanical process might be very creative, the result is created by a
machine and thus by definition lacks creativity (Unless some
"creative" constants are copied in). IANAL.
The more likely issue, is that if the file format is patented, we
wouldn't be able to use due to internal political reasons, rather than
any external restrictions.
Hay said:
Then there's the problem of hardware. Think
about OGG/WebM: used very
little on mobile because there's no support for hardware acceleration
(and hence: better battery life).
So, no. I don't think this initiative could fill the 'open source high
quality video gap'.
I don't think that's really where this particular group is targeting.
A format like mox would have impractically large file sizes for mobile
(or any sort of end viewing), and hardware acceleration really doesn't
matter very much when almost no compression is being used. Work in the
high quality open source video codec space for final product video is
more centered around VP9 and Dalla AFAIK.
--bawolff
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