[Commons-l] We should permit Flash video playback

[Erik Moeller]

On 7/20/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> We need redundant fail safe storage etc for our images as well. We're
> failing. The solution is to stop failing, not hand over the ropes to
> someone else.

Since we aren't currently doing any large scale video hosting, we
wouldn't be handing over anything.

The space we're operating in is large, and there are friends willing
to help us. These include Internet Archive, Creative Commons, Mozilla,
and others. Of course they don't agree with everything we do and vice
versa. That doesn't mean that we should be taking an isolationist
stance: we should work together when it makes sense.

What is your worst case scenario?

> Our popup "(>) play in browser" system loads a launch page off a box
> with an access log.  Due to java security it also fetches the video
> through a proxy on the same system.  We can tell if the player worked
> for an IP if the same IP both fetches the launch page and completes a
> media file.
>
> Previously it worked for 81-82% of the people who clicked the play button.
> I pulled yesterdays numbers and it was only 72%. Both are still
> clearly a majority. :) This is in the same general range as flash
> penetration, at least for flash 8+... and  it's way better than before
> I setup the player: about 0% could just click a theora file and play
> it ;)

These are promising numbers. What I would suggest to get better numbers is

1) Add a link to an example video file to the sitenotice for a couple
of weeks (or random sample of readers);
2) Add a question "Did the video play without problems in your
browser" to the page and capture the numbers.

If we end up somewhere in the 60-70% success range I guess that's
acceptable, but I'd like this confirmed with a reasonable sample of
users and an explicit question.
-- 
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik

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