[Commons-l] Preview of TimedMediaHandler extension ( Re: Size and Bitrate )

[Michael Dale]

Related to the discussion of size and bitrate of uploaded video
discussions on wikivideo-l, I thought it would be nice to share the
latest efforts on the TimedMediaHandler extension.

This extension will help make the size and bitrate choices less of an
issue, and will just be a matter of uploading the highest quality
version you can. The extension auto transcodes to a few different
derivative formats.

Its best illustrated by features overview page:  ( best viewed with
Firefox 4 )
http://prototype.wikimedia.org/timedmedia/Main_Page

This extension standardises a lot of features of the mwEmbed player
gadget, like pop-up gallery videos, temporal media fragments, timed
text, iframe embed video sharing, html5 standard "video", "source" and
"track" page output, etc.

The bottom clip illustrates a key feature of this extension with a real
commons "media of the day" clip from a few days back.  JJ Harrison
uploaded a very nice, very encyclopaedic HD nature clip, but at
1920x1088 and 13mbs it fails to playback almost any time some tires to
play it :(  With this extension we get the 'right' resolution given the
embed size, and have easy access to switch streams as you go into
fullscreen if your computer / connection supports it.

There are still a few resource loader integration issues to work out
before more widely sharing these efforts, but I thought I would share it
on these list to get some early feedback.

I have filed a tracking bug
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27699 to keep track of
its progress toward deployment. If you file related related bugs or
feature requests, you can tag them with that tracking bug.

Also got started on a mediawiki.org extension page:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:TimedMediaHandler

peace,
michael