[Foundation-l] We should permit Flash video playback

[Emmanuel Engelhart]

Preparing us to be able to offer a friendly and open way to handle
videos late 2008 seems to me a better idea.

That means at least:
* Improving Mediawiki in this direction
* Having a media-center to make video manipulations : convertion, thumbs,  ...
* resolving bandwidth problem

Your proposition:
* add dependences
* does not use free tech. (Internet Archive)
* is only for one-two years
* postpones our real challenge

Kelson

2007/7/20, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> Last week I met with John Killy, the COO of the Mozilla Corporation,
> and with Brewster Kahle, ED of the Internet Archive. Mozilla intends
> to support video playback in Firefox using the new <video> tag [1],
> but such support is not likely to arrive before late 2008 according to
> John.
>
> The Internet Archive currently does not transcode to Ogg Theora, but
> has a transcoding pipeline in place for other codecs. They have
> recently started embedding the Flash-based open source "Flow Player"
> for playing back FLV files directly in the browser, and have added FLV
> to their transcoding pipeline.
>
> The Archive is happy to support us with video hosting in any way. If
> we can find a useful hosting arrangement with them, they would also be
> willing to add Ogg Theora to their transcoding pipeline.
>
> Imagine that we could easily embed any currently hosted video from the
> Internet Archive into Wikimedia projects, but also make use of their
> immense hosting capacity for future video uploads beyond the current
> 20 MB upload size limit.
>
> Video has tremendous potential educational use, and we should not let
> the Wikimedia projects fall behind when it comes to hosting video
> content. One should not underestimate the big role that ease of use
> played in the success of YouTube: thanks to embedded Flash video,
> users no longer had to worry about some plugin possibly hosing their
> Windows installation, or about Real Networks' eternal "Buffering ..."
> message showing up. It just worked [tm].
>
> We must achieve the same ease of use in Wikimedia projects. In my
> opinion, inconveniencing users is the worst possible way to raise
> awareness of free content & free software. I therefore propose that
> 1) we immediately begin serious discussions with the Internet Archive
> about hosting some or all of our video content on their servers;
> 2) All uploaded videos should be transcoded to at least Ogg Theora & a
> Flash-compatible codec.
> 3) we add video support to MediaWiki that will, as intelligently as
> possible, fall back to any of the following methods
> - embedded open source Flash player
> - Java player
> - VLC plugin
> - (in the future) <video> support.
> 4) We support the open source Flash project Gnash to ensure that it
> can be used for video playback on Wikimedia servers.
>
> Having an open source Flash implementation & an open source Flash
> player does not address the patent issues with Flash video, but those
> who are concerned about violating software patents (which are not
> universally applicable anyway) could still use the provided Theora
> files. We could also add a clear message to this effect at the bottom
> of every embedded Flash video.
>
> Such a solution would be a reasonable compromise between trying to
> provide "free as in speech" video wherever possible, but also
> minimizing hassle and maximizing ease of use for typical Windows users
> looking for free educational content. We should continue to evangelize
> & use Ogg Theora, but not at the expense of usability.
>
> [1] http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/section-video.html
>
> --
> Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
>
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