[Foundation-l] Wikimania2008 Sessions online

[Brion Vibber]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> I couldn't play these without installing non-free software and I can
> not play them at all on the non-x86 platform I'm using at the moment,
> because the proprietary software is not provided except for x86.  ...
> in fact,  nothing at all is displaying on that page, so I can't figure
> out how to download the files (if they are downloadable at all)
> 
> It appears that the videos are embedded by embedding flash movies
> provided by a non-mediawiki kaltura server at kaltura.com and that the
> kaltura extension still works just like the youtube embedding
> extension.

Indeed, these are precisely the reasons that Wikimedia *doesn't use* 
Kaltura's extension or other similar systems today -- in their current 
state, based on proprietary codecs and plugins, they simply don't meet 
our requirements for open access.

I can't get the videos to play on my proprietary Mac either, though, so 
don't feel left out. ;)


Note that Kaltura is now sponsoring Michael Dale's continued work on 
advanced video support in MediaWiki. They're not *evil*, they just 
didn't create their system with the same needs we have in mind.

Michael has long been working on MetaVid, based very heavily on Ogg 
Theora to ensure openness, and will be both improving our basic 
Ogg-playing capabilities and creating a truly open version of the online 
editing interfaces that Kaltura's current stuff provides.

http://metavid.ucsc.edu/

-- brion