[Foundation-l] Wikimania 2008; online video recordings

[Walter Vermeir]

Hi everyone,

I have not been to Wikimania but I do am interested in what was going on 
there. And probably many people who did go also because you can not go 
to  everything.

120 years ago some clever guy found a solution for exactly this type of 
problem.

About how this invention was used for the Wikimanias before 2008 have I 
voiced in my newsletter my opinion last year;
http://en.wikizine.org/2007/08/year-2007-week-33-number-79.html

For Wikimania 2008;

There are archived videos online of the sessions.
http://webcast.bibalex.org/Home/List.aspx?Conference=6u0LkBzgNlZm+RzGhC/6Ag==

This is the first Wikimania that this has happened. So far the good news.

The location, Biblotheca Alexandrina, was presented as a very new, very 
upscale world class and technological advanced location for a 
conference. Having some expectations that the are able to provide video 
recordings is not unreasonable.

When I try to watch the video online it just does not work. I use Ubuntu 
8.04 / FF3.0

On this blog can be find information about how you can watch the streams;
http://linuxawy.org/node/28

... and it works. At least for a while. Then the video stops in the 
middle of a presentation.

This is a deep url
mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-17-7.wmv

to the board panel session. I was not able to find out how to download 
it directly. I was able to open it with VLC and dump the file locally 
and so make a local copy.

This way it was possible to get behind the point where when streaming 
the video breaks down. It seems that the video contains several points 
where it is broken. The video stops but the audio keeps running. By 
running the video forward a bit and back again you can get over the 
break points.

But even so I was not able to view the whole session because the file at 
a certain point was empty. The videofile seems to be so bad that even 
VLC can not swallow it.

That is my user experience of "trying to view the Wikimanina 2008 
recordings" for so far.

Why is the WMF again still not able to do what any 12 year old with a 
mobile phone seems to be able to do these days; make a movie and put it 
on the internet in way that just works?
What is wrong with putting files on an ftp-server and posting the urls?

-- 
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
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