[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikitech-l] Video codecs and mobile

[David Gerard]

On 21 March 2012 08:17, Jürgen Fenn <schneeschmelze at googlemail.com> wrote:

> I wonder whether we should rather use our strength in users' demand in
> order to make pressure on manufacturers to support free-software
> codecs than adopting the costly and patented codecs. I mean, it's not
> only about content. MediaWiki and Wikimedia should remain free from a
> technical point of view, too.


The actual problem there is there's not enough video content on
Wikimedia sites as yet to make this a user pressure issue.

So we need to be able to *ingest* anything that comes in from a camera
or a phone, even if we save it as Theora or VP8.

(This is harder than it sounds, but is apparently in progress, in the
coming-some-day Timed Media Handler.)

At that point we can start on serious programs to add video. Every
article on a street should have video of the street, for example.
Video of athletes in action [1]. Etc.


- d.

[1] and boy will *that* be interesting for egregious overreaching
claims of copyright by sports leagues, but anyway.