[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [Wikitech-l] Audio derivatives, turning on MP3/AAC & mobile app feature request.

[David Gerard]

So when and who authorised non-free formats?


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Dale <mdale at wikimedia.org>
Date: 2 February 2013 16:25
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Audio derivatives, turning on MP3/AAC &
mobile app feature request.
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: Jan Gerber <j at thing.net>


+correct content-type this time ;) Note this has already been merged,
but still worth mention for visibility.

On 2/1/13 12:10 PM, Michael Dale wrote:
>
> We are about to merge in support for audio derivatives to Timed Media Handler (TMH). The big value here, I think is encoding to AAC or MP3 and adding a /listen to this article/ feature to the mobile app.
> https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/39363/
>
> This can really help with improving accessibility of Wiktionary pronunciation media files as well.
>
> Also AAC / m4v ingestion, could make audio recordings a lot easier to import into the site, i.e a "record a reading of this article" mobile app feature #2  ;)
>
> There are already thousands of spoken articles, with some promotion their could probably be a lot be more:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_articles
>
> The software patent situation for mp3 is sad, considering how long the mp3 format has been around:
> http://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/
>
> I think AAC is a similar situation, encoder wise:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding#Licensing_and_patents
>
> But fundamentally Wikimedia is not "distributing" these encoders and there are no royalties for media distribution. Likewise we are not shipping decoders ( the decoders are in browser or the mobile OS )
>
> I don't know why Wikimedia's commitment to being accessible in royalty free formats, somehow also precludes making content accessible for folks on platforms that ~don't~ decode royalty free formats. But hopefully we can change that over time.
>
> Not sure if this is the right forum for this, but I hope we could come out of this thread with rough consensus to enable these formats to help increase the reach of audio works.
>
> peace,
> --michael



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