Wikipedia To Add Video 165
viyh writes "Wikipedia will be adding a video option within two or three months, according to the MIT Technology Review. '... a person editing a Wikipedia article will find a new button labeled "Add Media." Clicking it will bring up an interface allowing her to search for video — initially from three repositories containing copyright-free material — and drag chosen portions into the article, without having to install any video-editing software or do any conversions herself. The results will appear as a clickable video clip embedded within the article.' They will be requiring all video to use open-source formats. This is in hopes of getting content providers to open up their material to gain wider exposure on the Wikipedia website. There is also an in-browser editor that removes a lot of the headache often associated with any kind of video editing. With the new Wikipedia system, 'people will be able to easily inject media into pages, in a way that wasn't possible before,' says Michael Dale, a software engineer from Kaltura, the company assisting with development of the tools."
Re:Rather not. (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. This will also make Wikipedia's bandwidth cost skyrocket, and if I remember correctly they're on a lean budget.
Re:No Male (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rather not. (Score:3, Interesting)
Google has never provided servers or bandwidth to wikipedia. Yahoo provided some servers at one point. Since wikipedia doesn't carry ads google has little incentive to suppot it
In practice bandwidth demands will likely be limited by how hard it is to produce encyclopedic videos and harder still to produce ones people want to watch.
Re:Hipocrisy or something near that. (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't go FOSS because it's FOSS. Go FOSS because it's superior.
Not all FOSS is superior. I trust they'll use the best video streaming for the job, with priority placed on being open source.
Flash has the best video streaming available at the moment, and the best compatibility. Hard to beat that for a website trying to reel in customers.
Wikimedia Commons (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Hipocrisy or something near that. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm all for driving Flash out of existence, since Macromedia/Adobe should have never been allowed to acquire the near monopoly on web video they have. Adobe has also been a horrible steward of their responsibility especially when its come to Flash player support for devices like smart phones.
But the flip side is you might recall back to what video was like before Flash. Every freaking web site you went to had a different video standard, video player, and you were usually forced to launch a video player which either wasn't integrated in the browser or was integrated badly. Flash only succeeded because it fixed a completely broken thing on the web where Apple, Real and Microsoft in particular were trying to acquire their own monopolies on web video.
For this to succeed Wikipedia needs to compel a new video player standard other than Flash and proprietary codecs like H.264, and insure near universal availability of the solution they create as an integrated browser component, either built in to the browser or as a plugin.
I'm kind of curious if HTML/5 is going to be able to achieve that lofty goal across all the warring browser factions in the world, especially IE and Microsoft. Not sure JavaFX counts as open. What other standard is their other than HTML/5.
You also have the little problem that all existing video is going to have to be transcoded if you reject H.264, VP6, MPEG, WMV, AVI and Flash H.263 as acceptable formats. It sure isn't going to be easy to add video to Wikipedia if Joe and Jane user have to transcode the video to add it, or is Wikipedia going to automatically transcode video as they get it to their open standard.
Re:Hipocrisy or something near that. (Score:3, Interesting)
If someone at our TV had this genius idea of RE-encoding a maximum compressed format to another maximum compressed one, he would be fired in less than a commercial break time.
Of course, not accepting H264, MPEG, H263 is pure ideological and will satisfy number of elitists who can't even tell difference between SD and HD broadcasts and even brag about it.
The reality you mention was one of the main reasons why Nokia (and couple of sane companies) insisted on using h264 in video element. There is no way you won't lose quality between transcoding an already state-of-art compressed video to another one. It is the main reason why Youtube videos really sucks, people (who are ordinary) doesn't have the raw video at hand. I even encoded 3-4 videos from digital betacam masters for that exact reason and posted to Youtube. I asked the producer "would you prefer mpeg2-->DV-->VP7 chaos or this? There is no other option because guy/gal will post it.". So we posted our own copyrighted video which really interestingly automatically taken down since a "responsible citizen" reported it :)
I try 1 more time for open codec fanatic developers: Would you want your pure C code to be converted blindly to BASIC and converted again back to C? That is what you do to videos when you transcode. Oh also, if VP6 worked, they wouldn't donate it to you for Theora. ;)
Donations? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Less is more. (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe it's a bit dodgy when it comes to the important stuff, but Wikipedia is an invaluable repository of pop-culture trivia. Simpsons, Star Trek, or Family Guy questions? I know where to look. And just the other day I needed to know the name of Dagwood Bumstead's daughter.
Re:No Male (Score:3, Interesting)
Note that this problem already exists with sound samples that are allowed on Wikipedia. And I'm not aware of it being a problem.
Using a monopoly to destroy competing technology (Score:1, Interesting)
Wikipedia practically has a monopoly on information content, even stronger than Microsoft has a monopoly on OS software.
What is called for here, by a large number of people, is for Wikipedia to use this monopoly for the benefit of a single video standard, with the aim of destroying opposing technologies because they are not open source.
Why should someone who does not see open-source as a natural ideological destination not see this as evil, abusive and hypocritical on a mass scale? Wasn't there a discussion here just days/weeks ago where it was demanded that YouTube also allow open-source formats? Why is it so important that YouTube allows open-source, yet another site should never use anything but open source, unless the consistent goal is "always maximise the use of open source and minimise the use of anything else"?
This is a great example of open source being an ideological battle setting out to destroy proporietary software. Although many often deny it (maybe they don't like awareness of the truth?), there's plenty of examples from the community.
Re:There's just one problem... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hipocrisy or something near that. (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh well, VLC works for anyone, Java mp4 player works too and so as anything. It wasn't my point, it is all about the feedback they would get if they embedded that or that. It is always negative of some kind. Also please forget about telling people to install some huge media player for a video, it won't happen. Even virus writers know it so they trick people with "codec install" :)
After reading some comments, I agree it should have been video tag. World's one of the largest, most popular sites happens to be open source and open content, one should use that advantage in a good way without too muuch alienation of poor IE users. Asking browser if it can do the VIDEO thing and falling back to Flash if not would be best.Of course, please, no browser name sniffing, capabilities detection should be enough.
Re:Rather not. (Score:3, Interesting)
Its even wider than that. Here are a few examples of corporations that do not maximise profits:
1) Oxfam
2) the Mozilla Foundation
3) bishops of the Church of England
4) cities
5) some cooperatives and mutuals
6) some professional associations (some are unincorporated associations)
7) educational institutions such as schools and universities
It is also perfectly possible for a profit making corporation to have other objectives (such a guaranteeing editorial independence at Thompson Reuters), or to sacrifice profits in ways that the members approve of (e.g. by giving money to charity) in spite of the stated objectives being purely profit oriented.
Can we know put this stupid, ignorant Slashdot meme to death? Yes , I know,no chance.