Planet Miro

Will's blog: Need help testing KDE screensaver patch

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:21:00 +0000

About a week ago, Joe contributed a patch to disable the screensaver on KDE when Miro is playing fullscreen. I don't run any systems with KDE on them. I'd love to get some help testing this patch so that we can include it in the next release of Miro.

The bug for this work is http://bugzilla.pculture.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3067. The patch is at http://bugzilla.pculture.org/attachment.cgi?id=1980.

Let me know whether this patch works or doesn't work for you either in the comments of this blog entry or in the comments of the bug.

Open Video Alliance: The Golden Age of Video

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:00:50 +0000

Artist Ricardo Autobahn took quite a few clips from classic movies and TV shows and strung them together to make this great remix, “The Golden Age of Video.” This is a great example of transformative, fair use of content that’s clever, catchy, and very danceable. Enjoy!

Will's blog: Dev call 11/04/2009 minutes

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:27:00 +0000

minutes

Paul:

Is sick.
Bug fixes and small features for Miro Community.
We have a lot of sites and things seem pretty stable.
Working on Miro Community 0.9 now. 0.9 isn't very feature-full, but it improves on things for style, look and feel, and such.

Luc:

Worked a couple of days on subtitle support for Miro on Windows using VLC. Building a test application in C. Once he's got that working, he'll transcribe it to Python and ctypes.
Switched gears to help Will to fix libtorrent build problems with the new binary kit system. Bumped into problems getting it to compile on OSX 10.4 (expletive expletive expletive). Worked around it.

Will:

Continued working on libtorrent and binary kit changes.
Wants to do a 2.5.4 that includes vlc 1.0.3, libtorrent/unicode fixes on Windows, and database fixes from Ben.

Ben:

Fixed database problems with duplicate ids.
Spent time removing sorts.pyx and filetypes.pyx from the codebase. This reduces complexity of the build.
Wants to push out a 2.5.4 with database fixes he's done recently.
Wants to finish the fasttypes removal work on OSX.
Talked about the sniffer code.

Janet:

Tested changes in Miro and Miro Community.
Working on making it easier to assign tasks to volunteers and get more volunteers involved in the process without losing track of them.
Wrote up a wiki page for subtitle implementation work and testing. This will become the specification of what we're implementing now that we're mostly done research. https://develop.participatoryculture.org/trac/democracy/wiki/SubtitleImplementationDetails
Is having her wisdom teeth taken out next week.

bugzilla

19 bugs/feature-requests created
1 bugs marked DUPLICATE
7 bugs marked FIXED
1 bugs marked WONTFIX
2 bugs marked INVALID

Miro News Blog: Miro Community Sites Blossom

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:09:18 +0000

Since the public beta launch of Miro Community on Thursday, we’ve been excited to see what kind of sites people would create. And we haven’t been disappointed – already, a variety of sites are testing their wings.

One of the most moving displays of MC’s potential is from tiny Cook County, Minnesota. Danna Mackenzie, the Information Systems Director for Cook County, told me:

“We are the northeastern point of Minnesota, on the Canadian border. Most of our land area is taken up by the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. We only have one stoplight in the whole county!

When I heard about Miro (via Twitter!) I knew that it was a perfect fit. I am so happy to read about your project and the energy and enthusiasm that is going into supporting the most important connections on the internet….the hyper-local ones!”

Danna points out that video is “the new lingua franca of the internet.” As one of the organizers behind the Cook County Ultra Broadband Initiative, she realized Miro Community could be a great way to develop excitement about the possibilities of high-speed internet. Although they haven’t gone public with the site yet, in the future, Danna looks forward to inviting the community to engage with videos of their friends and neighbors. Not only will this site function to bring together community members around broadband access and adoption, it also offers a way for Cook County to develop a new understanding of itself as a community, and to share that community with the rest of the world.

Also on the local front is http://vcam.mirocommunity.org/, a beta site created by the folks at Vermont Community Access Media. Already, VCAM’s Miro Community site has made it easier to check out VCAM’s content online, and they see great potential in the site to engage their viewers.

Many folks also jumped at the chance to make a Miro Community site outside of regional groupings. The Opencast Project has had a Miro Community site for over a month now at http://video.opencastproject.org/, compiling all the videos they’ve acquired over the years relating to the use of audiovisual content in academia. Miro Community has allowed Opencast to bring together videos from a variety of sources – from University material to YouTube video – all in one place. Having easily created an elegant video website, Opencast is a great example of how many organizations can start using Miro Community.

New Miro Community sites also include Womoz, for the newly minted Women & Mozilla project, A site for all things GNOME, Hackerlab, and many more. Other groups and organizations are just beginning to experiment with Miro Community for a variety of uses. One family thought to use MC as a way to bring together their family videos, while an international nonprofit is considering how curation could work for them. At http://videobloggers.mirocommunity.org/, videoblogger Jay Dedman explains, “Our community is playing a game where we each post a video a day for the month of November. Remix fun ensues.” We can’t wait to see what they come up with!

We’re only just beginning to see what Miro Community can be. Have an awesome example of an MC site? Email anne[a]pculture.org and let us know – we want to hear about all the innovative video communities you are creating.

Open Video Alliance: Kaltura Developer Meetup in NYC

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:00:20 +0000

For all of you in and around New York (and for all of you who don’t mind traveling), Kaltura is having its first ever developer meetup. Come get together with other developers and chat about open video and interactivity. The meetup will feature three short talks about upcoming news with Kaltura, open video in education, and upcoming Open Video Alliance activities. This will be followed by a half-hour technical session.

Date: Wednesday, November 11
Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm (doors open at 6:30pm)
Where: Kaltura Office in NYC, 41st East 11th street, 11th Floor (TechSpace)

For those of you who can’t make it, the meetup will (hopefully) be recorded and available on Kaltura.org.

Will's blog: libtorrent out of portable

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:47:00 +0000

Miro uses libtorrent-rasterbar for bittorrent downloading. We had a copy of the libtorrent source code in the portable section of our repository. Miro would compile libtorrent as a Python extension along with all the other stuff to build Miro binaries. Not any more.

Luc is almost done carrying my changes over to OSX 10.4, but as of today, libtorrent-rasterbar is no longer in the portable section of our repository.

What does this mean?

For Windows, a clean build on our Windows build box went from taking enough time for me to make dinner, eat dinner, and then completely forget what I was working on (26 minutes) to 4 minutes. In my Windows XP vm, a clean build went from 8 minutes to 1 minute. Plus I fixed the unicode problems Miro had with Windows and libtorrent and updated Miro to use libtorrent 0.14.6 on Windows.

For OSX, a clean build on my mac mini running OSX 10.5.8 went from 17 minutes to 1 minute. Plus I updated Miro to use libtorrent 0.14.6 on OSX, too.

For gtk-x11, libtorrent is now a required system package. Miro will no longer compile its own libtorrent if you don't already have it installed. I'm pretty sure that most modern versions of the major Linux distributions have packages for libtorrent-rasterbar and the Python bindings.

We have a couple of other changes that affect the project structure almost done. I'll blog about them as they finish landing.

11/4/2009 - This is completed now. Many thanks to Luc who sorted out the issues I was running into with compiling libtorrent on OSX 10.4 with Boost 1.35.0.

Open Video Alliance: PCF releases Miro Community

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:29:58 +0000

This week, our friends over at Participatory Culture Foundation debuted a new video presentation site, Miro Community. In addition to providing simple and convenient access to diverse video content from anywhere on the web, it creates a unique, personalized video site in minutes. Best of all, it is free to create a site (and it’s open source, so you can host your own).

Miro Community tackles two fundamental issues facing online video—the navigation of content dispersed all over the web, and the difficulty for less tech savvy producers to establish their own attractive video site. Audiences and creators know all too well the hassle of searching unsuccessfully for a video or maintaining unified video content across a growing number of popular hosting platforms.

With Miro Community, creators can display all their videos in one location, even if those videos come from a variety of sites like YouTube, Blip, Vimeo, or are self-hosted elsewhere. Users and organizations can create their own website and pull together already existing content and add new videos. Visitors can comment, view administrator curated playlists, or submit a video that they think is worth adding to the collection.

For universities, this might provide more professional web front-end than either iTunes or YouTube for open courseware and related materials. For public broadcasting affiliates, it could mean a free, accessible location for digitally distributed content. In terms of presentation, the site gives video the spotlight and because it is ad-free, there are no unwanted promos to distract from the viewing experience.

Miro Community has issued a call to partner with local and public media organizations, so if you’d like to see your company get involved, be sure to check them out. In the meantime, give your own Miro Community site a try.

Open Video Alliance: Open Internet: 5 Minute Net Neutrality Video by Jesse Dylan

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:05:08 +0000

The folks at Public Knowledge have created a five-minute primer on the basics and importance of net neutrality.

Directed by PK board member Jesse Dylan and featuring PK president Gigi Sohn alongside a sampling of the usual suspects (Professors Lawrence Lessig and Ed Felton, members of the band Ok Go, Free Press’ Ben Scott, etc.), the video explains what net neutrality is and why it’s critical that we preserve the free and open nature of the Internet.

Miro News Blog: Miro Community Launches with a Focus on Local Video

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:29:40 +0000

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Miro Community, in partnership with the Knight Foundation. It’s a powerful way to draw video from all over the web, whether it’s produced by you or someone else, into a highly customizable site that you control.

CALL FOR LOCAL AND PUBLIC MEDIA PARTNERS:
We are beginning this public beta period with a particular focus on local communities. Over the next couple months, we will be launching locally focused video sites with WNYC in New York, BAVC in San Francisco, Medfield Access in Medfield, MA and several others (see our partners section below for more details on these and others). We are seeking additional partners for sites in other cities and towns. In particular, we are looking for organizations that have a strong local connection, an existing media outlet, and a curatorial focus. Miro Community will allow these groups to add a world-class video site, focused on their local community a virtually no cost and with only a small amount of curatorial work each day. It is an excellent way to extend your connection to your local community. If you are interested in launching a site in your city or town, please be in touch: dean [a] pculture.org.

This New Service
The primary goal of this project is to enable local video websites to quickly develop and flourish. Miro Community gives any person, public broadcaster, or local media access center a simple way to create a video front page for their city, town or region.

Miro Community was born out of the chicken or egg dilemma of hyper-local video: audience first or site/content first. When developing the idea, we realized that most organizations would need a guaranteed audience before they could dedicate resources to building an expensive video site. And likewise, there would need to be lots of interesting video available to community members, in order to attract this regular viewing audience. With this catch 22 in mind, we figured that making it quick, easy, and inexpensive or free to create a robust community video site was a sensible approach. We also realized that most communities have an abundance of video that exists on the web and just needs to be collected where a community could be cultivated around it.

Miro Community Demo for Floyd, VA

The Technology

Miro Community is designed to help people and organizations efficiently create, maintain, and curate a topical or hyper-local site. Videos can come from YouTube, blip.tv, Vimeo, or almost any video blog or site powered by drupal, plone, or other CMS that creates a media RSS feed. Miro Community is Free and Open Source Software (source available here).

We also decided to create a fully hosted version of Miro Community that would require no IT resources. The hosted sites can be located on AnyDomain.com or sub.Domain.com and are fully customizable through CSS. Every site has the potential to be completely branded and owned by the organization that creates it. Furthermore, conversations happen within the community site—positive social norms can be instilled and nasty comments (like the type that sometimes appear on YouTube) can be dealt with swiftly and painlessly.

Anyone can set up a site for free on our beta server.

A Video-Centric Approach

Sites that maintain regular viewing audiences are usually video destinations first and foremost. In other words, websites that integrate video as a secondary function or as an afterthought generally never gain traction as places to go watch video. The most successful video sites and communities are centered around watching the videos; for example, YouTube, Hulu, and the TED conference. These sites each have regular viewers/visitors who come expecting entertainment, enrichment, and engagement. Therefore we developed Miro Community with the idea that a successful community is built around the videos themselves and we didn’t focus on integration or hiding videos behind organizational firewalls.

Miro Community Partners

We’ve partnered up with a lot of great organizations for Miro Community, including WNYC, the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), Economystory.org, the Pittsburgh Foundation and public access station Medfield.TV. WNYC’s upcoming site will expand video coverage of arts and culture in New York City. BAVC and Medfield.TV are leading the way in innovative new understandings of public access, embracing a mission of empowering community media both inside and outside of their studios. Jason Daniels, Executive Director at Medfield.TV, hopes that their site, video.medfield.tv, will particularly attract young people to a new vision of public access, creating connections between their online pursuits and their physical communities. Meanwhile, Economystory.org, a project of PRX, brings together unconventional stories about the American economy, and uses videos.economystory.org to present video stories that might not make it on the radio but are just as fascinating as the latest “Planet Money” coverage. As Economystory shows, Miro Community sites are not just for geographically linked communities, but also for communities of interest.

We’re interested in expanding our partnerships with local media organizations, and helping them jump-start a video front-page in their community. If you’re interested, or know a person or organization who might be, please get in touch: dean [at] pculture.org.

Miro Community has been made possible through a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Will's blog: Dev call 10/28/2009 minutes

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:08:00 +0000

minutes

Paul:

Worked on Miro Community stuff over the week.
Talked about infrastructure for the MC services.

Janet:

2.5.3 looks like a pretty good release.
Tested Will's torrent-related fixes--looks good.
Testing Luc's subtitle work. Found some bugs with the subtitle code and older versions of OSX. Otherwise, it's looking good so far.
Talked a bit about Miro Community testing. We have a few volunteers helping, but there's still work to do.

Luc:

Worked on subtitle stuff. Happy to see people are starting to test subtitle-enabled builds.
Worked out some bugs so it now works on 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6.
Working on getting subtitles working on Miro on Windows with VLC.
This is coming along nicely and we decided it should land in Miro 2.6 so we're going to move the work to the master branch.

Will:

Reworked Miro on Windows to use a packaged binary kit.
Switched Miro on Windows to use a pre-built libtorrent from the binary kit.
Planning to do the same for Miro on OSX.
Pushed out a set of Karmic packages for 2.5.3, but they aren't well tested.

Ben:

Did some bug-fixing.

bugzilla

23 bugs/feature-requests created
12 bugs marked WORKSFORME
1 bugs marked INVALID
2 bugs marked DUPLICATE
3 bugs marked WONTFIX
3 bugs marked FIXED
25 bugs marked INCOMPLETE

Open Video Alliance: Vodo embraces P2P for film distribution

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:00:54 +0000

Vodo is a promising new project that offers a new method of film distribution that combines peer-to-peer (P2P) and donations to increase impact and support filmmakers. The venture has already released a fantastic feature film, Us Now, directly to some of the largest video viewing communities online. This particular release has garnered well over 100,000 downloads in less than a week. Vodo aims to have more feature films up within the week.

Jamie King, director of Steal this FIlm II and mastermind of the operation, realized there was an immense amount of attention that could be pooled together from P2P communities. He’s using websites like The Pirate Bay, Mininova, and TorrentFreak as a platform to introduce, distribute, and popularize awesome film. Vodo also aims to create a real relationship between the film creators and audience, hoping to eventually help support filmmakers financially in their work.

Vodo relies on the premise that for many independent filmmakers, file sharing isn’t a big concern, but reaching a wide audience is. King reasons that by spreading the films, they are gaining a grassroots buzz that rivals current Hollywood blockbusters.

The site also fosters a donation-based business model by including information about how to contribute to the creator in every file, along with a link to do so directly. All donations go straight to content creators, letting them cultivate a loyal audience and respond directly to their fans. Vodo itself is supported through membership by subscribers, who in return receive access to films being considered for distribution as well as those already available. Subscribers also vote on which of these films should be picked up by Vodo, and have direct access to producers and directors.

Open Video Alliance: Supreme Court to Reconsider Software Patents

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:00:51 +0000

On November 9, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Bilski v. Kappos, a case that could have a big impact on the future of online video.

In 1997, Investors Bernard L. Bilski and Rand A. Warsaw attempted to patent a business method they had invented—specifically, a method of hedging risks. When brought to court, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected the patent. In its ruling, the appeals court stressed a test for patentability known as the “machine-or-transformation test.” This test establishes that a process is patentable in two instances: one, if it’s tied to a machine, or two, if it transforms something from one state to another. The appeals court left the decision’s effects on software ambiguous. Immediately after the initial Bilski ruling, the patent office rejected four applications from IBM, citing that a machine wasn’t necessary for their processes.

The question now is whether software patents meet the “transformation” part of the machine-or-transformation test. Though the facts of the case do not hinge on software patents, the Court’s interpretation of Bilski—which could either clarify, narrow, or expand what is patentable—may determine whether or not software falls within the scope of patentability.

What impact would this have on the online video ecosystem? If the Court were to eliminate software patents—or at least create a stricter standard of patentability—it would alleviate much uncertainty. The open source community operates in the constant and looming shadow of (often frivolous) patent infringement lawsuits, and a ruling tightening the patent regime could pave the way for future innovation.

Most legal experts acknowledge that the patent system is in need of reform. Billions of dollars are spent each year on patent claims, and damages and injunctions are wildly unpredictable. The patent pool is so expansive that virtually every new product must acknowledge a minefield of potential liability and seek to mitigate it. This results in hidden costs, and—some argue—an institutional bias against nimble innovators.

“The real power of [software] patents has not been their overwhelming intellectual force and originality, but the simple logistic difficulty of exposing oneself to expensive litigation, which also has the chilling effect of retarding adoption of any technology under that cloud,” said Dan Miller, co-founder of On2 Technologies. “I suspect these stratagems will undergo some changes but the general approach of creating a ‘patent thicket’ will continue apace.”

Makers of video compression technology have a hard time navigating in this thicket. H.264, the video compression standard associated with MPEG-4, is heavily patented. Makers of free software are barred from implementing it, since it would require paying licensing fees. By contrast, Theora is an royalty-free video compression format, and has been supported by Mozilla and others because it can be freely distributed. No one needs to seek permission to use Theora, nor pay a dime in licensing fees. Yet even Theora is haunted by the patent specter. Certain players worry that Theora’s patent history, inherited from On2’s VP3 codec, may one day be threatened by so-called submarine patents—ancient patent claims that seem to rise up out of nowhere. This is perhaps one reason why Theora was not chosen to be the official codec in the HTML5 draft standard. But in a world where everything is potentially at risk of patent infringement, submarine patents threaten everyone. (On2 Technologies, which created and publicly released the VP3 codec that is the basis for Theora, was recently acquired by Google. It is still unclear whether or not Google will choose to release On2’s newer codecs, like VP8, into the public domain.)

So should we count on big changes to the patent landscape? Would the open source video community benefit from such a decision?

“The Bilski case is very interesting and could potentially have a profound effect on the software community, but its full impact on the codec community would really depend upon how broadly software patents were invalidated,” said blogger Davis Freeberg. “To a certain extent, the very transformative nature of the codec itself could be interpreted as an exception/loophole to Bilski’s case, so I expect it will take more litigation before this moat can be completely filled in.”

Various companies and advocacy groups have filed amici curiae, or briefs that provide information—often from a specific point of view—that may help the court in its decision. Many of these organizations have filed briefs on whether software should be patentable. Groups like the Free Software Foundation, the Software Freedom Law Center, and Red Hat state that software should not be patented. They claim that innovation is stifled when patents and murky legalities need to be taken into account. The SFLC holds specifically that software is a set of algorithms—an abstraction—and therefore not patentable. On the other hand, giant companies like Microsoft, Philips, and Symantec have filed a brief stating that software should be patentable because of its physical ties to a computer.

There is little reason to believe that the Bilski decision will have a huge, immediate effect on video codecs and software patents. The legal situation is murky, and, as history shows, court decisions like this will take time to set in. But if the Court were to hand down a surprise ruling, it’s easy to see how the aftermath could be disruptive.

Open Video Alliance: Film Annex feature on OVA and the Open Video Conference

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:00:01 +0000

Film Annex, a network for independent movies and TV shows, has an interview up with OVA’s Ben Moskowitz discussing participation, social networks, and next year’s Open Video Conference. Check it out!

Miro News Blog: AcaWiki Goes Live!

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:28:29 +0000

If academia has been filled with walled gardens of content, there’s now a way to smell the roses without breaking and entering. We’re pleased to see the launch of AcaWiki, a collaborative, Creative Commons-licensed, nonprofit “Wikipedia for academic research.” At PCF, we’re big believers in the use of open-source and collaborative tools for education, and making inroads in traditionally closed off academia is a crucial part of ending educational inequality.

AcaWiki allows users to post summaries and literature reviews of academic papers, helping both academics and the general public gain access to the central ideas of peer-reviewed research without having to shell out big bucks for something that may not even be relevant to them. They make use of the important fact that you can’t copyright an idea to spread knowledge far and wide, while retaining the authority of a peer-reviewed process by focusing on materials that have been judged by others in their field.

AcaWiki can be used by those just interested in gleaning a little more knowledge about a variety of subjects, but it can also be used for more specific purposes. Do you teach classes that require students to write responses to academic papers they read? You can have them incorporate their response into a summary or review and tag it with your class name, so that students can benefit from one another’s readings and contribute to a wider body of academic knowledge. If you’re a researcher, AcaWiki is an excellent tool for easily figuring out what papers are worth purchasing or reading in whole.

As we’ve seen with fair use, it’s important to stand up for the rights we already have and make robust use of them in order to develop a truly participatory and thriving culture. Every time you write a summary, you’re proactively standing up for the critical fact that copyright doesn’t cover ideas, and in doing so, you’re ensuring a right to access of knowledge. So support open educational resources by checking out AcaWiki today!

Open Video Alliance: WordPress adds Ogg support through VideoPress

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:33:20 +0000

WordPress is often cited as a paradigm for open source innovation. As an easy, powerful blogging service, WordPress software is now powering many, many blogs—including our own. So it’s exciting to hear the latest announcement from the WordPress team: support for open video.

“While we are still working on adding full support for video tag, we are happy to announce that we have encoded all of our video inventories in Theora/Ogg format as well as the usual mp4 formats. VideoPress users are now able to access the Ogg file URL from within the Media Library, and the video can be played directly on browsers that support HTML 5, such as Firefox 3.5 and Chrome.”

Saavy, self-hosted users can check out the open source video framework, which handles uploading, transcoding, and more.

•VideoPress supports OGG

Will's blog: Miro 2.5.3 packages for Ubuntu Karmic released!

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:29:00 +0000

I just pushed out packages for Karmic for Miro 2.5.3. Until Karmic is out, consider these packages beta quality. If you use these packages and run into problems, let us know as soon as you can.

Ubuntu installation instructions

Will's blog: Dev call 10/21/2009 minutes

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:23:00 +0000

minutes

Nick and Luc weren't on the call. Janet and Will had colds. Ben's side of the call had some weird 15 second delay. That made it a dicey call that we ended on IRC.

Minutes for this morning's call:

Paul:

Working on Miro Community finishing up version 0.8.

Ben:

Worked on a lot of bugs, especially 12101. Checked in a few fixes into master which look pretty good, but need testing.
Worked on a bunch of other bugs.
Worked on 12229 to allow for distribution of RSS and content on a DVD.

Will:

Worked on extracting binary kit stuff from the repository.
Planning to work on Karmic packages for 2.5.3.

Janet:

Sick.
Hoping to get to testing the changes Ben made for 12101.
Spent some time testing Miro Community and is getting geared up to start testing Luc's subtitle code.

bugzilla

14 bugs created
2 bugs marked FIXED
1 bug marked DUPLICATE
1 bug marked INVALID

Open Video Alliance: Open Video comes to SXSW

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:23:48 +0000

The first batch of panels for South by Southwest 2010’s Interactive Festival were announced today. Of the 2300+ submissions, two out of our three proposals made it through so far—all thanks to your votes and comments.

What’s Open Video and Why Does It Matter? — This panel covers the essential ideas behind open video, including the importance of open video, what participation means in the digital age, and what the legal and technological battles that surround online video.
Wikipedia Gets an Upgrade: Collaborative Video — This panel will explore the implications of adding video to Wikipedia. Wikipedia has recently teamed up with Kaltura to implement OGG Theora video; however, there are lots of technological implications, communal implications, and both legal and practical issues.

Be sure to keep an eye out for our upcoming Open Video Contest, where one grand prize winner will receive a trip to Austin, TX for SXSW 2010 Interactive!

Miro News Blog: Share That Film with Vodo.net

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:28:28 +0000

Vodo is a promising new project that aims to dismantle the toxic environment of Hollywood PR and film distribution. The venture has already released a fantastic feature film, Us Now, directly to some of the largest video viewing communities online. This particular release has garnered well over 100,000 downloads in less than a week. Vodo aims to have more feature films up within the week.

Start watching Vodo films now with this Miro subscribe link. As always, Miro takes all the guesswork out of finding and downloading bittorrent files.

Jamie King, director of Steal this FIlm II and mastermind of the operation, realized there was an immense amount of attention that could be pooled together from peer to peer communities (both “pirate” and “non-pirate”). He’s using websites like The Pirate Bay, Minniova, and TorrentFreak as a platform to introduce, distribute, and popularize awesome film. While the Pirate Bay is a thorn in Hollywood’s side, it is also home to millions of avid film fans — it’s the perfect place to catapult filmmakers to international recognition. Vodo also aims to create a real relationship between the film creators and audience, hoping to eventually help support filmmakers financially in their work.

Vodo relies on the premise that for many independent filmmakers, piracy isn’t a big concern, but reaching a wide audience is. King reasons that by spreading the films, they are gaining a grassroots buzz that rivals the hollywood machine.

How does Vodo support the creators whose films they distribute? By including information about how to donate to the creator is every file, along with a link to do so directly. All donations go straight to content creators, letting them cultivate a loyal audience and respond directly to their fans. Vodo itself is supported through membership by subscribers, who in return receive access to films being considered for distribution as well as those already available. Subscribers also vote on which of these films should be picked up by Vodo, and have unprecedented access to producers and directors.

So check out Vodo’s truly independent productions for free today! A regular flow of engaging films is on its way, and you can start with Us Now, an appropriately themed film about the possibilities for participatory government. Come be a part of creating a new system that lets artists and audiences thrive.

Miro News Blog: VideoWTF – Keep those Questions Coming!

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:05:48 +0000

In its first week, VideoWTF has been a great success so far. But the site is filled with so many smarty-pants video folks looking to help out others that questions rarely stay unanswered for long. this is a great problem to have and shows what enthusiasm there is for collaborative projects. It also means that we’d really like to encourage more questions. Remember, whenever you ask something, it’s getting recorded for the future in an easily searchable format. So by posting those video questions, you’re really doing a great service to your fellow video enthusiasts.

We’re also looking for more people for are familiar with Linux-based programs to answer the many questions about open-source and video. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you have an interest in both…

I challenge you to stump video WTF’s community with your toughest questions!

Miro News Blog: Miro 2.5.3 Released

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:03:31 +0000

Miro 2.5.3 was released yesterday. It contains some bug fixes that are relevant to all users. There are also updates to vlc and libtorrent.

We strongly recommend that all users update now.

Will's blog: 2.5.3 coming soon--I promise!

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:52:00 +0000

The Miro 2.5 series has been a total pain in the ass--I'm not going to lie. Not only has it infuriated a number of users, but it's been like a Sysaphusian struggle for the team.

Right now there are 3 developers (Ben, Luc and myself) and 1 QA person (Janet) that work on Miro fulltime. Then we have a large community of testers, translators, and a handful of people who send in patches to fix the problems that irk them most. Even with this large community, the majority of the development, testing and support is done by 4 people.

In the last three months, Janet's house was hit by lightning frying a bunch of her testing machines; I bought a house and moved (along with the build boxes); Ben went on vacation for a month; Luc bought an apartment, moved, and then had his Internet connection totally hosed for a month; I had unforeseen medical problems (that I don't really want to talk about), that resulted in me being offline for the last two weeks; and our ssl certificates expired.

This week is the first time since the beginning of August when we've had all 4 of us working.

We've been trying so hard to get a much-needed 2.5.3 release out. It has a slew of fixes that should alleviate an array of problems that users have been experiencing. We're finally on the verge of the release. I hope it'll happen today or tomorrow.

I really appreciate the patience many of you have had with us as we scrambled to do the impossible over the last couple of months. I really wish it could have happened differently, but it's as if the forces of nature were completely against us.

Though 2.5.3 should fix a variety of issues, we're working on re-architecting some portions of Miro that aren't working well with the database changes we made in Miro 2.5. On top of that, we're working on subtitle support, extensions, and continuing to make Miro a better experience for a larger group of people. Some/most/all of this will show up in Miro 2.6 and 2.7, hopefully in the next few months.

Will's blog: Dev call 10/14/2009 minutes

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:48:00 +0000

note

I wasn't on the call for 10/7/2009, so I don't have notes for that day.

minutes

Will:

Planning to push 2.5.3 out.
Planning to keep working on extracting binary kit stuff.
Then get miro working on Karmic Koala.
Then moving libtorrent out of portable.
Will be in Providence, RI from October 23rd through 26th.

Luc:

Continuing work on subtitle work.
Perian doesn't support subtitles in subfolders. Luc is looking into fixing Perian and then sending a patch upstream.
Luc is going to start looking into VLC support next.

Ben:

Planning to work on 12101. One of the theories is that when torrents are downloading, Miro is doing a lot of disk thrashing.
Remove torrent metadata from the updates.
Tweak status so that we only persist to disk every now and then.
Plans to work on bug 12229.
It's difficult to figure out how many people are affected by 12101.

Paul:

Working on Miro Community 0.8 release. It's coming along nicely.

Janet:

Tested Miro Community and Miro 2.5 branch builds.
Working on testing plans for Miro Community post 0.8 release.

2.5.3 status:

Talked about 12277 and 12276 and where we're going with that plan.
Hopefully we'll get it out today or tomorrow.

bugzilla

8 bugs created
1 bug marked DUPLICATE
4 bugs marked FIXED
2 bugs marked WORKSFORME
1 bug marked WONTFIX

Open Video Alliance: Got questions? Video WTF can help

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:00:24 +0000

Over time, video is getting more and more ubiquitous, but there remains a few access issues with today’s methods and technologies. In other words, making and sharing video can be hard. Luckily, the Participatory Culture Foundation, a founding member of the Open Video Alliance, has unveiled their newest project, Video WTF.

Video WTF is a community-based help center where anybody can pose a question, and anybody can answer it. Questions can be about anything—from what camera to get on a certain budget, to what the best screencasting software is, to why there is an annoying hum on the stage mic. You don’t need to register to ask/answer a question, but registration and participation does come with certain privileges over time. See more at the Video WTF FAQ.

Ideally, video is easy. In reality, problems and uncertainties exist. The great thing about a site like Video WTF is that there’s an entire community out there happy to help.

Open Video Alliance: OVA Tipline: Help us spread the openness!

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:40:27 +0000

We’re here to keep you updated on everything related to open video—new technologies, legal issues, ideological struggles, big announcements, etc.—but sometimes things fly under our radar. This is why we need your help!

Come across any relevant news, stories, or artwork? Send us a tip at tips@openvideoalliance.org.

Miro News Blog: Video WTF: a new question and answer site for video creators

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:19:58 +0000

Today we are launching Video WTF, a new collaborative community site for video creators to ask questions and offer answers for anything related to video production— cameras, editing, publishing, and more. We think this will be an extremely useful site for the video community at large. We think WTF really sums up how we feel when we’re stuck on with a camera or editing problem. The site is based on the StackOverflow service, so we think it’ll work well.

We could really use your help getting this new community off the ground!

Here are three things you can do to help:

Tell your friends— mention the site on twitter, blog it, and forward this message to anyone you know who is a video creator or video expert.
Ask questions! Have a question about video production? Stuck on something? Looking for the right tool? Ask a question.
Offer an answer— take a look at the questions that have already been posted and jump in with an answer. Here are the questions that have already been asked.

Miro News Blog: Subtitles Success!

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:14:32 +0000

We recently asked you to help us fund a programming project to bring basic subtitle support to Miro… and you did! The next major release of Miro will include basic subtitle support for videos.

Thanks so much to those who helped spread the word and donated!

While this basic feature will be awesome, we had additional motives in gauging the community’s interest in subtitle support (and I’m really excited that folks came through). This successful litmus test helps us move forward on our larger subtitling project for standardized subtitle search and delivery. We’ve been talking with friends at Mozilla recently, who are also very interested in this vision of distributed and collaborative subtitles.

Turning distributed subtitling into a ubiquitous standard could be our most ambitious project to-date… stay tuned and thanks again for showing us how much you care!

Open Video Alliance: Ceding Control on the “All-Sharable Frontier”

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:00:26 +0000

Video is a primary tool for advertisers, political campaigns, and other brand messengers. “The challenge is to achieve maximum exposure… we control the message. We control the positioning,” writes marketer Jean Huy over at Lost in Dots. But as video tools fall into the hands of more people, brand messengers will have to plan on ceding some control. “If you think that it’s already a challenge to moderate your message board, follow your tweets, and to keep some consistency across your social media initiatives, be prepared to the real challenge,” he warns.

Videos are the last all-sharable frontier. With minimal knowledge and tools, it’s easy today to copy, alter and post text and images from about anywhere to about everywhere. Right click on a jpeg picture and you’re done copying it from the web. Double click on the copy and it will open the picture in your favorite free photo editing application, enabling you to modify the image, add text and save it as a new picture, ready to post on the Internet. But that’s not the case with videos. Videos are coded in tens of proprietary formats, causing insurmountable barriers for the average user willing to edit part of the content. And worse, popular so-called ‘video sharing’ sites like YouTube simply make it impossible to download the original video file without [special] software.

As we reach a certain level of video standardization and the tools become universal, it will become much easier for everyday users to play with video content. You can expect to see this unfold in interesting and unexpected ways. Users of products and services will begin to talk back.

The results won’t always be pretty. Perhaps the commercial for a particular product or service will be altered by a scorned customer, becoming a vehicle for that customer’s dissatisfaction. The altered video might end up becoming more popular than the originals. This potential for this has existed for years, but we’re only now starting to imagine it on a mass scale.

Of course, remixes and other alterations of commercial content aren’t always motivated by a personal or political agenda. In 2006, one artist reimagined a garish TV commercial for household cleaning product Cillit Bang as a grinding techno dance track, just for fun:

The creators of the original commercial could not possibly know what it would spawn. But the dance remix was a runaway viral hit, amplifying the brand visibility of Cillit Bang. This kind of wild appropriation is becoming increasingly common, with uneven results. Sometimes user participation is a blessing; other times it’s a curse.

What’s clear, though, is that brand messengers will need to abandon the pretense of one-way communication. As soon as a video is subject to remix and critique, the original message may be skewed. Context can disappear. Control can be altogether lost.

There’s no better illustration of this than in the work of artist Santeri Ojala, aka “StSanders.” StSanders briefly became an internet phenomenon after he posted overdubbed videos of famous guitarists shredding to his own awful guitar solos. The videos became hugely popular—until they were taken down and StSanders was banned from YouTube.

Here’s one (of my favorites) starring the band Iron Maiden (via Wired):

Though some artists laughed off the videos, others were horrified by the potential for damage to their musical prestige (hence the takedowns). Though Ojala stands by the claim that his works are transformative and fall under Fair Use, hijacking someone’s likeness in this way likely runs afoul of statutes protecting personality rights. But that doesn’t mean creative mischief like this won’t continue on a large scale.

Millions of images float through the ether of the web, undergoing constant alteration along the way. Sometimes the source of the image, and the message it was meant to contain, are lost. As video-editing tools become easier to use and standardization continues, we’ll see a similar phenomenon with video. In fact, many viral videos today are impossible to trace back to the source, but continue to cycle through social media as people share them for creative and critical purposes. With the distinction between content creator and consumer slowly fading, marketers will have to rethink how they engage with audiences.

…be prepared to the real challenge of open video combined with social media: the ultimate consumer-empowering tool about to rise. How are marketers going to deal with it remains an open question. I personally like to think that it might help us go back to the essence of communication: building promises that make sense to consumers and that can be kept. If you’re scared about angry customers spoiling your viral ‘open video’ campaigns, a good start should be to understand why they’re angry and improve their experience of your products before building any kind of social campaign.

In other words, a participatory audience isn’t something marketers should fear—but it will require new modes of engagement.

Open Video: The Next Challenge for E-Marketers

Open Video Alliance: Kaltura webinar tomorrow: video in education

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:00:21 +0000

Check out Kaltura’s webinar this Wednesday for some use cases of open video in education, with presentations by David Germano, Director of SHANTI at University of Virginia and Chris Millet of Penn State.

The show starts at 2:30 ET. You can register here.

Open Video Alliance: Theora 1.1 released!

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:50:56 +0000

Last week, Xiph released Theora 1.1, marking a huge update in the way open video is encoded and decoded. Ogg Theora is a compression format that is increasingly being adopted for online video, largely because of the fact that it is open and royalty-free. Though the Theora format itself hasn’t been updated, Mozilla’s Christopher Blizzard does a great job in showing how the Theora 1.1 codec (compression-decompression software) brings huge improvements. These include better quality videos (which allows for lighter videos, size-wise), improved live streaming, a more efficient two-pass encoding system, and more.

Will's blog: Dev call 9/30/2009 minutes

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:06:00 +0000

minutes

Minutes for this morning's call:

Janet:

Has gone through all of the tests on Windows XP for 2.5.3 rc1.
Working on testing Miro on OSX.
2.5.3 rc1 is looking good so far.

Luc:

Worked on 12212 and should have it fixed tomorrow.
Worked on subtitle ui--it's coming along nicely.
It's hard to determine which subtitle thing is which language which makes it hard to allow users to choose a default subtitle language.
Worked on external .srt subtitle handling.
Perian doesn't support external .srt for movie containers it doesn't open by itself (mp4, quicktime, ogg, ...). Luc's running into problems with that and is trying to talk to the Perian developers.
VLC handles everything created so far just fine. Luc's tossing around ditching Quicktime/Perian for VLC. (ed note: I think I summarized that right--but I could be completely mistaken about what Luc is tossing around.)
Will continue doing subtitle work in a subtitle branch that'll eventually get pushed to g.p.o.

Ben:

Hopped on the call to say hi.

Will:

Worked on 2.5.3 bugs, put out a rc1 release.
Working on redoing release process, scripts and infrastructure to make releases easier and cleaner with git.

Paul:

Working on Miro Community--almost done with version 1.0.
Working on unit tests.

kickstarter

We achieved the $1000 goal in large part to a couple of key donations. Thank you!

bugzilla

21 bugs created
7 bugs marked FIXED
1 bug marked DUPLICATE
8 bugs marked INCOMPLETE
2 bugs marked INVALID
1 bug marked WONTFIX

Open Video Alliance: An Award to Help Aspiring Filmmakers

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:00:00 +0000

For those of you working in film, a big break may be in sight. The WorkBook Project recently announced the first Discovery and Distribution Award initiative. One feature filmmaker will be chosen to receive the award—which comes with a one-week theatrical release in Los Angeles, PR support, and a cash award.

In the current environment, it’s often tough for budding filmmakers to break through larger companies’ hold over the theatrical market. Often, it’s tough to find audiences, distribute work widely, and raise money to not only cover costs but also to sustain their next project. By guaranteeing an artist distribution, marketing, and profit, this award serves as an out for both film and filmmaker.

Though one filmmaker will receive the award, 20 runners up will be propped up through various online distribution outlets. Judging begins in less than two months, so be sure to submit soon!

The WorkBook Project, which partnered with the Open Video Alliance to hold the Open Video Conference earlier this year, is an online community that collects innovative methods, media, tutorials, and advice from people who see the collective benefit of making their creative processes transparent.

Miro Testing Blog: Miro 2.5.3 Release Candidate build testing

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:45:50 +0000

The developers have fixed a TON of BUGs for a 2.5.3 release and it is time to get some serious testing done on the posted release candidate build.

Changes include some fixes to some unknown errors, updates to vlc and libtorrent, changes for some os x 10.6 specific issues, and some other file naming problems on windows.

Thanks to a contribution for Jason, we have also added the ability to play any item in an external player via the right-click context menu. This is the initial implementation of a long-requested feature.

Because there are so many changes that affect all part of Miro, we really need to get to broad testing on this. Please download the nightly build for your os: windows, os x, source.

There is a 2.5.3 rc test run in litmus. The focus areas test group consists of tests for the areas that have been changed the most. Please give us some of your time and run few test cases.

Open Video Alliance: Microsoft Supports HTML5 Video Tag

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:07:40 +0000

In a recent message that has come as a shock to many, Microsoft endorsed the use of <video> and <audio> tags. Adrian Bateman, the Program Manager for Internet Explorer, posted about this a few weeks ago.

The new HTML5 specification includes these <video> and <audio> tags to allow for both video and audio to be played from the browser without the use of a plugin, like Flash or QuickTime. This allows for open, royalty-free codecs like Ogg Theora to be widely utilized. It also frees video and audio from its current, largely proprietary grasp, which reduces the legal and technological costs of entry, allowing for more participatory media. Many new browsers support these HTML5 elements, such as Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, Chrome, and Opera 10. Internet Explorer, which holds the largest market share for browsers, was conspicuously missing from this list. By announcing its support, IE has potentially allowed for a much larger base upon which this new HTML5 framework can be built—though what will actually happen remains to be seen.

Will's blog: Dev call 9/23/2009 minutes

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:29:00 +0000

minutes

Minutes for this morning's call:

Luc:

Working on fixing problems with 10.6 build environment and getting Miro working on 10.6.
Working on subtitles. (Please help us fund this!)
Having issues with .srt files rendering with Perian and 10.6.
Snow Leopard support is targeted for 2.5.3.
Talked about subtitle implementation specifics.

Will:

Working on trying to get 2.5.3 out.
Working on 12101.

Janet:

Testing fixes targeted for 2.5.3.
Working on Miro Community testing. Planning testing and manual testing.
Suggested we build a pre-rollout/pre-demo checkoff list for testing.

Paul:

Worked on Miro Community and it's almost at the 1.0 point.
Miro Community still needs polish, documentation, testing plans...
Two sites are live now.
There are a bunch of sites on deck.

kickstarter

Subtitles project on kickstarter has 24 backers for $494. We're hoping it clears $1000 by the end of the month--8 days to go.

bugzilla

19 bugs created
4 bugs marked FIXED
3 bugs marked DUPLICATE
1 bug marked WONTFIX
2 bugs marked WORKSFORME

Open Video Alliance: Happy OneWebDay!

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:05:16 +0000

Today is OneWebDay, a sort of Earth Day for the web. In 2006, OneWebDay started as a day to celebrate the innovation and creation on the internet. Since then, however, it has grown into a day of action—encouraging equality and openness online.

Mozilla features various ways of participating today, such as printing out a poster declaring how much you love the web and taking a picture with it. Another way to help is to sign OneWebDay’s pledge to end the digital divide—an important step in creating a democratic, participatory web.

Today’s your chance to share the love. Encourage others to take a moment and think about the web, its importance in all of our lives, and the need to keep it open and equal.

Open Video Alliance: OVA Signs European Net Neutrality Open Letter

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:00:01 +0000

The Open Video Alliance recently joined a number of organizations in signing the “We Must Protect Net Neutrality in Europe!” open letter to the European Parliament. Network Neutrality has been in the spotlight recently in Europe with regards to the EU’s Telecoms Package. Recently, many European telecom companies have employed discriminatory practices that add an extra step between the sending and receiving of content. This roadblock is antithetical to progress, to innovation, and to the fundamental openness of the web. The petition requests members of the European Parliament to understand the benefits of a neutral internet and act accordingly:

We who have signed this open letter urge the European Parliament to protect the freedom to receive and distribute content, and to use services and applications without interference from private actors. We call on the Members of the Parliament to take decisive action during the ongoing negotiation of the Telecoms Package in order to guarantee a free, open and innovative Internet, and to safeguard the fundamental freedoms of European citizens.

The petition was spearheaded by La Quadrature du Net, a French civil liberties group that specializes in topics in the digital age. We encourage other organizations to join onto the list of signatories. This is action that is not only important for openness and media, but also for the future of the internet in general.

Uwe Hermann: Help add subtitle support for Miro

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 19:55:44 +0000

If you ever wanted to support an open-source project but you are not a programmer, here's one (of many possible) ways to help:

The Miro project (Internet TV / Video and Audio Podcast application for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X) is seeking for pledges/donations that will be used to add subtitles support in Miro.

To quote from the announcement:

We’re hoping to build real subtitle support into Miro in the next couple months, but we need your help! So we’ve started a Kickstarter project to raise $1,000 to develop this feature for Miro on all three platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux. Can you pledge to help make it happen? One of the great things about the Kickstarter model is that unless we can reach $1,000, your pledge won’t be charged.
[...]
(if you live in the United States, donations are tax deductible — we are a 501c3 non-profit)

There are 11 days left to make a pledge.

Will's blog: Dev call 9/16/2009 minutes

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:55:00 +0000

summary

Every Wednesday morning we have a conference call that we call the "dev call". This has been happening for years. Mostly we use it as a place to schedule upcoming development, talk with each other about problems we're working on, and come up to speed on where we're all at.

I occasionally take minutes when someone isn't on the dev call. I'm experimenting with posting the minutes on this blog for the next month. If it turns out to be useful, I'll keep doing it. Otherwise I'll stop.

minutes

Minutes for this morning's call:

Luc:

working on getting Miro working with Snow Leopard.
cleaning up the sandbox code.
it'll make things much easier when we drop support for 10.4--but that's far in the future still. (15% of OSX users are using 10.4 according to Miro Guide stats.)
then we talked about the costs of supporting 10.4 users.

Will:

worked on Miro 2.5.3 and 2.6 all week.
talked about bug status for 12028, 12150, 12166, 12101, and 12108.
talked about how we're building libtorrent and how we should bump it to the binary kit which will definitely alleviate some issues and possibly alleviate others because we're not really building it "right" in the first place.
made changes to Planet Miro and took over curating.

Janet:

got her machine back which was fried by lightning in August.
working through reworking her test environments.
testing the Miro 2.5 nightly that Will built.

Paul:

working on Miro Community.
almost done with merging "users" and "authors". should get resolved in the near future.
continuing to implement styling stuff from Morgan.

kickstarter

Subtitles project on kickstarter has 12 backers for $191. We're hoping it clears $1000 by the end of the month.

bugzilla

Rough Bugzilla stats:

16 bugs created
8 bugs marked FIXED
4 bugs marked as DUPLICATE

Miro News Blog: Get a Podcast Featured on Miro

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:37:26 +0000

As many of you know, PRX is now featuring the best audio podcasts on the web in the Miro Guide. Having your podcast featured exposes it to an audience of savvy listeners eager to find awesome content, and is an all around great way to reach a new crowd.

Know of an amazing podcast? Share it with Emily from PRX: emily[at]prx.org.

Many of us know and love the excellent shows from NPR and other public radio mainstays, but Emily also wants to hear about the not so well known and spread the love. Think your podcast is an excellent companion to “This American Life”? Or maybe your music show is so hot listeners will never turn to Pandora again? Doing an oral history project in your community and think it could resonate with millions? Give it a shot and send a link to Emily. If she likes what she hears, you may see it featured. And don’t forget to give props to your favorite shows by sending them along, too. You’ll gain good-listening karma and we’ll all win.

Open Video Alliance: DMCA Safe Harbor Applied to Veoh

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:00:56 +0000

A judge ruled recently that Veoh, a web video site with user-generated content, was protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s Safe Harbor provision, thus stopping Universal Music Group’s copyright suit against the website. UMG was suing Veoh for allowing the sharing of video that contained music of UMG’s artists. The judge, however, felt that Veoh was taking all steps necessary to avoid liability.

The § 512 (c) Safe Harbor provision states that a service provider will not be held liable if they are unaware of infringing material and if they take the necessary measures to take down infringing material once they are made aware. The judge found that Veoh had a strong DMCA policy and had done what was financially and reasonably possible to eliminate infringing work. He noted that, had companies been forced to act under the general awareness that infringing material was being uploaded, little technological progress would be possible. (Read the rest of the ruling.)

This buzz around this ruling is its potentially huge implications on Viacom’s similar (but much more expensive) suit against YouTube. YouTube is under fire from Viacom for not doing enough to block infringing content, though they seem to be taking similar steps as Veoh. Although the Viacom case is in a different district and the UMG case does not have to apply, the ruling court will most likely take it into account.

Video content providers can rest a little easier knowing that they have a better chance of protection under Safe Harbor. Hopefully, this will skew money, time, and effort away from costly litigation as copyright owners realize that they are responsible for takedowns, not the video provider.

For more information, check out Ars Technica’s coverage of the case.

Miro Testing Blog: What’s up

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:44:08 +0000

Few updates about what’s come and gone in miro testing lately.

Souce and Nightly Build testing:
Source repositories: a few week ago we migrated from using subversion to git. If you’d like to keep track of the code checkins, you can view the changes here: https://git.participatoryculture.org/miro/log/?showmsg=1 . It’s useful to see the regular changes if you are actively using nightly builds.

In Litmus there a new group under the nightly build test run, for weekly recommended tests. In that group there will be a selection of test cases relevant to the recent code changes of the past week. I’d really like to focus on improving the time gap between when a bug was injected, to the time it was detected. I think focused testing will help that.

Miro 2.5.3: we’d like to push out a 2.5.3 release soon. In 2.5 there are issues where users will get an unknown error on startup. There have been some changes to how we handle and log errors that occur during database transactions. Another different error that looks the same on Windows has also been corrected for the 2.5.3 release.

Additionally, vlc (for windows playback) has been updated to 1.0.1, libtorrent has been updated to 0.14.5. Perian Quicktime components (for os x playback) have also been updated.

Miro 2.6: Work is underway for the next major release. The most notable enhancement is subtitle support Luc is working on adding subtitle support to allow for more translations as well as assist the hearing impaired. To help finance it, we’ve posted the project on Kickstart.

We have also had some code contributions. There is now a context menu for items: Play Externally. This implements part of bug #9350, which is a long-requested feature. We have Jason Woofendon to thank for that patch.

Will's blog: Planet Miro status 9/13/2009

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:42:00 +0000

I appointed myself Planet Miro curator this morning. I also made some changes:

added new related links
added an about page
added Uwe Hermann's Miro tagged feed
added Open Video Alliance feed

Going forward, I'll blog about Planet updates.

Chris's blog: Invest in what you believe in

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:06:26 +0000

I just got back from Djangocon, which was pretty awesome. I was once again on the video team, much like at PyCon. Now that I've got traveling and such out of the way I can return to working on personal projects in my "spare time".

And hey, one of those spare projects turned out to be making some contributions to Miro. Pretty much just minor GTK-X11 specific fixes or enhancements thus far. I'm hoping to return to more Miro hacking in a serious way in the future, but of course I'm not working for the PCF full-time any more, and I notice that the kind of things I'll likely be working on will be a bit different: it really will be more scratch-an-itch style development. Working on serious projects would probably require more full-time dedication than I'm able to give at the moment.

Which actually leads me to another point. Free software and free culture projects all require funding. I tend to think that if you reap the benefits of these kinds of projects, and especially if you really believe in them, then you should consider putting your money toward them. Think of it in terms of the Lessig Challenge: how much money do you put toward media distribution companies, proprietary software vendors, etc whose policies and actions you object to? We do live within a capitalist system, and that means the best way to vote toward change is often to vote with your dollar. (There are other ways to vote of course, you can vote with your effort and time too. Generally the best option is to do both.) So putting your money toward things projects you believe in, even when that "purchase" won't result in an immediate result, is something I think everyone should do.

One such project is subtitle translations in Miro. The PCF is trying to raise funds toward this, and I think it's a great opportunity to tackle accessibility in open video, which hasn't really been covered yet... I'd really like to see this bar make it all the way:

I wouldn't stop there either. What organizations do you really believe in? Various groups could use your support, in especially what has been a terribly difficult year for nonprofits. A sample of groups that I think are important and worth joining or donating to in the free culture / free software sphere: Creative Commons, GNOME, the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation... these are all important groups that need your help.

As for media, support independent artists, especially those that use free culture licenses like Jim's Big Ego, Professor Kliq, Brad Sucks, or any one of the many awesome artists on Jamendo or Magnatune. The Blender Foundation is creating a new Open Movie, Project Durian. They're very close to meeting their pre-order goals... of course, they could still use some help, and the more orders the better (at the moment, if you preorder, you can get your name in the credits). That's a great project in particular because it funds Blender development, helps create an awesome movie, and even releases all the source files under free licenses. They have other items in their E-Shop, too. When you buy hardware, try to buy devices that are free software friendly. There's loads you can do in the realm of media and technology.

There's tons you can do outside of technology, too. Morgan and I get all our groceries from the local farmers' market, from our local CSA, and from independent grocers. When we go out to eat, we go to independent restaurants instead of chains. The Eat Well Guide is a fantastic directory for finding ethical sources of food near you (especially consider joining a Community Supported Agriculture program... it's a cheap and easy way to get fresh, local and organic food at your door every week).

Maybe not everything I've listed here meets what you believe in, but probably something does. Just remember that your time, effort and money are all incredibly important resources, and how you use them will change the world, either in ways you believe in or ways you don't. So invest wisely.

Will's blog: Who else should be on Planet Miro?

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:35:00 +0000

Who else should be on Planet Miro? We're interested in getting content and updates from anyone who contributes to Miro, Miro Guide, Miro Community, Open Video, or any of the other endeavors that we're working on.

If there are blogs or people you know of whose work should be synidcated on Planet Miro, email me to let me know.

Will's blog: Support subtitles in Miro--do you really want it?

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:02:00 +0000

As of September 11th, there are only 10 people in the world who are interested in subtitle support in Miro enough to contribute to it. Is that right? Were we completely mistaken in thinking that users want subtitle support?

If subtitle support in Miro is important to you, take the time to contribute now. If you live in the United States, donations/contributions are tax-deductible because PCF is a 501c3 non-profit company.

Also, help us get the word out. Write about it on your blog, dent it, digg it, reddit it, ... Help us make it happen. Help us help you.

Miro News Blog: PCF and PRX Team Up

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:36:56 +0000

PCF is pleased to announce that Public Radio Exchange has begun curating audio channels for the Miro Guide! Since we first started talking about having audio on the Miro Guide, we’re known we wanted to involve folks who really knew radio in adding and featuring content. Who better than PRX – based out of Cambridge, MA, their mission is “to create more opportunities for diverse programming of exceptional quality, interest, and importance to reach more listeners.” The Boston Globe calls PRX “a smart solution to the problem of excellent and innovative productions failing to reach wide audiences.”

We know that Miro Guide users are always on the lookout for new and interesting content, and we hope that this partnership with PRX will expand the choices available in the Miro Guide and, most importantly, help you get some great new content to listen to!

So say hello to PRX moderators Genevieve and Emily, and keep an eye out for the awesome podcasts they recommend in the “Moderator Pick” bar on our Audio page.

Miro News Blog: Help add subtitle support for Miro

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:28:14 +0000

We’re hoping to build real subtitle support into Miro in the next couple months, but we need your help! So we’ve started a Kickstarter project to raise $1,000 to develop this feature for Miro on all three platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux. Can you pledge to help make it happen? One of the great things about the Kickstarter model is that unless we can reach $1,000, your pledge won’t be charged.

See how we’re doing and make a pledge >>

Will's blog: Support subtitles in Miro work

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:03:00 +0000

How do you contribute to Miro development?

Do you test nightly builds and release candidates?

Do you submit bugs and help us fix them?

Do you send in patches?

Do you package Miro for other distributions?

Do you translate strings?

Do you tell your friends and family about Miro and help them set it up? Do you blog about Miro?

Did you adopt a line of code?

Miro is built and maintained by all of us working together contributing our time and resources. There are features to be implemented, bugs to be squashed, systems and software to integrate with, standards to develop--the future is great with possibilities.

We at PCF are testing out feature-focused support to help pay our operating costs. We're going to pick a feature every release and turn it into a project on Kickstarter. If the feature that we picked is important to you, then pledge and help PCF help you. These aren't little features--they're big projects that implement functionality that's often requested.

For the next next release, we're working on subtitles. If subtitle support is important to you, then check out the project page and pledge your support. Help PCF continue its work on Miro. Help me and the other PCF developers help you.

Open Video Alliance: Net Neutrality And The Law: Interview with Free Press

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:42:21 +0000

Imagine if your ISP charged a fee for uploading video to a service like YouTube. Or imagine an arrangement under which accessing services like YouTube required you to upgrade to a higher tier of internet service.

Free Press is a media reform group based in Washington, D.C. that’s fighting to stave off this dystopian future. Under proposed “net neutrality” rules, ISPs would be required to treat all internet traffic equally, preserving the end-to-end principle that’s been a key characteristic of the internet. But the newly introduced Internet Freedom Preservation Act is not without its critics. We sat down with Ben Scott, policy director at Free Press, to discuss the importance of the bill and the fear of a non-neutral internet.

Ben Scott, Policy Director at Free Press

Let’s talk about net neutrality. There are different definitions and different ideas about what constitutes net neutrality. But how would you explain it to my grandmother?

I think that neutrality is most easily understood as something that you take for granted every time you go online. When you’re surfing the web and you’re moving from website to website, whether it’s your Facebook page or cnn.com or Amazon, you’re pretty much in control of your internet experience. You can go wherever you want, you can read anything you want, you can watch anything you want, you can hear anything you want, and everyone who is offering content on the internet for you to find is treated the same by the network operator. The phone companies and cable companies that give you access to the internet through their wires have nothing to say about what you do, content-wise, on the internet. That concept is known as network neutrality, and it was built into the engineering when the internet was created. That was the whole idea behind the internet. That’s net neutrality.

Free Press is behind the creation and introduction of a bill called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, which would mandate net neutrality for ISPs. This isn’t the first attempt at codifying net neutrality. Can you give us a quick legislative history lesson?

Well, through the entire history of the internet—from its invention and development in the U.S government and at research universities in the 60s and 70s, all the way up through the 1990s—the internet was governed by telecommunications law, which contains non-discrimination provisions. And those served as the guardians of network neutrality. In 2005, the Bush FCC deregulated internet access and said these non-discrimination conditions wouldn’t apply anymore. From that point until the present day, we’ve been in a pitched battle to determine whether or not network neutrality rules should apply to the internet, or whether phone companies and cable companies should be able to have control over your internet experience. Since early 2006, there have been a few different efforts to legislate network neutrality. There have been lots of debates at the Federal Communications Commission over whether it should be regulated. And we’ve been in a sort of purgatory where neither side has the political will or the votes to win out.

And that brings us to the net neutrality bill, which was introduced last month…

Yeah. It was introduced the afternoon before the House of Representatives went out of session in July. That bill was introduced by congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Congresswoman Anna Eshoo of California. They’ve been long-time champions of network neutrality, and this time things are going to be different. For the first time in the history of the network neutrality debate, we have a president who supports network neutrality. During the campaign, he said he would “take a backseat to no one” on network neutrality, and that he would seek it out as a priority in his telecom and technology policy agenda. We also have a Congress whose leadership supports network neutrality, including the Speaker of the House. And we have an FCC with a new chairman who supports network neutrality. In fact, he just announced publicly that he was committed to enforcing network neutrality. Now we finally have a political climate in which it appears that network neutrality regulations can finally be implemented.

What, specifically, does the IFPA bill mandate? And how does it get there?

The bill is relatively straightforward. It says it is the policy of the United States to have an open Internet. It explains what we mean by that: it has to be non-discriminatory for all consumers and producers of content and services on the Internet. And then it instructs the FCC to go make rules to enforce the new law of the land.

There’s obviously a lot of criticism from the people the bill would seek to regulate. They claim that this might interfere with quality of service engineering and network optimizations; things they need to do to keep the network running. What is your response?

For the whole history of the net neutrality debate, the network owners have made two entirely contradictory arguments, which I think demonstrates the utter bankruptcy of their case. Argument #1 is that network neutrality law is a solution in search of a problem—that no one is talking about changing the Internet, no one is talking about taking control away from consumers. “No one would ever do this. Why do we need a law against it?” That’s argument #1. Argument #2 is, “we have to violate network neutrality, because otherwise Wall Street will never give us the money to reinvest in our network. We have to change the way the Internet works because we have to capture more revenues and more profits off the backs of consumers and producers of Internet content. Otherwise, there won’t be any Internet.” So we’re left, at the end of their speech, with the notion that they will both never violate net neutrality and that they absolutely have to violate net neutrality. Neither of which is persuasive.

We’ve seen some limited instances of intrusive network shaping—most famously, Comcast throttling p2p traffic for some users. Are there other examples of this that would make clear what the risk could be? Are those examples you are communicating to people who don’t have a really strong interest in telecommunications policy?

The Comcast case is certainly the most prominent case. But keep in mind that for the last 4 years since the law was relaxed and this sort of intervention and control over the network has been legal, the Congress and the FCC have been breathing down the necks of the network owners. People have been wary of committing any practice in the market that looks like a violation until after the smoke blows over. So we really wouldn’t expect to see wide-scale violations. Furthermore, the technologies that are necessary to control your Internet experience—speed up certain websites and slow down others to block you from accessing different kinds of content—that technology has really only existed for the last year and a half, two years. What we’re seeing now is these technologies being widely deployed, particularly in the wireless industry. We have examples where certain applications just are outright blocked over the wireless network. Sometimes it’s because they are bandwidth intensive and the network might not be able to handle them, and other times because [certain apps] compete against the company that is running the network.

So for example, a lot of the wireless companies don’t allow you to run voice-over-the-Internet (VoIP) applications on your handheld device because they don’t want you to be using VoIP [as an alternative] and not pay them for voice over your mobile phone. These kinds of anti-competitive practices, these kinds of interventions in the network, are exactly the kinds of business practices that we expect them to roll out if network neutrality goes away. And they are constantly talking to Wall Street and their other investors about what they have in mind to get more money out of the networks—taking it from consumers and producers of Internet content.

The bill is designed to stop these kind of anti-competitve practices at the ISP level—trying to maintain a level playing field when it comes to delivering content and services. But even if there’s a bill to stop that at the ISP level, there is a significant amount of that happening in the background, with dedicated content delivery networks who have peering agreements with big providers. Would IFPA do anything to shape that market?

IFPA speaks specifically to ISPs because that is how the regulations are set up. However, content delivery networks and the like operate on a different set of operational principles entirely. Putting your stuff on a content delivery network means putting your content closer to consumers in physical space, by moving the server that has the video or a website or a song in a closer geographic location to your consumers. That does improve the quality of your web site’s load time. But once you put your content on the network, then the network is required to treat that content the same. So we’re much less concerned about these content delivery networks than we are about prioritization baked into the network itself. It’s also true because the content delivery network services are by and large available to anyone, including small guys who buy into them on a pooling basis. Now the peering arrangements and the transport agreements that govern interconnection between the network are certainly a source of concern. Those would be governed by nondiscrimination conditions, although it’s not exactly clear how the regulations would work. We haven’t yet seen potential violations at that level of the network. So we’ll have a wait and see attitude on that, but we’ll certainly be vigilant.

Speaking of content delivery networks—they’re a very important part of how video gets delivered. Video is obviously a very high-bandwidth activity and so carries a bit more weight potentially in the whole debate. How central do you think internet video has been, and is, in the subtext of this debate?

Oh, huge. It’s huge because a lot of these telephone and cable companies that offer you internet access also sell you cable television. They make a lot more money from selling cable television than they do from selling broadband. They would very much like you to continue to pay them to watch cable TV. The trend in the market is technology-saavy consumers stopping their cable TV subscriptions and getting the video that they want from the internet. People watching video online is something that scares the pants off of cable companies.

It is, from an objective perspective, inevitable that this would happen—that the cable television market would come undone at the seams as people find more and more of the video they want online. I think more and more [ISPs] will just decide to build out bigger broadband networks, but it is going to be up to the regulatory structure to determine who gets to have the most control over that—and whether we see a natural transition into a competitive market for video where Hollywood studios no longer have monopoly over the cable television platform. [We're headed for] an online television platform where everybody competes on the merits of their content. Now, that could either happen sooner or later, but the speed at which it happens is largely going to be determined by policy decisions.

A few of the big ISPs, including Comcast and Time Warner, have talked about creating a managed channel on the internet for the high level, Hollywood-produced content. They call this initiative TV Everywhere. Is this troublesome from your perspective?

If they are prioritizing TV Everywhere—if they’re giving their content favorable treatment on the network vis à vis other video, it’s totally unacceptable. It’s a straight up violation of network neutrality. If they’re putting their content behind a pay wall and charging you to get access to it, but treating it like everyone else’s content, then it’s less problematic. I think it’s still very shortsighted on their part. TV Everywhere is going to be a blip on the radar of the history of online television—a failed experiment. But we should be very, very careful because I think they’re playing with fire—both in terms of open and neutral networks, but also in terms of anti-trust law.

Are there interests besides the network operators that want to defeat IFPA, or does opposition seem to be concentrated with network operators?

The big Hollywood studios are all opposed to network neutrality. They believe it will limit their ability to stop copyright piracy. Our view is that that’s a spurious argument. Network neutrality and the non-discrimination rules that have preceded it have never applied to illegal content, only legal content. It is perfectly appropriate for a network operator to block spam. It’s perfectly appropriate for them to accept a warrant from law enforcement it they find somebody who’s commiting illicit activities—child pornography, criminal activity. Similarly there are ways to address, in the criminal justice system, copyright infringement. But using a network solution which surveils the content of every communcation that travels over the internet, with the sole purpose of trying to take the copyright-infringing needle out of the haystack, seems preposterous. And in addition to being technologically impossible, it’s a violation of all kinds of privacy protections. And all of this before you get to the question of network neutrality.

In other words, that kind of network filtering does not fall within the scope of IFPA?

Well, no. Under the terms of the IFPA, if you were able to create a copyright filter that was 100% accurate and blocked only infringing content, then it would be legal. That technology doesn’t exist. It may never exist. That said, the IFPA explicitly refers to “lawful content.” That lawful content distinction is meant to convey that if law enforcement comes to an ISP with a signed warrant, with reason to believe someone is stealing something, that kind of enforcement doesn’t run afoul of the IFPA. That is appropriate—a system whereby law enforcement addresses infringement, rather than network providers trying to shape behavior.

Is there valid criticism of IFPA that’s not coming from industry lobbyists? Some argument against the IFPA as it exists that perhaps you don’t agree with substantively but can entertain on its merits?

I think the most legitamate concerns are those from technologists who have a libertarian bent. These folks are very concerned about the government becoming involved in regulating the internet. They fear content regulations. I share the same concerns, but in my view, network neutrality is not regulating the internet. It’s regulating the wires that bring you access to the internet to make sure that your internet access is unfettered. It is the opposite of regulating the internet; it is protecting the internet from exploitation from commercial market interests.

So, in other words, this isn’t something like the Fairness Doctrine that libertarians should be afraid of?

Not at all. It is the opposite of the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine tells you what you can and can’t say. Net Neutrality says no one can tell you what you can and can’t say.

Are there thing that both sides of the network neutrality debate can agree on? Are there things that they agree on?

I think in principle, most of the parties involved in this debate agree that networks should be open. That, for the most part, the internet should function the way that it has so successfully for the last twenty years. I think where ways part is over how much control commercial interests, that own the networks, should have over content and services. To what extent should gatekeepers be permitted on the internet? To what extent should we allow business models that look like cable television, broadcast television and print publishing to migrate onto the internet platform? And that is a fundamental question and a question of principle that I think is not conducive to compromise or half measures. You’re either fully open or you’re not open, there’s no real in-between spaces.

The idea of participatory media and public media, the Thomas Paine idea of an open platform for political participation and creative expression, is really implicit in the mission of Free Press. Beyond IFPA and network neutrality, what else do you think will be necessary to create this space from this kind of engagement?

I think you have three basic elements. One is make sure the network is open and that it’s open to everybody. And that we have these principles of non-discrimination governing.

Second, we need to make sure our networks are high-bandwidth—that they’re fast enough to handle all of the content and services that we want to use, not only today but going forward—and that we’re anticipating a steady increase in the amount of bandwidth demand for people who want to use the newest video services on the internet.

And third, we need to make sure that our networks are affordable. Increasingly the internet is not just a nifty commercial service that people like to have; it is the basic infrastructure of our information society. Not being connected is a huge economic and social disadvantage. So, it is incumbent upon policy makers, who are looking at broadband policy, not only to make sure the networks are open and fast, but that they are affordable and accesable so that we have very high adoption rates and we’re not creating an implicit digital divide.

How can people who want to support Free Press and its mission help in the fight for net neutrality?

I would encourage everybody with an interest in the issue to check out http://freepress.net. That’s our main site with all of our ideas and all of the information about how to get involved with goverment policy-making. We also run a coalition called http://savetheinternet.com which has information specific to network neutrality and the network neutrality campaign. Getting involved is a simple as going online and signing up. You can choose whether you want to spent two minutes a week or ten hours a week working on these issues as we try to bring them over the finish line and try to protect the internet in perpituity.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer these questions.

You’re very welcome.

You can read the bill here.

Open Video Alliance: Nina Paley Reveals Sita Sings the Blues Income

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:56:17 +0000

Filmmaker Nina Paley, whose beautiful animated movie Sita Sings the Blues was screened at the Open Video Conference this year, announced some monetary statistics at DIY Days earlier this summer. There’s a great article on TechDirt about it—video included. As they put it, “The more she shared, the more she made.”

Will's blog: Things are slow right now....

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:31:00 +0000

Things have been slow for the last week and will probably remain slow for the next week, too, mostly due to real life sorts of things among the various developers. We took advantage of this slow period (it doesn't happen often) to switch Miro development from svn to git. This is something we've wanted to do for a while and should make the development process we have a lot easier to deal with.

To summarize, things are slow right now, but they'll definitely pick up again in September.

Open Video Alliance: Technology Review on Open Video

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 12:30:12 +0000

Technology Review recently published an article on the growing open video movement and its importance. The piece features PCF’s Dean Jansen, Kaltura’s Ron Yekutiel, and more—many of whom attended the Open Video Conference in June.

Here’s a snippet:

[Their] difficulties offer one small glimpse into a larger problem with online video: unlike much of the rest of the Web, it is accessed through a collection of closed, proprietary formats, such as Adobe’s Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight. (Try a video search engine such as Blinkx; you’ll get plenty of videos pulled from around the Web, but to watch them you may need to download or update software.) Certain websites, led by YouTube, convert uploaded content to Flash for ease of viewing. Today, however, a growing number of technologists and video artists want to see Web video adopt the kind of open standards that fueled the growth of the Web at large. HTML, the markup language that describes Web pages; JavaScript, the programming language that allows forms, graphics, and various special effects to be added to them; JPEG, the standard for images–all these building blocks of the Web can be used by anyone, without paying fees or asking permission. This openness was indispensable to the creation and then the explosion of blogs, search engines, social networks, and more.

Read the rest!

Open Video Alliance: Preempting Dissent — Open Sourcing Secrecy

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:30:31 +0000

In 2008, Greg Elmer of Ryerson University and Andy Opel of Florida State University came out with Preempting Dissent, a book about surveillance, security, and suppression of dissent in the modern era. Now they are working with Open Source Cinema to create a collaborative documentary on the topic, and they need you to participate:

We are seeking video content from those of you who have experienced and/or captured on video new forms of surveillance and social control. Have you been Tasered by police, security guards, or other citizens? Did you witness someone being Tasered and record it on video? Has your name been placed on a “no-fly” list – or similar exclusionary watch-list? If so, we invite you to submit your video footage, personal video testimonials, audio testimonials, photographs, news footage, cell phone videos, mash-ups, and any other audio-visual medium which will convey your story.

To participate in this project, please go to http://www.opensourcecinema.org/project/preempting-dissent

By utilizing collaborative sites like Open Source Cinema, Preempting Dissent is taking advantage of the awesome power of participatory media. What better way to get powerful videos of interactions with security and surveillance than from the people themselves?

Will's blog: Miro switched to git

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:39:00 +0000

I finished up the work for converting our svn repository to git and pushed the whole thing to the server. You can follow along at https://git.participatoryculture.org/miro/.

I'll be spending the next week or so updating code, infrastructure, and documentation to reflect the change.

Open Video Alliance: OVA at SXSW: Help Us Spread the Gospel!

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:11:37 +0000

We’re bringing Open Video to SXSW 2010 in Austin next March, and we need your help!

South by Southwest (SXSW) is a set of interactive, film, and music festivals and conferences that take place every spring in Austin, Texas. It’s an annual ritual for creatives and digital tastemakers, and it’s a great place to spread the gospel of Open Video.

Our proposals are currently working their way through the SXSW panel picker. In true Web 2.0 fashion, the SXSW organizers put panel proposals up to a community vote. That means we need your help to secure our spot on the agenda.

If you want to see Open Video make a splash in Texas next year, please visit the links below and vote them up! You can also leave comments on the proposal pages, so if you have words of support please share them with the world.

Quick links (tweet these with #openvideo!)
http://bit.ly/openvideo
http://bit.ly/html5video
http://bit.ly/wikivideo

In order to vote, you’ll have to create an account (takes 60 seconds):
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/users/register

Proposal #1: What’s Open Video, and Why Does it Matter?
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/4382

Video cameras and desktop editing software are now cheap and ubiquitous, making it easy for casual computer users to speak to a mass audience. But online video is still mostly a glorified on-demand system–more like Internet TV than a truly participatory medium. The legal and technological battles surrounding online video are, at their core, battles for the future of the Internet, innovation, and free expression.

Proposal #2: Wow, That’s Cool… Fun With HTML5 Video
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3833

Using the video tag in HTML5, developers can do all sorts of things that are hard or impossible with plugins. In this presentation, Mozilla will show the best and most interesting hacks entered into OVA’s Open Video Contest—because when the webmonkeys unleash their creativity, things get interesting.

Proposal #3: Wikipedia Gets an Upgrade: Collaborative Video
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3886

Wikipedia is the most successful collaborative experiment in human history. Now it’s getting a big upgrade: video. OGG Theora video paired with open source tech by Kaltura is evolving the wiki and prompting some big questions. Can wiki video work as well as wiki text? What does video mean to the Wikipedia community? How long until Grandma can hop in and improve the video entry on her favorite old crooner?

Will's blog: Subversion to git transition

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 02:26:00 +0000

We're switching the Miro repository from svn to git. This frees us up considerably and will make development life a lot easier for us. We chose git over other dvcs systems because most of us were already using git-svn to access svn and we're already using git for Miro Guide, Miro Community, Miro Fullscreen and other projects.

For the last week or so, I've been converting the Miro svn repository to git. It's taken a long time because I ran into several complications:

I've been moving from an apartment to a house which sucked up a few days.
We treated tags in svn like branches: we'd tag a release, then make some adjustments "in the tag". Tags in git are immutable which is a good thing--they should be immutable. I've spent a bunch of time figuring out how to convert our svn tags into git tags and tweak the history accordingly. It takes around 20 minutes to fix each instance of the problem and there were a lot of instances of it--one for each release, release candidate, beta, .... Many many thanks to James Vega for helping me out on this.
I'm running out of disk space on my laptop. I've had to do some archiving to free up space and that's taken a while.

Hopefully, I'll be done in the next day or so. Once I finish, I'll push the new git repository to a public space, have the other devs run through it for issues, post a message about it on the develop mailing list and then I'll start work on changing build scripts and other things like that to use the git repository rather than the svn one.

One thing that's happened as a result of this work is that I've really come to appreciate git internals and how it's all structured. I have no idea how Bazaar and Mercurial structure things, but git's pretty neat.

Update 8/17/2009: My math was way off. I've got another 50 tags to go at 20 minutes per tag that's at least another couple of days.

Will's blog: Theora Cookbook

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 22:22:00 +0000

The folks at FLOSS Manuals put together a Theora Cookbook. It's a great book that covers Theora and publishing video on the Internet.

It's definitely worth reading/skimming if you're interested in Open Video, Theora, and the impending future of video on the Internet.

Chris's blog: Creative Commons Transition

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:25:14 +0000

If an unchanging life is a boring life, then I certainly haven't had much time for boredom as of late. I've microblogged about these changes plenty, but a blog post of normal length is probably in order.

I've mentioned on here already about getting married and etc. That hasn't been too huge of a change moving from unmarried to married life though. When you live together for long enough, the kind of changes that marriage brings are more in the realm of civil benefits and how you sign documents than anything else. There is, of course, the promise of permanence. Yet that's mostly a seal on a document it felt like we signed a long time ago. It is comforting to have, though.

The other big change has been a change in employment. A budget shortfall means I'm no longer working at the Participatory Culture Foundation. No animosity there... while I was sad to go, I understand that it needed to happen, and I am still on great terms with everyone there. I expect to continue to work on the Miro family of projects. I'm in a bit of a transition period, but I suspect I will simply be returning to the work capacity of a volunteer as I was before being hired at the PCF. Things need to settle again before I can do anything though, so we'll see. (In the meanwhile in PCF land, Paul Swartz took over the work I was doing on Miro Community TV, and it's coming out great. I expect to run a Blender-related instance of it myself soon.)

So, between jobs I did a small amount of contracting. I got positive feedback for the work I did. It is nice to know then that I have the capacity to do this if it is necessary, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn't worrying so much. At this point in my life at least, I prefer being employed as part of an organization. Maybe at some point in the future that will change. In the meanwhile, I'm extremely giddy to report that am employed at an organization... and an incredible one at that! I accepted a position as a software engineer at Creative Commons! How awesome is that?

Last week I spent doing "homework", reading up on the various technologies used at CC, the numerous projects in place, and so on. This week I have actually flown in to San Francisco (I am writing this from my hotel right now, actually). I spent yesterday going over this stack with Nathan in person and reviewing what the "glorious future" is supposed to be (read: a cleanup in code and architecture). Today I will begin working toward that glorious future, to which much work has already been done. Exciting!

Anyway, I'm grateful for the fact that I have been able to move from one incredibly awesome and socially positive organization to another without too much of a difficult transition period. To be able to put your daily effort toward something you truly believe in is rather rare, so I consider myself quite lucky. I come mostly from a free software background as in terms of these philosophical issues, but I said often when giving talks on Miro that I am especially interested in the areas where free software and free culture intersect. And now I'll be able to directly work to progress the free culture movement by working with and on free software. Which is several levels of fantastic.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, no, we are not moving to San Francisco... not in the immediate future, anyway. Early Saturday morning I will be flying back to Chicago so I can do work from our messy, messy apartment.

Speaking of which, I thought San Francisco was going to be all unbearably warm and etc. I was rather incorrect. It appears that in flying out I ducked the worst of a very modest heatwave in Chicago. So, fancy that.

Miro News Blog: Miro MythTV Integration

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:46:21 +0000

I just saw on our support forum that Doug Vaughan has created a tool that links Miro and MythTV. Here’s what he has to say:

Some of you may be MythTV fans. There has been a beta release of “Miro Bridge” a MythTV enhancement script which integrates Miro videos with MythTV. The script acts as a Miro front end triggering specific Miro functions (item deletion, item expiry, feed updates and auto downloading) and then updates MythTV as if a TV program had been recorded. There are a number of additional features.

The beta release has been tested with both Ubuntu’s Miro v2.0.3 package and Miro’s v2.5.2 release. For further details and screen shots check out the “Miro Bridge” wiki page at http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MiroBridge

I thought that was pretty nice of Doug. If you use MythTV & Miro, please check this out and let me know what you think in the comments.