[IMC-Video] video.indymedia.org

[anna]

hi all,

> Subject:
> Re: [IMC-Video] proposal re: video.indymedia.org, ivdn.indymedia.org
> From:
> Occam <indymedia at gmail.com>
> Date:
> Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:03:50 +0200
> To:
> imc-video at lists.indymedia.org
>
> To:
> imc-video at lists.indymedia.org
>
>
> the phpcake framework was ok.
>
> keep in mind that you need two main features.
>
> * open publishing (without any registration)
> * key based ftp upload
>
> you will not find these feature's be default in any cms out there, so
> you have to code a module for the CMS.
i don't think that open publishing without registration ("anonymous" 
open publishing) is the main concern for Indymedia anymore, or at least 
i don't think it should be.

a system should have a facility for uploading video without logging IPs, 
and key-based ftp upload too is nice, but really this is only a small 
though important area. indymedia activists only need real anonymity at 
times, not all the time. the simple anonymity you can have hiding behind 
a nick is often all people require. as we've seen from Indymedia sites 
collapsing worldwide due to collectives who cannot deal with the abuse 
of anonymous open publishing, this doesn't work if it is the main focus 
of a site/collective.

an anonymous system could be built as an add-on to an existing CMS - 
possibly where sensitive videos are passed, from one server that does 
not log IPs or require identity, to the main server. manually even, as 
it wouldn't be needed for the majority of videos. basically an FTP 
server could be used for this. then a collective could watch it and 
upload those videos to the video.indymedia.org site when necessary.

Indymedia activists will continue to use YouTube instead of Indymedia 
sites if usability is not improved for uploading video, and 
finding/watching/sharing it once it has been uploaded.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject:
> Re: [IMC-Video] proposal re: video.indymedia.org, ivdn.indymedia.org
> From:
> "ben" <ben at riseup.net>
> Date:
> Thu, 14 Jun 2007 02:37:25 -0700 (PDT)
> To:
> imc-video at lists.indymedia.org
>
> To:
> imc-video at lists.indymedia.org
>
>
> Hi,
>
> It would be really good to do something about the status of video in
> indymedia generally but I don't believe that simply changing video.indy to
> another CMS is all that is required. I think whatever solution is adopted
> needs to be one that allows full intergration into local IMC's and by that
> I don't simply mean that there is a syndicated wire of videos on local
> IMCs but that publishing and searching from local IMCs is intergrated to
> the video 'content' of video.indymedia.
>   
what you're suggesting here Ben isn't difficult. Plumi for example 
already produces RSS feeds for Genres, Topics and Countries. to add 
another category that contains local IMC names and produces RSS feeds 
for each local IMC would be trivial.

all a local IMC would have to do is pull in that RSS feed - there are 
plenty of PHP scripts out there to cache an RSS feed and display it in 
an HTML template.

search functions on each local IMC would have to search the RSS feeds 
from video.indymedia.org cached on their local servers in order to find 
those videos. or you can simply redirect people to a search on 
video.indymedia.org of that local IMC video only, or any number of other 
solutions.

publishing can be re-directed from a local IMC to a video.indymedia.org 
site with a hyperlink ;) this link could contain information that 
automatically categorises the video as being from that local IMC as it 
is entered into the database.
> I think indymedia will need to take a quantum leap and I don't simply mean
> adopting youtube like embeded players. I mean adopting p2p technology like
> used in the Democracy Player and the Broadcast Machine or the new Azureus
> 3 known as Vuze.
>
>   
EngageMedia.org (Plumi) already has smooth integration with Democracy 
Player. check it out :) BitTorrent integration is not far away - we had 
it working several months ago then removed it due to fairly minor bugs 
in order to prioritise other things (such as packaging up Plumi as a 
FOSS project and package). i guess it'll be a couple of months away 
(less if others pitch in).

Making an Azureus magnet for each video automatically would also be easy 
once bittorrent is integrated.
> I think that video.indymedia needs to be little more than a front end to a
> database that is accessable and skinable from any indymedia site and
> provides customised feeds, searching and a publishing gateway without
> necessarily actually storing any video.
>   
Really? I don't know that most local IMCs would necessarily want to deal 
with hosting video on their servers, but maybe I'm wrong...

Much better to be able to skin the local IMC area of the 
video.indymedia.org site to look like the original IMC site (if you 
really want visual integration) but leave the grunt of the video 
capability to video.indymedia.org I would have thought.
> Finally, I also think that discussion should go beyond these indymedia
> lists to reach the many people working on video distribution projects who
> have abandoned indymedia out of frustration. There are many people who
> have been looking for solutions for a long time and their input would be
> very useful.
>
> The transmission network would be my first port of call for trying to
> involve such people. http://www.transmission.cc/
>   
Well we're obviously part of the Transmission network.. Everyone in the 
Transmission network is working on their own ideas for what a video 
distribution platform to support social movements and 
social-justice/environmental campaigns should be. Transmission is about 
collaboration, without necessarily amalgamation.

In fact many Transmission projects probably arose because Indymedia was 
not fulfilling that purpose effectively. Some have sprung from local 
video collectives that existed well before Indymedia and have their own 
networks arising from their own histories and situations and alternative 
media groups.

In some ways having local sites with local flavours - and then having a 
video.indymedia.org site to bring in tags and feeds from local projects 
that fit the description is a better solution. That's a radical rethink 
of what Indymedia could be, but it's being talked about even on a local 
IMC level, with text news (Melbourne IMC for example, which has had to 
close down publishing due to excessive trolling and not enough 
collective energy or good enough software to deal with it).

Another solution is of course to be both. Bring in syndicated content 
from affiliates, and also have publishing capability.

As far as the video publishing/sharing side of things goes I think Plumi 
is a strong candidate (though obviously I'm biased ;) ). Much of what I 
think is needed is already there, working. In order to make it happen it 
would take some Indymedia Python heads to take it on. We can definitely 
support this to quite an extent, but we're neck deep in our own project 
so we can't take the lead.

Cheers,
anna