[IMC-Video] input video.indy discussion in Amsterdam

[trojan- at gmx.net]

Hello people at the vx-mission gathering in Amsterdam!
Unfortunately we cannot join you because of another meeting, which we have to attend.
However, we would like to use the opportunity to share some of our thoughts with you as an input to the discussion about video.indymedia.org. We would like to focus on the content requirements (not on the technical ones to fulfil them), from the video activist point of view.
For those, who do not know us, we are trojan tv, a small video collective from Germany and the Netherlands. We have been producing short videos and documentaries during the last eight years on different topics like environment, migration and social justice and have tried to give voice to radical emancipatory political views. We are part of the videoactivism network in Germany which initiated G8-TV last summer.
A few additions to what the video.indy network could be:
- We think it would be great if video.indy could be so attractive that groups and individuals would use and promote it instead of solely focus on their own video-project and website.
- Preferably the network would also be one of translators, and by that the posted videos would become available in different languages.
A way to make a website attractive is the lay-out and user-friendliness. A small screenshot of the video and a short description in two or three sentences next to general information (author, length etc) are important. Perhaps also the possibility to play (part) of the video within the browser – in that way it is not necessary to download the whole video first. It would be nice if there are different language pages – a start-page with videos in languages that one cannot understand is not attractive.
When videos are translated at an international video network site this will increase its attractivity, and people will be more interested to post their videos there.

We think its important that video.indy should be moderated. In that way it can be possible to offer some standard of quality, which is also important for the popularity of a video portal. So, its important to think about criteria for moderation.
What is reasonable quality? We think one should make difference between technical quality and quality of content. To us the technical quality (e.g. is the video recorded with a dv-cam, well cut, are there no mistakes in the audio channel) is not so important. Also people who start to make video and do not have the money for expensive material should be able to contribute. The quality of the content of the video is more important. A video should speak for itself; one should be able to understand it without having to read an article about the same issue first.
Of course, the video content should orientate to the moderation criteria of indymedia, be non-discriminating (racist, sexist, etc), but that is not a point of discussion.

For moderation it is of course required that there are enough people who would have time for it and also it should be a multi-language moderation pool.

We think it’s a good idea to promote non-commercial video formats on the site. It could mean not to allow real-video postings, perhaps even to ask for one certain format. At G8-TV good experience was made with oggtheora (screenable quality in combination with relative high compression, playable with non-commercial players like VLC). It could also mean not to use Flash, we don’t know if there are alternatives.
Promoting formats like oggtheora would mean that its important to make good tutorials available.
We would like to put time and energy in video.indy, but unfortunately we have no programming skills. We can imagine to put half a day (or night) per week in moderation work for videos in languages we understand (german, dutch, English). Next to that we can imagine to ask translators if they are interested to help translating for video.indy. Also we can imagine to look for tutorials if they are needed.

Greetings from trojan tv



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NEW: Double DVD with all the videos produced by G8-TV -> mail to:
videoactivism at nadir.org

Deutschsprachiges VideoaktivistInnen Webportal :: http://www.videoactivism.de

on-line videos :: http://www.antenna.nl/organicchaos/online.html

trojan tv is a Dutch/German Video Activist Collective
and part of the Organic Chaos Network :: http://www.antenna.nl/organicchaos

Interested in a workshop video activist training ? send us an email !

Einen interaktiven Workshop Video Training (deutschsprachig) gibt es hier ::
http://www.antenna.nl/organicchaos/training/reader.html

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