[IMC-Video] [Fwd: Re: jilt's proposal]

[hamish]

ben wrote:
> jilt,
> 
> Have you heard off transmission.cc? If not, you should check it out as
> a lot of work is being done in the directions you speak of and it
> would make sense to collaborate rather than duplicate.
> 
> A couple of comments from me.
> 
> Documentation...
> I did quite a bit of work doing documentation on video.indymedia.org
> and on the imc uk video projects pages. A lot of work is now being
> done via Transmission on documentation using floss manuals. Personally
> I don't think the effort yields much as nobody every seems to have
> heard of or found such documentation themselves.

Current Open source video editing is too complex and buggy - we need
something much simpler/functional if anyone is going to use it.

* video editing is 95% cutting video up then throwing away 90% of it and
rearranging the small bits that are left to tell a story. CUTS only
editing is what we need with a nice drag and drop interface. Some titals
would be good two...

* we rarely don't wont anything eales before we get this working... just
my point of view...

> Mobile Publishing
> I developed mobile indymedia but I'm not a coder and failed to find
> anyone to help make a publishing gateway. Personally (despite being a
> film maker) I think it is way more vital that indymedia provides
> publishing gateways for text and general multimedia attachments than
> specifically for video. In my opinion, indymedia has got really left
> behind and is now sadly retty much irrelevant.

The is a huge potential there but I would be tempted to re-use the API's
of corporate software such as twitter/meetup/goggle maps and to build
the tools we needs - and then when we have found what is useful then
create a open source solution - its a route to failer to do the code
before the need... a good mashup has a HUGE speed/scalability advantage
and alowes people to experiment before jumping into coding. I believe UK
IMC used twitter at the climate camp? This was controversial - but I
feel its largely futile if we start coding before the is a demonstrated
need for the code. Lets do some mashups to find out what works and what
we need (:

> Collaborative and Online Video Editing
> Been to international gathering of video activists over the last four
> or five years and this often comes up. I have seen projects such as
> Tapestry demonstrated and been excited by some of the potential but
> ultimately I don't see the point. People generally don't collaborate
> on video editing and there are major security issues with online
> footage sharing. While available bandwidth has increased massively
> over the last few years it's not realistic to work with uncompressed
> DV footage online and anything else will require post compression and
> therefore time and processing power which will put people off
> unloading. Personally I really don't see this as a worthwhile place to
> put effort.
> 
> Collaboration works to some degree in the live face to face
> environment of a convergence centre but beyond that it breaks down.

I agree with Ben here wholeheartedly having been involved in setting up
a number of such projects - the bigist one the European Newsreal which
died a long death with this very thing on its lips... editing is a
individual thing - most big co-operative edits are made of lots of
individual segments which are put together by a few individuals thus the
"co-operation" is always limited.

> My view is that distribution is key. We don't really have a problem
> making videos, we have a problem getting them out of the ghetto and
> giving them the audience they deserve while people are moving away
> from TV and the broadcast model and have less and less time or
> attention span yet greater and greater demand from a wider and wider
> variety of video producers and distribution services. I think mobile
> and streaming content is key and will be more and more important in
> coming years and indymedia hasn't even got the basics yet.
> 
> Ben

Distribution is the key (: though have to question Bens assumption that
we already know how to make videos - we don't, most activist videos only
make sense to the people who were on the action thus has very limited
use as outreach beyond this small activist ghetto. As Ben actually says
in the next sentence (;

We are doing a opensource/copyleft distribution project that should help
to deal with outreach http://visionontv.net

More info on it here http://hamishcampbell.com

Whats missing?

* uesabel open source video editing that is created to edit video rather
than as a geeks idea of what video editing is. Ie. get some people who
have trained thousands of filmmakers over the last 15 years in on the
design stage - such as ourselves http://www.undercurrents.org (including
Ben many years ago in a pink castle - still one of my favorite videos).
We hope to have a small bit of funding to help this speck to happen soon.

* subtitling tools and standards

* database exchange standards (probably RSS)

* meta-date standards and media RSS

* encoding standards and formats (see http://visionontv.info for some
work on this)

* international networking of filmmakers vier some sought of social network.

* probably some more

transmission.cc is looking at many of these things as is visionontv so
things are kinda happening which is a good thing (:

jilt its good you bring these things up as hopefully it helps bring the
existing projects together and by doing this it helps us stop
re-creating the wheel.

Hamish Campbell
http://www.undercurrents.org
http://visionontv.net
http://hamishcampbell.com

Ps. am currently traveling around the USA networking alt-filmmakers (:

> 
> 
> 
> 2008/5/5  <jilt at debord.ortiche.net>:
>> ---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
>>  Subject: Re: [IMC-Video] jilt's proposal
>>  From:    jilt at debord.ortiche.net
>>  Date:    Mon, May 5, 2008 9:25 am
>>  To:      "Mara" <mara at aktivix.org>
>>  --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>  > I'm a videographer and editor, so here's my thought on the idea
>>  > to build and web 2.0 applicaton for video editing. it does sound
>>  > interesting, but in my opinion there is a more urgent need for a decent
>>  > linux editing software that can just be downloaded and used the old way.
>>  > i have tried working with kino, cinelerra and other programs, but never
>>  > got very far. so as editor, i am stuck with proprietary software for
>>  > now. a web application also would not so much help with the digital
>>  > divide, as a lot of people might be able to download software and
>>  > install it on their computer, but are not online for hours on end.
>>
>>
>>  Well I'm talkin' about not just a web 2.0 application in my mail, and I
>>  use in my everyday production cinelerra and kino, so probably you have
>>  problem of hardware compatibility Mara :)
>>  I'm not saying that your work isn't enough open because you aren't used on
>>  open source software, people who work on it and me can tell you that is
>>  very difficult learning and using a software for wich nobody gives answer
>>  to your question, but you have to reach it by you.
>>  I'd like people to answer to my proposal of givin' people a tool to
>>  collaborate, (documentation, and video upload for mobiles phones, the 3
>>  points) 'cause if we'll be able to move in that way, we'll be able also to
>>  discuss a standard operations and of tool tha we use for our video to
>>  indymedia and to reproduce it on the internet using open source code and
>>  defining an interface.
>>
>>  For example cinelerra has a lot of command running from command line, if
>>  we define some standard operation that may be done to videos (such as
>>  subtitles as in g8-tv) we can build a simple interface from command line
>>  (not even using browser) as freaknet does:
>>
>>  medialab.freaknet.org
>>
>>     * Telnet to medialab.freaknet.org
>>     * If the above link doesn't work with your browser, try opening a DOS
>>  prompt or Unix shell and typing:
>>
>>         telnet medialab.freaknet.org
>>
>>     * If that doesn't work either, you could try with this Java Applet
>>     * To open a secure session from Windows instead, try downloading and
>>  running putty.exe.
>>     * We also offer an FTP site, which is also accessible via HTTP.
>>
>>  We don't need to use the word "web 2.0" or this kind of concept to create
>>  something usefull :)
>>  People would upload the video and the work on it using telnet for remote
>>  shell.
>>
>>  The best wish I have is to make people able to cover faces and indentity
>>  on the videos directly on our (yours) server, this is possible with a lot
>>  of software, open and not open , but if we want to manage it as we like we
>>  have to use the open ones.
>>  I think that givin' people a tool like this would be important during next
>>  year g8 in Italy.
>>
>>
>>  ciao
>>  jilt
>>
>>  >
>>  > cheers
>>  > mara
>>  >
>>
>>
>>  The points:
>>
>>  >>
>>  >> This are the numers (and my proposal in short words):
>>  >>
>>  >> _1 write manuals on how to manage videos during parades
>>  >> _2 build an internet interface for pubblishing videos from mobile phones
>>  >> _3 build a web 2.0 interactive tool to give chance to use open source
>>  >> video editing code directly from the internet.
>>  >>
>>  >>
>>  >> thanks
>>  >> jilt
>>
>>
>>  _______________________________________________
>>  imc-video mailing list
>>  imc-video at lists.indymedia.org
>>  http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-video
>>
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