Some Features Updates

A few updates to metavidWiki have been rolled out recently, thought I would take a quick opportunity to point them out.

Search

Search now has a more “google-like” display with text links to “Watch Clip” and “Improve Transcript“. This should make it clear that you can play search results inline and gives the inline search results a larger native video resolution play window.

Remote Embedding:

The remote embedding functionality has been enhanced to include inline transcript with auto scrolling and transcript layer selection. This feature can also be used to select between language tracks. (our site currently only has a single language track) The transcript format is in CMML. So you could use the mv_embed library with other CMS systems to embed video with transcript selection.

Near Future

Our summer of code student Stjepan Rajko is hard at work on adding in compatibility with flash flv video clips. This will enable “html5 like” syntax with ogg video and could use flash video as a backup. Sort of a supper version of Mike Chambers hack with all the added benefits of mv_embed library: inline transcripts/translations , references to download the clip, embed it, playlists etc

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MetaVidWiki Open Beta

We are pleased to announce that MetaVidWiki  (link) is now in open beta. We look forward to you comments, suggestions, and bug reports on this new free platform for community audio video participation.

We have put together a new extended screen cast demoing MetaVidWiki features available here on metavid. (also available on google video, and xvid copy here (23 megs) ). Editing on MetaVidWiki site is now open to anyone that can pass a audio or visual captcha test…

So check out the demo video, try some searches, and then try improving the archive by syncing a transcript or improving some text content

Simultaneously we are releasing the software that powers metavid: MetaVidWiki extension (v.01). It has been packaged and released for other cool re-uses of the code base. The Mv_Embed package has been updated to version .7 and released as well.

Read on for Technical Feature overview:

MetaVidWiki extension (project page)

dependencies: MediaWiki, mod_annodex or oggz-chop, LAMP stack
recommend: the Semantic MediaWiki Extension.

• Adds namespaces for Streams, temporal stream metadata, and sequences.
• Adds interfaces for editing multiple sub-name-spaces of temporal metadata per Stream or layers. Enabling the separation of transcript languages, annotative layers or the defining of other layer types.
• Adds a media search engine based on page semantic properties and defined layer types.
• Extends Categories, Page Histories, and Semantic result sets with inline video playback.
• Adds an in-browser sequencer for editing and creating sequences from clip segments.
• Exports to video rss for categories & searches. Exports CMML for temporal metadata.

Specifically for the legislative archive:

• Auto-completes media searches with likely people, bills, issue groups or full text search.
• massive data scrape from open secrets, maplight, govtrack, and others to populate base data set.
• template based display of people, bills, & interest groups (separating data from display while remaining flexible with user contributed structured data)

Mv_Embed (full feature list)

• Is a stand alone javascript library used for video playback in MetaVidWiki
• Abstracts all ogg plugins to a near html5 spec, letting web developers target a single abstraction for multiple underlining plugin or native video support systems.
• Supports draft ROE (Rich Open multitrack media Encapsulation) spec for xml distribution of media.
• Supports playlists in xiph xspf , rss or inline format.

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Short MetavidWiki Extension Screencast

Updated screen-cast available here

you can grab the original xvid/mpeg4 clip (37.9 MB) and if all else fails its posted on youtube

As we work hard towards release candidates of the metavid Wiki extension and the official launch of the metavid congress archive project I thought I would quickly share a little preview of what we are up to. Its a very rough screencast my apologizes for the low volume and rough ending. We will make better screencasts to help with documentation and promotion of features in the future

About MetavidWiki Extension
MetavidWiki is an open source extension to mediaWiki (the software that runs wikipedia) it also builds off of the semantic mediawiki extension. All the video is encoded with ogg theora (the open source patent unencumbered video codec) and the dynamic video segmentation and metadata export is handled by annodex. Many of components are modular and reusable outside of mediaWiki such as mv_embed and the sequencer.

Once the site is launched you will be able to play with these tools directly! If you can’t wait come by #metavid on freenode and I will likely share our development server url with you … but expect to be recruited into documenting bugs

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Metavid Wiki video preview

Here is a short demo (ogg 5 meg, mp4 17megs) video of the metavid wiki integration that has been under development. This video shows the stream view with basic editing of text and person attribute meta data. This is more or less what I demoed at wikipedia a while back. The in-development version of metavid wiki has 2 additional interfaces. One for searching streams metadata and another for creating and editing sequences. As was mentioned last week, the sequence playback functionality will be handled by mv_embed.

We hope to have something online that people can play with soon and then a total site conversion not long after that. To get a feel for how sequencing and “dynamic” searching will look/feel you can check out the original version of metavid… and then imagine in the mediaWiki platform ;P

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Mv_Embed and Playlists Preview

The latest version of mv_embed has just been updated for preview before it goes live later next week

If your not familiar with mv_embed you can read the html5 the future is now post I made a while back. This playlist functionality will be the basis for viewing collaborative sequences created in Metavid-mediaWiki. In the mean time it will be another view for search results. Once a few IE bugs are fixed it will go live on the metavid site. If you have firefox you can check out the demo page now New features of this mv_embed release include:

Playlists: mv_embed now supports playlists. Supports xiph, m3u & ipod video rss (so far). It takes these types and gives a little interface for playback. It uses the plugins native playlist support or has the user manually advance the track if using a reduced feature set playback method.

Smaller Base Library: The code base has been re-factored to dynamically load required libraries and reduce the overall size of a given usage of mv_embed. Client plugin objects are now separate files loading only the code needed for a given client playback method. Ofcourse further optimization can be made with one of the javascript compression packages out there and I still have to do general code refactoring to fully take advantage of the jQuery library.

Oggplay: Great work is getting done on oggplay plugin. The latest mv_embed supports this client side playback method with playhead and all. This is will eventually be the preferred playback method.

VLC: The vlc plugin has received a few updates as well.

and lots of little changes see the mv_embed page for details

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Open Media Updates

Thought I would send out a quick update of some open media happenings:

Super Open Media Platform: Everyone should check out Chris Doubles SVG + firefox3 video element demo. Similar to a silverlight demo for rotating still images, this demo takes the next step and swaps in ogg video inside SVG elements. This is done in an entirely free software and is patent unencumbered (for example notice the “we cant redistribute this edition” quote here in open source silverlight video implementations)

FOMS 2008: Building on the success of FOMS 2007 free & open source software developers will again converge in January to iron out the stumbling blocks to wide scale free-media adoption. Check out FOMS 2008

Miro road to 1.0: Miro previously known as Democracy Player is quickly nearing 1.0. Check out the latest feature set and get ready for the official release

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Metavid 2.0

While blog activity has been light the past few weeks, rest assured there has been good deal of svn activity I thought I would quickly share what I have been up to lately, and the targeted feature set for what we can call metavid 2.0

Metavid 2.0 is basically a complete code refactoring and extension of metavids feature set into the mediaWiki framework. (the software that runs every ones favorite encyclopedia). For a more details, read the rest of this blog entry and the targeted feature set on Metavid 2.0 wiki page

Beyond improved usability, scalability, accessibility and content/browser neutrality this rewrite aims to integrate metavid components with mediaWiki & the semantic mediWiki extension. The semantic wiki integration in particular will open up metadata queries to a more human readable format and un-bounded them from exiting indexed relations. Adding to Erik’s post about the future of wikipedia articles we can explain these features as extending the concepts of semantic data feeds on articles to video.

Metavid can already take a custom advanced search using our pre-defined indexed values mainly who said what when, and then use that as a video feed for democracy player or your ipod… But with the new system these advanced searches could be based on custom semantic data. ie a user could request a video sequence representing anytime anyone mentions word X that has received contributions more than Y from company Z. Or any variation there of. These realtime feeds will be the basic building blocks for open source news broadcasts that integrate rich video temporal metadata with up to the minute video broadcasts. Watch this space for more updates as its developed.

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Code Migrated to SlugForge

As a few people have pointed out the code repository was down the last few days this was a big bummer. This happened because ucsc’s engineering did a migration to Gforge Advanced Server and there was some downtime in between. But now it should all be working with a new the new & updated code management system.The new metavid code repository can be accessed here.

Also we have updated the links If you find a dforge link let us know, also if you previously had a developer account on dforge you will need to recreate it to re-join the metavid development.

Our apologies for the downtime.

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Mashup Congress Contest

Sunlight is hosting a $2K congress mashup contest. I (ofcourse) think metavid would make a great base for some interesting mashups. See our short screen grab demoing campaign contributions along side video. The APIs and platform is rough around the edges (things should improve once we start working on it full time ;)… more about that later)…For now the dataset should be usable by those willing to brave the bleeding edge. Let us know if you would like to use metavid data set and we will lend you our metavid expertise and hopefully make your vision is implementable If your just feeling conceptual maybe list your idea on the possibilities page.

If your ready to start hacking congress check out the developer resources in the wiki, and come by #metavid in irc.freenode.net

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Ogg Theora in your Webpage

Update mv_embed.02 has been released its a bit more user friendly and has the latest cortado player.

In response to a request the mv_embed code has been packaged as a stand alone component. This should enable its usage on other sites that want to embed ogg theora clips without those annoying plug-in install requests from the browser that point to non-existing auto install systems.

Mv embed has been tested in windows on (IE 6 (activeX vlc) IE 6(java), Firefox 2(vlc plugin), Firefox 2(java), Opera(java) … on linux: Konqueror (java), firefox(java) … If people find other platforms or combinations that do not work let me know about & if it’s the script’s fault I will see what I can do Often we are limited by the java applet framework which has a few issues… As established in the FOMS meeting: we really need native ogg theora support in firefox & an IE compatible theora plugin.

Future features for mv_embed could include detection of the mplayer plugin (which I would recommend over the vlc browser plugin for linux users), generally enhance it to be more css style friendly, playhead control for vlc plugin (as demoed in tests here & on the vlc site) & maybe integrate the code as a plugin for various CMS and blogging software.

Also check out iTheora (French) project which performs a similar function to the mv_embed script.

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