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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While the Congress is away…

The House and Senate are off this week for Independence Day observence; we’re using this break as an opportunity to break in our brand new admin interface, which makes the numerous behind-the-scenes tasks involved in transcoding and bringing the footage online much more streamlined. By the time Congress returns on the 9th, we expect to be caught up and able to get new footage online within a day or so of air — hopefully sooner.

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While the Congress is away…

The House and Senate are off this week for Independence Day observence; we’re using this break as an opportunity to break in our brand new admin interface, which makes the numerous behind-the-scenes tasks involved in transcoding and bringing the footage online much more streamlined. By the time Congress returns on the 9th, we expect to be caught up and able to get new footage online within a day or so of air — hopefully sooner.

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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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Exporting democracy.. to Democracy Player :D

From the DemocracyTV blog:

There’s a new version of XiphQT, which is the behind-the-scenes code that helps Democracy Player for OSX play Ogg files. We’ll be including this in an upcoming release of ours and it should make Ogg playback much more efficient. If you use the XiphQT plugin yourself, this version supports creation of Oggs, which is very handy.

This theora support means that the RSS feeds generated by MetaVid searches (those funny orange boxes: ) are exportable as channels for your DTV player. You could use a channel for your own Congressman (here’s mine), an issue you care about (like peanut butter), or some combination of the two (Anna Eshoo saying Peanut Butter). The great thing about RSS and DTV is that as new matches to these searches occur, the clips will download automatically — giving you a new and efficient way to sousveil your representative and cause.

update: hmm, it looks like our feeds are broken in the latest democracyPlayer; we’re looking in to why.

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new version of democracy player

Do go check out the new version of democracy player with improved ogg theora support :).

This means that you can now grab the rss link() at the top of any metavid search and add the channel to democracy player. As new video clips come online they will be listed in your channel. But don’t get too anxious for new clips congress has conveniently taken the month off for campaning and whatever else they do in their free time.

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