[Gslug-general] video clips from last meeting

[Jason Self]

Mark Foster <mark at foster.cc> wrote ..

> I agree with this and had said something about it earlier. However after 
> spending literally hours cleaning up the videos (they needed cropping 
> and audio boost)

I was wondering about the audio. Would a microphone near the front would be a good idea? Maybe a wireless lapel microphone or something? Just a thought.

> Vimeo's FAQ states they accept these formats: asf, asx, avi, divx, dv, 
> dvx, m4v, mov, mp4, mpeg, mpg, qt, wmv, 3g2, 3gp, 3ivx and 3vx
> 
> Do any of these qualify as open formats?

It looks like that's what the site accepts for /input/ (and some of those are actually containers, not codecs.) It appears that Vimeo then converts the upload into a Flash video. Flash does not allow for the use of patent-free audio and video codecs.

> Of the video-hosting sites out there are there any that accept uploads 
> of Theora/Vorbis (a.k.a. ogg ) format that don't also impose 
> unacceptable limits (like having to pay, 10minutes max and so on)?

I know of blip.tv and tinyvid.tv, but is it actually necessary to outsource the hosting of the video? It's only a file after all, and IIRC, GSLUG has their own server? Could the files live there?

As an example of doing it in-house: ffmpeg2theora could be used to convert the audio/video into an appropriate format and that file could sit on the GSLUG server. (There have been a number of improvements made recently, so using one of the nightly builds is best: http://firefogg.org/nightly/ffmpeg2theora.linux).

The HTML 5 video element (and as a fallback for browsers that don't support HTML 5 like Internet Explorer, the Java Cortado applet) could be used to embed the video into a webpage hosted on the GSLUG server.

<video src="MyVideo.ogv" width="352" height="288">
  <applet code="com.fluendo.player.Cortado.class" archive="http://theora.org/cortado.jar" width="352" height="288">
    <param name="url" value="MyVideo.ogv"/> 
  </applet>
</video>

Then everything is done in-house and there's no need to worry about any limits (money, duration, or otherwise) set by a third party. Just a thought.

I have alot of experience with audio & video and am willing to offer whatever assistance is needed.

> P.S. I had also intended to do some live webcasting of the talks but my 
> webcam turned out to be pretty finicky. vlc has some nice options for 
> doing live streaming (w/ audience participation) that deserves further 
> experimentation as I'm pretty sure it can be done with the right 
> combination of decent webcam + graphics horsepower + bandwidth.

VLC can do live streaming, which would be interesting. ffmpeg2theora can also stream to an icecast server. (If it's not obvious yet, ffmpeg2theora is my choice for most anything regarding Theora & Vorbis as it's the most full-featured encoder at the moment.)


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