open video
Open Video Conference Call for Proposals
The Open Video Conference, “a multi-day summit of thought leaders in business, academia, art, and activism [exploring] the future of online video,” is taking place this fall from October 1-2 in NYC and includes a keynote from Michael Wesch, the cultural anthropologist responsible for the YouTube phenomenon, The Machine is Us/ing Us. Last year, OVC “was host to over 800 guests, including 150 workshop leaders, panelists and speakers. Over 8,000 viewers tuned in from home to watch the live broadcast. The event earned coverage in WIRED, NewTeeVee, BBC News, Filmmaker Magazine, and The New Yorker.”
You can apply to host or be part of a panel, presentation, workshop, or demo session at http://openvideoconference.org/proposals/. The deadline to apply is June 7. For more about OVC, visit http://www.openvideoconference.org/about/.
No Comments »Cool open video news from Wikimedia
The most frequently used audio and video formats on the web are not open (they’re software patent encumbered), which has hindered the development of free and open source media tools. Open audio and video formats face a tough chicken and egg problem: not interesting to publishers if not supported in software, and not interesting to software developers if not much published open format audio and video.
Wikipedia and its media repository, Wikimedia Commons, have long been an important piece in this adoption puzzle. Along with only accepting liberal copyright licensing, they accept only free file formats.
Late July the Wikimedia Blog featured two hopeful items regarding open media formats. Both are still developing and well worth checking out despite this late posting.
First, an announcement that MetaVid lead developer Michael Dale has been hired by the Wikimedia Foundation:
As many of you may know, Wikimedia is working with Kaltura, Inc. to explore collaborative video editing in the Wikimedia projects. I’m very happy to announce that Kaltura has decided to support the further development of a 100% open source video editing solution integrated into MediaWiki. To this end, Kaltura is sponsoring Michael Dale, lead developer of the MetaVid project, to work in the Wikimedia Foundation offices in San Francisco beginning in early August.
Michael will work on adding support for video editing operations and other video-related functionality to MediaWiki, with a rich user interface built entirely on open standards like Ogg Theora. Michael’s work priorities will be coordinated between Kaltura and WMF. I am hoping that we can make incremental improvements to Wikimedia’s video capabilities that will start to become visible to users soon.
This is really excellent news. MetaVid impressed when presented at a CC Salon two years ago.
Second, a post on news that Firefox 3.1 to support open video and audio. This post also has an excellent summary of why open formats matter for free culture. Go read it!
No Comments »Raw Footage from NOVA’s “Car of the Future” Open for Sharing and Remix
In the winter of 2006, NOVA embarked on an “open production” experiment, asking viewers to contribute by reading and commenting on a preview of their show’s script—the (then) in-progress documentary, “Car of the Future.” The show’s producers liked the results, and according to the Wired Blog Network’s Underwire, NOVA decided to return the favor by “[giving] the material back.”
For the first time ever, PBS and NOVA have released 240 clips of raw footage from the making of the “Car of the Future” documentary online. The videos, which include full-length interviews with world-renowned scientists and engineers (in addition to various footage of the high-tech vehicles themselves), is free for viewing, sharing, and remixing under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License (CC BY-NC). NOVA encourages you to take this footage and “create your own video or multimedia project about tomorrow’s cars, environmental issues, or other related topics you care about.” They also ask you to send them back your finished product if you want, so that they can feature the best videos on their site.
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