Wikipedia video gets boost with $100,000 Mozilla grant

Development to be integrated into open source MediaWiki package

Dale said open video is important as it will make video a lot easier to view like text and images are today.

"So why do it? Free software needs to be on a par with proprietary systems. In the latest versions of Ubuntu it is one click away from importing software to play proprietary formats."

While Dale concedes the big problem is adoption, with Archive.org transcoding more than 100,000 videos to the Ogg format and Wikimedia also supporting open formats, the game could change quickyl.

"A cool tool is Firefogg that does in-browser transcoding and uploading of video, so we can avoid videos looking crappy," Dale said.

Wikipedia is also working on a Web-based GUI developed in JavaScript for video editing that will make video content sharing much easier.

"The platform is the Web so we will see in-browser video editors dominate casual video content distribution. And it will be easy for open source desktop apps that integrate into Web applications."

Wiliepdia's collaborative video sequencer application will bring collaborative video to wikis and aims to support basic editing, effects and transitions, multi-track audio and video controls, wiki-driven templates and overlays, sequence transclusion, and APIs for desktop video editors to participate in collaborative video.

"It brings a sematic query system into temporal media," Dale said, adding such queries could be RSS feeds, for example.

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Tags open sourcemozillawikipedialinux.conf.auvideoeditingwikimediamediawikiOgg Theoraannodex

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