Why Wikipedia supports open video from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

From time to time, Socialbrite explores the use of open source tools by change-makers and social benefit organizations — see below for our past coverage of open video and how open standards can benefit nonprofit tech.

The second annual Open Video conference returns to New York University on Oct. 1-2. If you can make it, it’s a must event for evangelists of open content. At last year’s event, I got to meet Erik Möller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation and an early advisor to Ourmedia.org, who helped (via email from Berlin) steer us toward the right set of Creative Commons licenses.

In this video interview, Möller tells me why Wikipedia decided early on to support open standards for all video used on the online encyclopedia. “We’ve always had a commitment to open standards,” he said. The Wikimedia brain trust made a decision early on not to support Flash, MPEG-4 or any other proprietary format on Wikipedia when the formats are controlled by a single vendor or handful of vendors. “If [users] all have to get permission from one entity, we would never accept that kind of market power” in other mediums, like TV or radio.

Without question, it was the correct decision — and a vastly important one.

As a result, today Wikipedia has more than 30 million text articles — all available under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license — but only 3,000 videos. Erik hopes that changes. He encourages contributors to collaborate and publish “rich educational materials” through video, photo slide shows, animation and rich media on subjects like genetics or natural selection. “The potential is enormous,” he said.

Watch, download or embed the 6-minute video in Theora Ogg on Tinyvid.tv (and let us know if you can’t view it in your browser)

Watch, download or embed the 6-minute video on Vimeo

Watch or embed video on YouTube

For those so inclined, here is the Wikimedia Commons entry on converting video to the Theora Ogg format. The free Miro Theora video converter is available for Windows and Mac computers and features a simple drag-and-drop interface. Since version 3.5 of Firefox was released last year, Firefox now supports HTML 5 video and audio in the browser without the need for proprietary formats like Flash.

So far, Theora remains a promising but geeky codec that hasn’t advanced much since I last wrestled with it three years ago. I just tried converting my H.264 video into Theora using Miro Video Converter — and it came out as a green screen. Firefox 3.6, Opera, Google Chrome and Safari can play back Theora videos with varying degrees of success. But, to be sure, the era of open video on the Web has just dawned.

Side note: Erik Möller developed the proposal for Wikinews, a Wikimedia project, and organized the vote that implemented it. Before joining Wikimedia, Erik was a freelance journalist and author. He now lives in San Francisco.

A production note: I’m trying a new “outro” on this video — that is, the music over the closing credits — with “TheForce” by j1s, a CC BY-NC musical snippet that I found on beat.org.

Related

• Toward a Web of open video: an interview with Mozilla’s Mark Surman (Socialbrite)
• How open standards can benefit nonprofit tech (Socialbrite)
• Boxee and the promise of open media (Socialbrite)
• The promise of open source video (Socialbrite)
• Kaltura: open source video (Socialbrite)
• Creating media: Tools, tutorials, resources (Socialbrite)

The post Why Wikipedia insists on open video appeared first on Socialbrite.

Toward open video on the Web from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

A few weeks ago, before and after the Open Video conference at NYU, I sketched out the proposition that open video is a requirement for an open Web in two posts: The promise of open source video and Boxee and the promise of open media.

By some estimates, 90 percent of the traffic on the Internet will be video by 2013, so this affects free and open discourse online. Above is a 7-minute interview I conducted with Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, who talks about how video is really separate from the rest of the Web in that it’s a much more closed system. “We need to look at how to make video a first-class citizen on the Web,” he said.

Surman said he hopes a concerted push toward open standards will “shift the market away from a black box video plug-in, where the video is separate from the rest of the page, to something where video can interact with Javascript” or other elements on a Web page.

Video today is locked up (technologically) and locked down (legally). In order for video to become part of the Web’s innovation ecosystem, Surman said, we need to be able to play, manipulate, transform and remix video in the same way we can with photos and data.

In the past two years, the vast majority of video hosting sites have settled on Adobe’s Flash as the format of choice because more than 95 percent of desktop computers and laptops can play them. But Flash isn’t an open source system, and video producers have been limited in how they can make video interact with other Web page elements.

“That may not sounds interesting to those who just watch videos, but it’ll be interesting first to video producers who can do all kinds of innovative things that we can’t even imagine now,” he said.

Firefox 3.5 may be a game-changer

With the recent release of Firefox 3.5, Web developers can now program video within the browser, bypassing Flash, QuickTime, DivX and other codecs altogether. “That means 300 million people will [eventually] have access to native video in their browser,” Surman said. Other browsers, including Safari, Chrome and Opera, are also on board the open video bandwagon.

Where firefox 3.0 was an upgrade for users, “we say Firefox 3.5 is an upgrade for the Web,” he added. That doesn’t mean we’ll see a shift away from Flash .flv video in the next few years, but now the door is open to innovation and experimentation.

Online video “will always be a contested space, but enough people love the Web that they’ll make it happen,” Surman said.

Watch, embed or download video in Flash on Vimeo
Watch or download video in H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia
Download the original video from Archive.org or watch it in Ogg

Related

• Mark Surman’s tak at the Open Video conference in Ogg Theora

• Breaking: Firefox 3.5 is Released — A Historic Day for Web Video? (beet.tv)

• RiP: A Remix Manifesto: A movie by Brett Taylor

The post Toward a Web of open video appeared first on Socialbrite.

I don’t know about you, but I am a big fan of open standards, particularly when my bladder Direct Messages me with the hashtag #urgent. Open standards (see picture below) guide me to a place where I can @reply in a hurry.

In June, I hosted a discussion about Collaboration and Competition on Social Edge in which the topic of open standards for the nonprofit sector was raised. In response to a comment from David Wolff, I wrote:

Jo Davidson then replied:

I replied to Jo:

Where to go from here

The nonprofit technology community is filled with many bright minds and innovative thinkers. For better or worse, this passion often gets channeled toward one-off projects that benefit a single organization or a coalition of organizations.

I would like to see the brightest minds and most innovative thinkers in the social sector come together to create open standards that lift all organizations making use of the social web. The open standards that I’d like to see developed and adopted would help social benefit organizations seamlessly publish rich information about their donation opportunities in a structured format, helping major grant-makers and citizen philanthropists make smarter choices about their giving.

I’d also like to see open standards developed and adopted that help organizations publish rich information about their volunteer opportunities and the events they are hosting, helping individuals connect with service opportunities and events effortlessly. Finally, I’d like to see open standards developed and adopted that help nonprofits fill out their social media profile once and have it syndicated everywhere and anywhere on the fly.

From a technological perspective, these are modest goals. Where they become difficult to achieve is at the level of organizational culture, grant-making priorities, and leadership. I understand fully that this conversation has been launched on many occasions over the years. I’m hoping that in 2009, we can overcome cultural, funding, and leadership barriers to create a nonprofit sector that charts its own course toward open standards, open data and collaborative innovation.

If you are interested in participating in the open standards and open data conversation, please leave a comment below.

The next time your nonprofit’s stakeholders collectively Direct Message you with the hashtag #urgent, you’ll be able to @reply with a simple message: Open standards and open data are helping you respond quickly and effectively.

The post How open standards can benefit nonprofit tech appeared first on Socialbrite.