Jay Dedman and Ryanne Hodson packed a bit into their workshop session as part of the Videodefunct and Showinabox: Hitting vlogging with a hammer workshop at montevideo in Amsterdam. The showinabox community are frustrated with the way a blog content management system handles video. The video clips posted chronologically cause a big part of this frustration as it makes it difficult to find and access video that are not featured as the latest post. In other words the vlogger may what the user to view clips that have been posted some time ago. They are also wanting more aesthetic control, where as media producers they should be able to alter how there video looks and is published online. The idea in addition to this is to provide simple open source tools that follow the YouTube model of accessibility and ease of use. Showinthebox is a response to these objectives where a number of tools are brought together into a type of package, a box.
To get their point across about being able to archive and locate videos in a more open-ended manner on a vlog, they showed a number of examples that people are working on, in response to this issue. Each of these examples demonstrate varying approaches towards customising the index page interface.
Lost in Light 8mm film project. The number of categories demonstrates in part the process of archiving on a conventional vlog. A file Directory has been added to provide alternative access to the posted clips.
Swanjana Life in India On this vlog the conventional sidebar attributes have been dropped, the interface simplified with a video thumbnails at the bottom that lead to a video archive page. The vPIP plugin is being used to provide a range of online video formats for download. These are featured at the bottom of each poster. (as a side note it was interesting to learn that mefeedia created an early plugin now defunct, to create video archive pages on vlogs.)
Shadow World uses a chronology blog drop down archive.
Columbia Migration Project This vlog has had an HTML makeover. People are the key focus and they have been represented on the index page in simple videowall type layout.
Jay then moved to the blip.tv showplayer. The showplayer is like a self-contained video display window that has thumbnails down the side as a list of videos. What is displayed and searched can be customised to a certain degree. But the feature has limitations in terms of making associations across clips and breaking the self-contained nature. The showplayer Jay argued breaks away from blog functionality. i.e comments; permalinks etc and action scripts are an issue. Using this a key focus the vPIP community are interested in maintaining, utilising and developing this blog functionality.
Moving back to showinthebox, vPIP they stated is one of the few players that offers all the online video formats including open source with the facility to add HD formats. Looking for another way to make connections across clips beyond categories and dated archives there is the related videos feature on YouTube. This type of feature has been added to the Showinthebox index interface. An example is Ryan is Hungry. There is also a recent video strip on the bottom of the page. The related videos are created using a showinabox developed plugin by Charles Iliya Krempeaux called “VideoPress Related Videos”.
Ryanne then went through using vPIP. The process was very labour intensive in regards to setting up compression files for each online video format and then inputting a url address for each uploaded video file. But the plugin provides a lot of flexibility and room for choice.
Following using blog functionality the semanal.org project they are working on provides a function to video comment. The vlog uses comments as a way to post to the vlog. This recent project along with the other features being developed by the showinthebox community demonstrates re-working a vlog to suit video – while still keeping the features which make a blog a blog.
They also pointed out the http://havemoneywillvlog.com/ project where the vlog community are encouraged to raise funds to support each others vlog projects. This project reflects some of the P2P Foundation research into differing types of economies.
Finally, in talking with Ryanne afterwards I was fascinated with her http://revlog.blogspot.com/ revlog project. Here hours are put into selecting and posting chosen vlogs in a revlog as a form of personal vlog archive. A process I am familiar with in delicious only this applies to vlogs, using delicious RSS.
4 Comments
Great summary of our workshop. Appreciate the documentation. When it’s ready, I’d love to show the Video Defunct project to our group.
Hi. Nice write up, but I have a few counter-points…
I am a member of the Show in a Box community. However, I am not particularly “frustrated with the way a blog content management system handles video”. There are many other interesting issues discussed in the group as well.
Your description of vPiP gives the impression that it is “labor intensive”, when it is really the compression and uploading of *any* video that is relatively labor intensive. How “labor intensive” can vPiP be when it takes less than a minute to use with a mouse to copy and paste some url’s???
The revlog blog is now a collection of del.icio.us links. How does that take “hours”? The point of revlogging is that you see something you like and want to share it quickly and easily, which seems to be exactly what Ry is doing. This is not a time consuming process (just press a bookmark in your browser toolbar).
The “related vidoes” plugin is different from the “related entries” one you linked to. See the showinabox.tv site for links to Charles’ VideoPress related videos and video archive plugins for use with vPiP.
Thanks for the comment Markus. It is not so much that I look upon the process of compression and uploading negatively as I think it is fantastic that the showinabox community are providing a system that allows for all the varying formats including open source. It is more about wondering how this may be streamlined if the option is to compete with something like YouTube, where the aim is to encourage as many users as possible to work on their own independent production. I was imagining for example going through this process with students who in many cases seem to gravitate to the most user friendly not as technical options. This is a tension I believe that we work with as larger entities aim to simplify things to get a mass user base while the alternative-independent media community and artists work on more personal control which comes with more technical skills. In the end, I see these developments as being part of the way towards making changes to accommodate video in a blog. But, in the end the major improvements are made by the tireless work of communities like showinabox.
Great job summarizing the presentation, Seth. Thanks for that! I had to miss it, but now I feel like I was there!
I’m part of the Show in a Box team, too. Markus beat me to commenting the correction that the plugin developed by Charles Iliya Krempeaux for Show in a Box is called “VideoPress Related Videos” and has nothing to do with the Related Entries plugin you linked to. I’ll just add that Related Videos does not select videos for you based on your tags for previous video posts. Instead, it simply provides fields for you to enter videos you decide are related. What we like about this is that you can actually link to videos that were made by someone else, on another site.
Thanks again for this write-up. It’s helping me plan my own presentation tonight – ensuring I don’t forget anything. ;D
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