PAD.MA - short for Public Access Digital Media Archive - is an online archive of densely text-annotated video material, primarily footage and not finished films. The entire collection is searchable and viewable online, and is free to download for non- commercial use.
We see PAD.MA as a way of opening up a set of images, intentions and effects present in video footage, resources that conventions of video- making, editing and spectatorship have tended to suppress, or leave behind. This expanded treatment then points to other, political potentials for such material, and leads us into lesser-known territory for video itself… beyond the finite documentary film or the online video clip.
The design of the archive makes possible various types of “viewing”, and contextualisation: from an overview of themes and timelines to much closer readings of transcribed dialogue and geographical locations, to layers of “writing” on top of the image material. Descriptions, keywords and other annotations have been placed on timelines by both archive contributors and users. At the moment, PAD.MA has approximately 160 “events” on video, mostly from Mumbai and Bangalore. This adds up to about 100 hours of fully transcribed video footage, which we expect to grow to more than 400 hours by early 2009.
Notes: Pad.ma uses a lot of text-annotating to provide extra information on video content across the timeline.
Q 4.1: What is annotation?
A 4.1: Annotation is the adding of textual information, in this case to parts or the whole of a video event. This is similar to the general concepts: comments, commentary, or marginalia.
Q 4.2: Who has put in the current annotations?
A 5.2: The first layer of annotations have been put in by the original contributors of the video event.
They also have a map function as an overview which utlises google map functionality. The videos are kept at full length and have a scrolling feature for accessing the timeline at any point. Once a point in the timeline is accessed an overview of where you are on the timeline is provided along with a lot of annotated text, including keywords. In a way the features normally hidden in video editing software are revealed in the interface. The application seems to rely on Python and JavaScript programming with the source code available https://wiki.pad.ma/wiki/Source. They are not bothering with supporting IE and there are plans to support Ogg theora.
Q 2.1: Which browsers do you support, on which platforms?
A 2.1: We currently support Firefox and Safari, on Linux, MacOS and Windows. We do not support Internet Explorer. However, if you wish to endeavour to make the site work on IE, please appeal to IE to support web standards in their next version.
Q 2.2: Do I need to install anything to view the videos on pad.ma?
A 2.2: Yes, currently you need to install either the VLC plugin (ensure you tick the “Install Mozilla Plugin” box while installing) for Firefox/Safari on Windows or OSX, or the OggPlay plugin for Firefox on OSX or Linux machines, to play the videos. In the near future, Firefox plans to support Ogg Theora (the open source video codec we are using) natively, and you should not need to download anything to view videos on pad.ma.
Notes on their position in terms of software development:
PAD.MA is not intended as a software product, but you are free to use the code to create your own instance, if you like. Obviously it would be more interesting if these instances fed into each other, if people’s annotations could layer and combine rather than exist in artificially separated environments.
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