Research blip.tv integration

Well I think this is really important and the best delivery I've seen for high quality video is from the folks at Make Magazine(O'Reilly Media).

Before going into any sort of depth as to possible options and methods I want to separate an issue that I'm seeing in irc, the forums, and the issue cue. Distribution of content is very different from source media format and all that goes along with it. For the sake of staying on topic and keeping various issues in their specific place I will only be discussing infrastructure and distribution methods here.

The Ideal

The ideal distribution and storage system would allow many the opportunity to access our material with great ease. This includes having compatible encoding formats that are appropriate and viewable on each individual's system. The ideal system would provide some sort of redundancy. At the same time the system needs to offer some distinct features that make it a desirable and reliable system in which users can always trust there will be content. Some of these requirement/goals are met in scheduling the releases of material, others are more technical. Lets take a look at what Makezine is doing right and wrong from a pure user perspective (my perspective, others please chime in) and then we will look at some of the technical aspects that would support the user experience.

What is Makezine.com doing?

Well what makes makezine really cool is that anyone can immediately access the content, its there right in front of your face and all you have to do is push the play button. You don't even have to go to makezine's site to get fresh and amazing content it can actually come to you. Makezine uses a combination of blog style video distribution methods and simultaneously takes advantage of various RSS methods. This makes acquiring and personally archiving fresh material very easy, in fact its automatic for the majority of users and is directly compatible with iTunes and other media feed readers. While the RSS feed is distributed in a single media format, Makezine, through the use of blip.tv and other sources, has other media formats available for download/play through their website. Makezine places the blip.tv media player in each teaser view of their new videos/podcasts. All the user has to do is press the play button to instantly enjoy the 5-10 minute treasure awaiting them. Immediately below the teaser and media player are a couple links (MP4 | Hi-Def | Blip | Youtube | PDF | Subscribe). These links are amazing! See example, here. Makezine is using blip.tv as their primary distributor. The clean, elegant and, most importantly, the functional media player is generated by blip.tv and simply embedded into the desired content. The links below the media player are amazing as they provide additional accessibility options to users who can't view the media player or to users who wish to independently archive the material or use an alternative format.

Another thing that makezine does that is really unique and amazingly helpful is they always distribute a pdf with their "Weekend Projects." I think it's important to note that the pdf and the video show up side by side in your feed reader. These PDFs are typically very simple but provide a nice outline for replicating the steps once you are actually trying to perform the instructions. This is very nice as you don't have to watch the whole video again even though they are very short and entertaining.

Imagine this being implemented on the drupal dojo level. The pdf would act as a cheat sheet, listing out function definitions and essential steps as well as general tips for a successful completion. (Kinda off topic, sorry) I don't know about you, but there has been a few times where I saw something cool in a video, bookmarked it then had to watch the whole thing over again just to find that one cool segment. The pdf would hopefully help alleviate some of this. The good thing about video is that its more hands on, totally example, and people will lower attention spans will get something out of it versus reading a reference manual. The bad thing about video, most video, is that it is somewhat difficult to just skim and find the important parts. Of course technical editing can resolve some of this but the pdf is a low tech easy to implement alternative. Another benefit of using a pdf like this is that each viewer/user starts building a very simple reference library and so does the dojo. Who knows maybe it could be the start for a self published book. Finally the pdf could be a pre-prepared document, one that is created before actually shooting the lesson. This could be helpful for approving lessons, insuring adequate planning and development, etc... I've gotten slightly off topic of the observation of makezine but I feel that is ok.

The things that makezine are not doing well are easy to remedy. Their main draw back is the site its self and not the actual content distribution, though the two are highly dependent upon each other. Their site is not organized well, at least not the video/podcast section. We can easily fix this by using various sorting and viewing methods which I may expand on in another issue.

The Power of blip.tv

blip.tv is an interesting distribution platform and as to date you still get a large amount of features using the free version alone. Here's how blip.tv works. You take your source video (blip.tv accepts many different formats) and upload it. blip.tv then encodes it in various formats, Flash 8 ("much higher quality then most flash video" - blip.tv/about), Quicktime (iTunes), DivX, 3gp (mobile) and in the end blip.tv retains your original file. That covers a lot of our basis and should squash the many complaints I've received for my decision to use .mov H264 format. The links that I talked about makezine having to various formats are mostly linking to different blip.tv formats. You can access each format by manipulating the url. They follow distinct patters and can easily be provided with the dojo videos just as makezine does. From the drupal side of things there is a module already in existence that utilizes blip.tv's api (actually it seems like there are several now). Another benefit of using blip.tv is that files can be primarily hosted on blip.tv. This eliminates some of our responsibility and ensures longevity of our videos which contain a significant investment of time. Blip.tv uses the REST API for uploads. One of the main things that I've seen people wanting with REST is the way to bypass the immediate server (your personal server) allowing videos you upload to your server to go straight to blip.tv instead of going to your server then going to blip.tv. The way the current modules function is that you upload your video to your site, then your site uploads the video to blip.tv, then your site deletes the uploaded video. Drupal-dojo could use the lack of the above mentioned feature to their benefit by altering the workflow. Instead of deleting the video from your server after successful upload to blip.tv you keep the file on your server. This adds another level of archive and can serve as a redundant/backup point for users and the dojo alike to access the unavailable media.

There is so much more that I could and probably should expand upon but I think this is a good start. Please comment and help acknowledge potential issues and concerns with this loosely outlined distribution model. I think this will help us look a lot more professional and even matching the quality of our hopefully new format for produced media content.

Peace,
-mpare
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Pare Technologies
Drupal Consulting, Themeing, and Module Development
806.686.4496
www.paretech.com
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I think you're spot-on regarding Blip.tv. There are a lot of companies/individuals using their service as a centralized repository, distribution/advertising platform, and more... They also have a ton of great learning materials and guidelines (such as these relevant bits):
http://blip.tv/learning/export/
http://blip.tv/learning/distribute/
http://blip.tv/learning/community/
http://blip.tv/learning/advertise/

And if you read the last line on their developer section (http://blip.tv/about/api/), it seems like they'd be happy to help us out!

Amazon S3 is the best, but it would cost a lot :(
Unfortunately the video sharing sites are not designed for screencasts, they are designed for real-life videos or presentations with big font.

So we cannot provide high quality streaming videos. However the downloadable versions of the screencasts can be high-quality, and storing static files is not so expensive.

This has been submitted as a DROP task - please claim it over here:
http://drop.cwgordon.com/node/31

Why not use the Internet Archive (www.archive.org). It fits much better with open source its sister site: ourmedia.org even runs on Drupal. Nothing against Blip.tv but what if their business model fails - then where are we?

Subscribing and referencing the options: http://drupal.org/node/222775