After the constructive talks with had at drupalcon portland, I Just wanted to add some points on this discussion and open this issue to gather all remarks on this task.
For those of you that still don't know Scald, it is an alternative media solution for drupal 6, and 7. you can give it a try here : simplytest.me

The idea of this issue is to discuss on a common architecture for a unique media solution for drupal 8, based on what we know and what we did for drupal 7. Here is our semi-technical point of view based on the different opinion in the scald team. We can develop if you want more details. We truly want to be part of the development of a unified solution for media on drupal 8.

This said there is some points we don't really want to be left aside :
we pointed out the main difference of architecture at our drupalcon meeting which is mainly the fact to have an in the middle entity between file entity and the scald core. this allows us more flexibility and more usage cases than the actual 'file entity' centric view of the media module. per example :

  • Better access control rights granularity, no need for private/public files, which is currently already incompatibile with Media (youtube:// is neither public:// nor private://)
  • We don't have this file removal problem when unused because the file is linked to our media atom ( ie entity ) and as long as this entity exists, the file is retained, even if not used in a node
  • MIME: a media could have different MIME types for each medium (video/mp4 or video/mpeg, or even audio/mp3 + subtitle)
  • Every file is a media. No. Imagine that a Viddler video provider generates derivatives videos or thumbnails what we store in the {files} table (because we want to render them easily), they should not be "media".
  • Media included in library: per-media option for media reuse. The media publisher, with appropriate permission, should be able to specify whether the published media is available for reuse in the same website and/or in a different website (hot linking/embedding etc.)
  • Better contextualization per node of the media atom ( ie legend on the bottom of image )
  • No over dependency on an underlying module development to get things done. Scald provider can implement one method to get and display a media asset, and this can be changed independently of the scald core whenever a better solution is available. Which in other terms means that we won't have to wait for file entity to be done in drupal 8 to start something for media, things could evolve later in the provider modules without touching the core and include dependency when it will make sense.
  • We already have in the drupal 7 module an underlying structure made the drupal 8 way using classes and OOP.
  • We are thinking of a scald_dashboard module that would be mostly theming of views ( as an entity media atoms are fully compatible with views ) in our case.

Those are points we don't want to be left away to integrate Scald in the drupal 8 version of media. It make sense also on the community project management term, as people on scald don't have to be involved in other underlying module because of strong dependency, and on the variety of use case this architecture should manage.
I think it is really the time now to stop wasting our energy around some details, and we shall make a step to each other :)

Comments

tkoleary’s picture

tkoleary CreditAttribution: tkoleary commented

@drico

This is great. Thanks for posting in such detail. IMHO there is no more urgent effort than this in D8 contrib and it would be an incredible accelerator for Drupal if the combined media solution could be ready at or near the D8 launch.

I will work with the UX group to get the interaction issues worked out as quickly as possible.

-Kevin

slashrsm’s picture

slashrsm CreditAttribution: slashrsm commented

I welcome this initiative, since I truly believe that cooperation is the only way to achieve great results. This was proved may times before. Drupal urgently needs a solid and powerful solution that will handle multi-media assets. Every single solution that we currently have in D7 have it's own weaknesses. The only way to merge all their strengths is to work together and see which ideas and principles can be taken form each of current media projects.

D8 is a great opportunity to build something that will make all of us happy, since it comes with a lot of new concepts, APIs, features and principles. This allows us to re-think things and build on top of it.

driki_’s picture

driki_ CreditAttribution: driki_ commented

Just to elaborate a little more on the utility of having this entity in the middle, we have a new contrib module for scald, allowing a view to be used as a Scald atom, and drag and dropped. This one is really interesting because it's a use case we did'nt predict at all when we started this development.

tkoleary’s picture

tkoleary CreditAttribution: tkoleary commented

@drico

That's awesome.

AFowle’s picture

AFowle
he/him
CreditAttribution: AFowle commented

Both of these modules look quite complex to set up and are suitable for editors and administrators (as the media module's description says).
I am looking for something for naive end users to maintain their own galleries of works - in fact to replace the gallery2 embedded solution in D6. Surely with all the power of scald / media you could have a simple gallery for end users (media_gallery is still quite difficult to set up for users and there is still no stable version and there is the whole v1 or v2 debate).

Have I missed a simple trick somewhere or is it really difficult to do this in D7 and upcoming D8?

steinmb’s picture

steinmb CreditAttribution: steinmb commented

Great idea +1 from me. Both projects have some great ideas but also many similarities. Any plans for a Drupalcon BOF about this?

Dave Reid’s picture

Dave Reid
he/him
Primary language English
Location Nebraska USA
CreditAttribution: Dave Reid commented

I'm +100 to the idea of having Media become a unified UI that File entity or Scald could both utilize to present a unified way of interacting with Media. I'm looking forward to tkoleary's mockups and being able to review them as an integrated team, much like we were able to in Portland.

I'm not sure why we needed to bring in criticism of File entity again here though, it seems unnecessary.

I'm not sure if Media will have a representative in Prague. At least for me I will not be able to attend. Maybe ParisLiakos or someone else is going, but I'm not sure.

tkoleary’s picture

tkoleary CreditAttribution: tkoleary commented

@Dave Reid

New designs are on the way. We are putting them into Commons first and some of those should roll up into Media.

slashrsm’s picture

slashrsm CreditAttribution: slashrsm commented

I will have a core convo about media/asset management in Prague: https://prague2013.drupal.org/session/let%E2%80%99s-fix-file-and-media-h.... My intent is to start constructive discussion about possible solutions for media/asset related problems in Drupal 8, as I believe it is great timing to re-think stuff, learn on previous mistakes and build something awesome for next Drupal's release. Any ideas, help, proposals, etc are more than welcome. You know how to contact me ;).

I personally don't care whether it is Media, Scald (I actively contributed to both) or anything else. I'm happy as long as we build something that will make Drupal the most powerful tool for media/asset handling.

I don't think we should think about representing Media, Scald, MediaBox, Assets or whatever else. I strongly believe that we should all represent Drupal and work together.

slashrsm’s picture

slashrsm CreditAttribution: slashrsm commented

I published a survey that will hopefully help me to initiate solid discussion in Prague. I'll be glad if you take few minutes to complete it.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RMLGQFB

driki_’s picture

driki_ CreditAttribution: driki_ commented
Issue summary: View changes
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

I'm closing this issue as discussion / works goes on media entity now for D8

Dave Reid’s picture

Dave Reid
he/him
Primary language English
Location Nebraska USA
CreditAttribution: Dave Reid commented
Status: Closed (fixed) » Postponed

I'd still like to keep this open for discussion about the unified UI, which seems to have lost focus over the media entity. The latter being a direction that I think this project should not head towards.

Chris Matthews’s picture

Chris Matthews CreditAttribution: Chris Matthews as a volunteer commented
Status: Postponed » Closed (outdated)

Closing this issue as outdated. However, if you think this issue is still important, please let us know and we will gladly re-open it for review.
sincerely,
- the Drupal Media Team