When first envisaged for Plumi, the Burnstation module was to produce either VCD or DVD format discs for distribution. During the design of the prototype, it was decided to focus solely on DVD format discs for the following reasons:

• DVD is more popular than VCD and more people are likely to have DVD players than VCD players
• DVDs use mpeg2 encoding providing a higher quality and more compressed file than the mpeg1 encoding used by VCDs
• No need to ask the user to select VCD or DVD

The Burnstation prototype will take video files that have been mpeg2 encoded by the transcode daemon (as normal), convert them to VOBs and then produce a DVD ISO file using the tovid utility.

The restriction to solely produce DVD format discs will also need to be reassessed. Research is required to determine whether the VCD platform is still common in Indonesia and other parts of Asia or whether it has been replaced by DVD players and is no longer required.

EngageMedia and Unweb have started development work on a prototype of a Burnstation module for Plumi. This module will allow a Plumi system to burn DVDs of videos from its collection.

Derived from the concept behind the original audio based Burnstation that provides disc burning systems in public places, the intention of this Plumi module is to facilitate distribution of video content to areas where Internet connections may not support streaming video online, or provide additional distribution options.

The Burnstation module will allow someone using a Plumi based system to select a list of videos and burn them to a DVD. At first we are producing a prototype system that will demonstrate the feasibility of taking a selection of Plumi hosted videos and producing an ISO format DVD image that can be burnt to disc using any standard disc production software. While the prototype will perform the bare minimum functions required, the final version will include a streamlined interface, total disc size checking and more.

We will produce further blog entries about the Burnstation project to capture the decisions we make during design & implementation of the prototype. Watch this space!

EngageMedia and Unweb are pleased to announce the release Plumi 3.1, the latest version of the video sharing platform that is built on the Plone open source content management system.

You can download Plumi 3.1 as a compressed tar file from Plone.org or via SVN.

Plumi 3.1 features the following improvements:

• Rebuilt the transcoding engine to fix a variety of issues encountered in the version released with Plumi 3
• Upgraded to the latest version of FlowPlayer
• Translated the /publish page into Indonesian
• Videos should appear in listings based on date of first publication
• Users look up for non-logged in users returns no results
• Redesign the Callout template
• Create new “Featured” state for workflow
• Videos triggering retranscode after editing metadata
• Add ability to feature a call out
• Callouts items should be removed from the front page once the due date is up
• Member video’s RSS feed needs a filter like RSS2 feed does
• Add “processing” state to workflow with listing
• Add callout portlet to right nav
• Enlarge size of download links in video/view page
• “Read more” link on featured news/events
• Change date stamp in video listings to be the “effective date”
• Front page RSS feed links to random front page content
• Replaced custom transcode daemon integration with collective.transcode.star

If you’d like to get involved in Plumi development please make contact at irc.freenode.net #plumi or join the discussion or announcement lists.

A working version of Plumi 3.1 can be seen at http://engagemedia.org and http://demo.plumi.org

Thanks to the developers, testers and coordinators who made this release possible!