A number of projects were either begun or moved forward considerably. These include

• a 0.1 alpha release of collective.piwik.flowplayer which enables stats on video plays and downloads
• a 0.1 alpha release of collective.piwik.now which allows users to see who else is on the site
• the development of collective.seed which adds torrent download support for plone content
• updating of transcoding profiles for transcode.star
• an initial assessment of Plumi 3 migration to Plone 4, including migration to the new Sunburst theme
• research in the best html5 video player support in Plone and the various browsers
• updating of the video-feature-set listing that details the desired elements for full video functionality
• initial development to expand republisher to enabling publishing of videos from a Plone site to Facebook

We hope to continue this and other work over the coming months. If you are interested in joining us please sign up at the project page.

Thanks to the Open Society Institute for sponsoring the sprint.

• We began a new plone video suite that brings together the base common features most users expect, such as embedded flash, ogg and h264 video, vodcasting, transcoding, large file handling, content licensing support, metadata extraction and much more.
• a huge amount of work was done on transcoding in particular by EngageMedia and Unweb built on top of Convert Daemon
• upgrading of the Plumi buildout to the latest stable Plone release, 3.3.1
• Translation of Plumi and Plone into Indonesian is almost complete
• We built a solid basis for ongoing collaboration, more video sprints coming hopefully!!

To continue the momentum for the Plone video suite we’ve started a new project on launchpad. Please sign up if you are interested in contributing.

You can also find us in irc.freenode.net #plonevideo.

Here are some of the conclusions, please speak up if we’ve got anything wrong or if we’ve missed any key details.

As mentioned previously there are three strands

1. a new plone video suite based (mostly) on already existing tools
2. the future of plone/video – aimed to toward plone 4/5 and looking particularly at Tiles
3. essential improvements to already existing products such as Plumi and p4a

We’ve updated the feature set based on those discussions and dived into ‘must have’, ‘should have’ and ‘nice to have’. (If you’re not already on the coactivate page, please join here.)

We want to granularise the tasks as much as possible to – any help people can offer there would be great.

We’re also looking to have leads on the various sections who can help break goals down into tasks and get tickets on the coactive tracker ticked off. We currently have 17 people signed up here and a few remote sprinters. We’re expecting 20-25 sprinters on board, possibly more. (Please spread the word and get people on board!)

At the moment Nate has volunteered to bottom line the video suite, and also the p4a enhancements and release.

We also discussed the idea of some of this possibly going into the core of Plone.

Vik is bottom-lining transcoding but is also keen to get more help on the coordination there. And will bottom line Plumi enhancements toward the 3.0 release.

We need a lead on the future of plone video; Limi has offered to help out in framing the needs at the start but will be attending multiple sprints. If you have any ideas or suggestions for a lead, please let us now.

If you’re interested in attending the sprint, there’s some info here and you can also follow what we’re up to on twitter: @plumisprint

The sprint agenda is starting to look a like it will have three core areas

1. The Future of Plone Video – looking at using Dexterity and other bleeding edge tech to prototype plone video functionality going forward
2. The development of a “Plone Video Suite” that would enable most of the “must have” functionality based on already existing small tools such as collective.flowplayer, p4avideoembed etc. The aim is to avoid building something monolithic and re-inventing the wheel and to keep the suite small with the minimum required functionality. We want to ensure we have realistic outcomes that are reachable during the sprint. A lot of the tools are already there, they just need to be tweaked to play well together.
3. Enhancing and bug fixing existing video tools such as plone4artists and Plumi.

More updates coming soon….

EngageMedia

Online video has exploded in recent years, being a major source of the “web 2.0” boom. YouTube, Yahoo Video and other video sharing spaces have been celebrated for making major advances in facilitating citizen media. Despite their success however there are many limitations to these proprietary platforms, such as YouTube’s limit on video size, its frequent censorship, the difficulty in downloading the video, the low quality of the flash video employed, the terms of use that allows YouTube to do near anything with your video, etc.

The ability to host and manage your own content using free, libre and open source (FLOSS) tools is essential for independent media organisations and non-profits.

Topics and Aims
The aims for the sprint are the following

• Increased communication and collaboration between Python, Zope and Plone developers working in the area of open video technologies.
• Direct improvement of key video technologies and the video feature set available in the Plone CMS so as to increase uptake and improve those sites already implementing Plone video technologies.
• Improved the ease of use, install and set up of Plumi via technical and documentation enhancements, opening it up to a
  broader set of users and contributors.
• Increased skill set among sprint participants regarding how to implement and develop with the Plumi CMS and for video
  technologies more generally in the Plone CMS.
• Increase the community of developers working on Plone and video and their effectiveness.

We will be guided by a professional facilitator to help the group focus on priorities. Broadly we aim to work on the following topic areas: building a shared roadmap for video on Plone, working on key technical needs such as large file handling, transcoding and bittorrent support, improving support for FOSS video codecs, publishing and viewing content with mobile devices, bug fixing existing video related Plone collective products and improving documentation.

We hope to follow up related work from around the FLOSS video scene – such as Transmission.cc network, Plone4Artists, the recent Open Video Conference in NYC, the annual set of FOMS conferences, and the free documentation work of FLOSSManuals.

We aim to contribute to constructing online spaces where independent media networks can flourish in an open, accessible and transparent way. For our part, EngageMedia will continue work on Plumi – the Plone based video CMS sponsored by us as a FLOSS tool for local communities and activists to use as a democratic online video sharing space.

Participating
The Plone Conference has subsidies for people wanting to come to the conference.
http://ploneconf2009.org/blog/apply-for-participation-grants

EngageMedia also has a very limited number of travel subsidies to offer to activists and NGO developers based on need. When you contact us, please also let us know by September 6th if you want to be considered for a travel subsidy.

The Plone Video sprint has limited number of places, and you will need to register, and please indicate how long for the 4 days you can stay. We have a preference for people to stay for the entire 4 days. Please add yourself to the team at http://www.coactivate.org/projects/plone-video-sprint/request-membership and also drop andycat@engagemedia.org an email.

We will close the list of sprint participants on the end of September 30th.

The Plone/Video Sprint is supported by the Open Society Institute