• online subtitling support using Universal Subtitles
• html5 support using webm and mp4 (high res and standard transcodes available) makes page loads massively faster – no more flowplayer.
• all transcoded versions are available for easy download
• better and more reliable support for 16:9 video
• sort and find videos by language
• play count on videos is now counted when the video is played embedded on another site
• updated to Plone 4.1
• replace collective.piwik.flowplayer with collective.piwik.mediaelement
• Video transcoding progress indicator for site admins

For a full list of changes please see the changelog.

You can download the package from http://plone.org/products/plumi/releases/4.3-Final or via http://pypi.python.org/pypi/plumi.app/4.3

The changes can be seen in action at http://engagemedia.org and http://demo.plumi.org

Thanks to Unweb.me, Rok Garbas and Anna Helme for getting us across the line and producing the best Plumi release to date.

The beta includes updating to Plone 4.1.2, support for 16:9 video transcoding, webm transcoding, replacement of Flowplayer with mediaelement.js HTML5 player, video language added to metadata and support for the Universal Subtitles platform.

Also updated is the INSTALL.txt with the new installation how-to.

Please install, test and get in contact with us via the email list if you find any bugs.

Here are the changelogs for plumi.app and plumi.content:

• added mkv and wmv files to cache exceptions [clopy]
• moved repo to github [garbas]
• added support for 16:9 transcoding, updated ffmpeg version [clopy]
• removing propertiestool.xml – functionality was moved to other packages [garbas]
• publish link should be part of desgin (moving to plumi.skin) [garbas]
• removed boilerplate code [garbas]
• added iw.debug into devel.cfg [garbas]
• update to Plone 4.1.2 [garbas, dimo]
• add publish and notifyMemberAreaCreated via portal_skins (from plumi.skin) [garbas]
• added webm transcoding support [clopy, cpsaltis, dimo]
• updated transcode script to catch odd resolutions [clopy]
• update thumbnail generation script for 16:9 [clopy]
• replace collective.flowplayer with collective.mediaelementjs [clopy, dimo]
• replace collective.piwik.flowplayer with collective.piwik.mediaelement [dimo]
• add plone.app.theming support & update lxml [dimo]
• pump up versions of external tools [cpsaltis]
• add vocabulary and index for video languages [clopy]
• update installation method and docs [dimo]

https://github.com/plumi

We are currently working towards a Plumi 4.3 beta release, including support for Universal Subtitles, 16:9 video and an HTML5 video player (with auto fallback to Flash video support for older browsers).

You can check out the development tracker here.

The article “Make a video portal with Plumi” covers the installation of Plumi and contains an overview of what you can do with Plumi, plus lots of tricks.

Linux Inside is a greek magazine about linux and open source, featuring high quality original articles in the greek language .

Refresh your greek and read the article here!

Improvements in this release include

• Author page now only pulls in news/events created by that author;
• Minor layout clean up to the author page;
• Indonesian translation enhancements – option to choose low/high resolution version of the embedded player;
• Add timeout to scheduler queue to avoid possible transcoder freeze;
• Backward compatibility with pre iframe embed code to ensure old embeds can be played;
• Thumbnail is taken at 8 seconds rather than at 4 seconds to reduce number of instances of black frames;
• Page size optimizations – double loading of flash player removed and lower resolution thumbnail is displayed;
• Simplify installation procedure by automatically creating a Plone site and installing plumi.app;
• Update tests use plone.app.testing;
• Fix doctests;
• Update to Plone 4.0.7 that includes the latest security fixes.

The release can be found at http://plone.org/products/plumi

SVN at https://svn.plone.org/svn/collective/plumi.app/tags/4.2.1/

A demo can be seen at http://demo.plumi.org and http://engagemedia.org

Full changelogs at

• http://pypi.python.org/pypi/plumi.app
• http://pypi.python.org/pypi/plumi.content
• http://pypi.python.org/pypi/plumi.skin

From May 10-13 EngageMedia conducted a video database development workshop with ASTEKI – a network of progressive TV stations based in Bogor, Indonesia. The workshop made use the Plone based Plumi video sharing software. We were joined by friends and Plumi developers Unweb (Greece), Inigo Tech (Malaysia) and local Indonesian Air Putih technologists.

The goal of the workshop was to provide ASTEKI with fully-functional local Plumi site set-up, including a basic design and a preliminary set of content. We also aimed to teach participants the skills needed to install, template, design, configure, backup and administer/maintain their own Plumi/Plone systems. These workshops intended to impart a solid understanding of the relationship between ASTEKI’s web and content delivery strategies and their video database.

While we got some help from the cool weather of the rainy city Bogor, our main assistance came from the Plumi system itself. As the program matures, it is becoming easier and easier to install. Only two hours was required to install the software on several computers, including by many  ‘non-geeks’. Participants built their own Plumi site during the course of the workshop but the key output was an offline video data-base to house ASTEKI’s large collection.

The site (under heavy development) is also available online at asteki.org, it is very fast within Indonesia but quite slow outside the country.

The workshop also saw the revamping of the Plumi manual into Indonesian which you can find at http://translate-new.flossmanuals.net/plumi_id/_v/1.0/introduction/

During this workshop several videos were uploaded, mostly by the Kotahujan.com crew (thanks for that!). You can view them by clicking the links below:

Berbagi Video via EngageMedia & Plumi, Solusi CMS Video Sharing

Flickr photos can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/engagemedia-org/sets/72157626793443518/with/5753600083/

Until next time, ciao…

About 50 people participated in the workshop, and it was a great experience! During the workshop’s two hours we presented Plumi, we assisted the audience to perform fresh installations on their laptops, we discussed deployment issues and have received highly positive comments regarding Plumi, the transcoding framework and the future of the project.

There have been a few concerns about the packaging of the project and there has been a demand for easier ways to install it. For example, as we experienced network issues during the conference, the installation was unable to proceed for a couple of attendees.

The presentation (in Greek!) can be found here

Plumi workshop at the 2011 Greek FOSS conference

http://plone.org/products/plumi/releases/4.1.2

• Bittorrent: when you upload a video a bittorrent file is automatically created.
• Plays/downloads on videos: videos now show the number of times they have been played and downloaded.
• Low resolution version of video player: you now have the option to watch streaming video in a lower resolution.
• Other videos by this member listed on video pages: thumbnail links to other videos you have contributed to the site.
• Brazilian-Portuguese translation: The site is now available in Brazilian-Portuguese (obrigado Luciano De Fazio!).
• Video listings now link prominently to member profile pages.
• Paypal: you can now add your Paypal account to your profile page to accept donations.
• Facebook/Twitter etc. accounts can be easily linked to from your profile page.
• Profile page shows the most recent comments you have made.
• Number of comments on an item are shown in video listings.

A full list of the changes can be found here.

You can see a demo version of the software at http://demo.plumi.org and a production site at http://engagemedia.org.

The code is available here in SVN: https://svn.plone.org/svn/collective/plumi.app/tags/4.1.1/

Download available at plone.org/products/plumi

This release has been produced by EngageMedia in conjunction with Unweb and Dave Fregon.