Doc James

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Questions about VideoWiki

A few questions after our discussion at Commons:Deletion requests/File:The gout james gillray(KenBurns).webm (thanks for explaining):

1. With this VideoWiki software can one sync the video to the audio/text somehow? At the first segment of Wikipedia:VideoWiki/Tuberculosis e.g. the bacteria and the organs show up at exactly the right points when the text is about them.
2. I think it would be much better if the different languages were different audio tracks rather than a separate video for each; see the proposal for audio tracks support here. Any input on that?
3. I'm not worrying about disk space for such/any specific cases on WMC; it's rather that things are best done right the earliest possible time and also these videos would clutter WMC search results, new files feeds, and categories. If the video is just an image being zoomed in, it should work fine with just the image and effect being specified and the only video of this being the part in the final video. This is especially the case for videos including many images, possibly sometimes a hundred.
4. Can one specify start and end points of videos on WMC to be used for sections? A short ~3 min video introducing the software basic functionality would be helpful.

Prototyperspective (talk) 21:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

1. Not possible at this point, but we generally only recommend video segments of less than 10 seconds.
2. Different languages may want different videos, so that would not be something we would look at building.
3. Disk space is still becoming rapidly less expensive. Some people may want to use an image with the Ken Burns effect separate from the VideoWiki project and we want to allow that as well. Additionally having these as separate functions makes trouble shooting easier / improves redundancy.
4. We developed the videocuttool in part to allow creation of short video sections. Once again this simplifies matters. With respect to an overview explainer video of VideoWiki, we will eventually make one. We currently have this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VideoWiki/Tutorial Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:01, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

   1. I think that's a major shortcoming then that substantially limits the usefulness of the tool, e.g. when compared to editing videos with a tool like Kdenlive. Also I don't know how the example video was made so well then. If possible, please create a code issue for that if it doesn't yet exist.

   2. That may be the case but I think it would be rather exceptional and these are complementary so people could still create a separate video that is e.g. slightly different or excluding/including additional segments. I think it would make maintenance, findability (at least once there is support for translated file-titles), collaboration, stats, accessibility (e.g. people better understanding other languages playing a video on English video when they would prefer other language audio), etc much better. Support for multiple audio tracks here would need to be implemented elsewhere/otherwise anyway.

   3. Even when neglecting that at some point very large files could be used for segments and revised many times and that disk space is not just about WMC storage (but also about external downloads/copies etc), this isn't just about disk space but also cluttering of pages/WMC. Using a video of an image getting zoomed in/moved around without audio elsewhere does not make sense. As for troubleshooting that makes sense only during early stages. Redundancy is given by the static image being hosted on WMC.

   4. Here again I think the better approach would be to use that tool for specifying the exact start and and point and then just using the video for segmented (the final whole video would still be uploaded to WMC). That may be something for later stages.

   5. The Tutorial page is useful but if you'd like to have the tool used more I'd recommend a short demo video (only basic functionality and from nothing signed out to a final video in a WP article) that links to this tutorial in the description. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:29, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

   1) I have not found it to be a major limitation yet. But if we are finding we need it can look at building this functionaility.

   5) If you would like to create a short demo video explaining how the tool works that would be amazing. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:16, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

   It is definitely a major limitation if this tool is / is to be used. The text has to match the video and maybe one could use timedtext format like SRT closed captions for videos on WMC. For example imagine if the text was still about the causative bacteria when showing the organs and so on. That it's in sync is a basic requirement. I wonder if the timedtext is generated by the tool. Anyway I'll probably come back to this at some point to create issues in the code repository for the tool but it would be best if somebody else did as eg it could take very long and it would to address these things rather early on. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:48, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Create some videos and than point out specific issues you find. This will help us know what needs improvement. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:53, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Videocuttool

Hello, I write to you because you seem to be the most active one of the maintainers in Commons, but also pinging Sohom Datta: The VideoCutTool appears to be down. — Speravir – 01:07, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Yah we at Wiki Project Med do support the VideoCutTool. I am seeing a "502 Bad Gateway" on login. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:01, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Started by filing a ticket on phab. Also emailed our tech folks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:20, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Took a look, we had a misconfigured redis database that decided to crap itself. The server should be fixed (AFAIK). Sohom (talk) 17:45, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Perfect thanks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:55, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you both, Doc James and Sohom Datta! Login was successful here, as well. — Speravir – 23:54, 8 December 2024 (UTC)