Sunlight is hosting a $2K congress mashup contest. I (ofcourse) think metavid would make a great base for some interesting mashups. See our short screen grab demoing campaign contributions along side video. The APIs and platform is rough around the edges (things should improve once we start working on it full time ;)… more about that later)…For now the dataset should be usable by those willing to brave the bleeding edge. Let us know if you would like to use metavid data set and we will lend you our metavid expertise and hopefully make your vision is implementable If your just feeling conceptual maybe list your idea on the possibilities page.

If your ready to start hacking congress check out the developer resources in the wiki, and come by #metavid in irc.freenode.net

Here are some minor corrections to the article Which Videos Are Protected? Lawmakers Get a lesson published on February 26th.
The article quotes “C-Span said that it had for first time asserted its copyright against a video-clip site, ordering YouTube to take down copies of Stephen Colberts pointed speech…” This neglects a the smaller players that have been affected by C-SPAN take down notices see the C-SPAN and intellectual property article on Wikipedia.

Additionally the articles does not address the trademark issue. Although the floor footage is public domain the only copy the public has access to is encumbered with C-SPAN’s trademark and this has provided a grounds for which C-SPAN has requested sites take down otherwise public domain footage. Our site metavid has been hosing this public domain footage with the trademark removed. Metavid’s conversations with C-SPAN in early 2006 showed that C-SPAN would leverage its trademark rights to force the removal of floor footage. The real story here is one of selective enforcement, and how citizens have no real, reusable, permanent access to committee footage.

Update: As boing boing pointed out today Carl is working to change the situation of limited archival access to committee footage. Check out what he has grabbed so far.

Update mv_embed.02 has been released its a bit more user friendly and has the latest cortado player.

In response to a request the mv_embed code has been packaged as a stand alone component. This should enable its usage on other sites that want to embed ogg theora clips without those annoying plug-in install requests from the browser that point to non-existing auto install systems.

Mv embed has been tested in windows on (IE 6 (activeX vlc) IE 6(java), Firefox 2(vlc plugin), Firefox 2(java), Opera(java) … on linux: Konqueror (java), firefox(java) … If people find other platforms or combinations that do not work let me know about & if it’s the script’s fault I will see what I can do Often we are limited by the java applet framework which has a few issues… As established in the FOMS meeting: we really need native ogg theora support in firefox & an IE compatible theora plugin.

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In case you have not been following the metavid in use part of the wiki, I thought I would mention some of the usage of the metavid dataset & site here:

Click.TV has let us know about a prototype they have created for using their flash application with a enhanced version of the data set that metavid makes available. The flash video interface is very responsive and we aspire to such fluidity with open source video and should be getting there soon

GovTrack.us is syndication friendly system for tracking government representatives. They now link into metavids clips on their people pages (on the left hand side).

And finally bloggers are using some clips: findlaw and boogiechimpdigital have used the embed clip function to put a metavid clip right into their blog postings.

This last Thursday and Friday just before linux.conf.au 2007, Open Source Media developers meet in Sydney, to hack on the future of Open Media. FOMS had a diversity of participants ranging from low level audio driver hackers & codec researchers to tool developers & online open media project maintainers all of whom worked together to identify next steps for open media.

The developer meeting established Community Goals for the near and long term. Goals include improving low level open media infrastructure, a push for native ogg theora playback in the base firefox install & getting embed oggplay support into mediaWiki (the software which runs Wikipedia).

Following the slashdot post poiting out the lack of open media support on the EU media site. I wrote them a short open letter pointing out metavid and calling for their support for open media.
I noticed your FAQ mentioning the following question:

On which platforms can I view the live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union?
The live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union can be viewed on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh platforms. We cannot support Linux in a legal way. So the answer is: No support for Linux

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The Digital Arts and New Media program at UCSC has issued its call for applicants for the 07-08 term. I thought I would point out some of the participatory culture project groups. People interested in a MFA graduate program and participatory culture should take a look Over the next two years two project groups will take place under the Participatory Culture focus area in the DANM program. One focusing on tools for media activists and the other focusing on technologies for civil society & democracy.

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In preparation for the open source media course that is happening tonight I built a vmware virtual appliance for running the powerful non-linear editor cinelerra in windows.

Now people stuck in windows land can take advantage of this most excellent video editing suite. Cinelerra features among many other things: Ogg Vorbis support! In other words you can edit the ogg theora files that we distribute here on metavid. To use this virtual appliance you will need the free vmware virtual machine player.

fedora-cinelerra-vm.rar (1.3GB), (save target as…we should have a torrent shortly). The root password is ‘thoughtpolice’, and user ‘cinelerra’ pass is ‘cinelerra’.

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Aphid & I (dale) will be hosting a free culture/free skool class. It will take place Nov 7th, 14th & 21st 6:30-8pm UCSC Porter Room D245. Anyone interested in free and open source media should come check it out. Here is the description that will go out with the freeskool prints, which should be going out soon.

We will examine free and open source software for purpose of democratizing the production of audio/video media. We share how to work with free and open content repositories such as archive.org & metavid. We look at methods of subverting proprietary content sources, for critical use. We will look at free and open source systems for video editing and discuss methods for online collaborative media production. And finally look at systems of online distribution. Participants are encouraged to bring their laptops if they have them.

Update: Here is an outline of Open Media as discussed in the first meeting.

Do go check out the new version of democracy player with improved ogg theora support :).

This means that you can now grab the rss link() at the top of any metavid search and add the channel to democracy player. As new video clips come online they will be listed in your channel. But don’t get too anxious for new clips congress has conveniently taken the month off for campaning and whatever else they do in their free time.