Mailing List Archive

Wikimentary: great news, updates
Dear all,

The Wikimentary project, which started as the kernel of an idea at
Wikimania when the Globalvision documentary team was moved to see what
the community would do with their raw footage, is taking off. Rory
O'Connor at Globalvision has really been pushing to make this happen;
through some heroic efforts on his part we now have low-res copies of
all 25 tapes they shot, a high-res copy of one tape (#8), and a 'rough
cut' he edited together that PBS will be airing in January -- all
available via archive.org at the moment.

You can see a guest blog-post about this on the Frontline/World blog here :
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2005/11/its_a_wiki_wiki.html

The rough cut (be the first to write a review ;-):
http://www.archive.org/details/WIKIMANIA-ROUGH_CUT.mov

Transcripts:
http://www.archive.org/details/WIKIMANIA_TRANSCRIPTS


NEXT STEPS:
If you'd like to take part in the project, or work on your own short
wikimentary using this content, you can help in a few ways.
1. Download the transcripts (all of which are rough, have some
mistakes, and are currently Word files) and one of the low-res
'screener' files; listen to the screener while editing the transcript.
Upload the fixed transcript, as something other than a Word file, to
Wikisource :-)

2. Help others learn how to edit their own video. Add ot the
[[m:Video]] guide on meta; learn more about various editing platforms
(iMovie might work well as an interim step), help set up a
qt/wmv/other --> theora conversion tool (if there isn't already a good
service online). Some existing editing guides:
http://current.tv/studio/survivalguide/ (for tv-quality video production)

3. Update [[m:Wikimentary]] with notes and links. Discuss the
project on [[m:Talk:Wikimentary]].

4. Edit your own video from the raw footage! Right now only Tape #8
is available via archive.org in high-res, but for a test project you
could edit something together from the screeners.

More to come. Andy Carvin, a notorious podcaster and vlogger, is
interested in helping teach people to start editing their own video;
he's worked on a related project recently with some elementary shool
students in Atlantic City. And the resulting video is adorably
amazing:
http://www.starw.org/acrc/2005/11/witches-aliens-and-school-board.html

Rory's latest update is included below.

++SJ



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rory O'Connor <Roc@globalvision.org>
Date: Nov 16, 2005 11:45 PM
Subject: Re: Wikimentary latest


All,

I'm pleased to announce that files containing the following are all now
accessible at the URL below:

1. 'screeners' of all media shot by Globalvision at WikiMania;

2. transcripts in MS word of all screeners

3. a 'screener 'of the rough cut;

4. An 'editable' larger file of the rough cut;

5. a MS word file of the script for the rough cut

6. One 'editable' large file of one tape (008) of the media shot by
Globalvision in Frankfurt.

To see and download any or all, go to:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=wikimedia

EXPLANATORY NOTE: What we are calling 'screeners' are smaller, lower quality
files suitable for downloading and meant to be looked at in conjunction with
the word files of the matching transcription. In other words, 'screener 008'
is the low quality media version of the eighth tape we shot. It should be
matched by a MSW file of the transcription of tape 008. When looked at in
conjunction, one should be ready to them correct the extant transcription
and wiki-ize it to make it a perfect match.

In most cases the current transcripts are close--but few if any are perfect.
So there is initial work to be done just looking at the tapes and fixing the
transcripts.

One can also download the 'screener' of my rough cut, which should match
perfectly with the MSW script file of same. If it doesn't, please amend it.

The 'editable' file of the rough cut is also available for anyone who wants
to begin tearing it apart and improving it.

We continue to upload the larger 'editable' files of the other media as
well, and are working out several kinks and issues associated with that.
Thus far, only tape 008 is available in this form.

Also, for video newbies, here's a link to a fairly comprehensive video
production primer available online -- the VC2 Survival Guide -- courtesy of
Current.tv:

http://current.tv/studio/survivalguide/

Finally, if you haven't seen it yet, here's the URL for the 'Dispatch' I
recently posted about WikiMania and the wikimentary project at the web site
of the PBS program 'Frontline World"

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2005/11/its_a_wiki_wiki.html

I still need to see and sign and maybe post some sort of license for all the
above; a wiki to discuss if not work on this would be a good idea, if anyone
is so moved; and it might be nice if there were a mechanism to let everyone
who attended the conference to know about all this, no?

Hope to hear from some of you soon...

-Rory



On 11/5/05 4:50 PM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> SJ wrote:
>> An easy way to get people involved is to have them finish up the
>> missing transcriptions; once we have the files in a suitable place
>> online.
>
> This is a very fine idea. I can help with this. In my previous email,
> I said that I don't know how to edit video, and that still holds true.
> I suppose I do know how to make or correct a transcript. I just
> download a video clip, I watch it, and while I'm watching it I type or
> else I edit/correct what someone else has typed.
>
>> Absolutely ! For the purposes of transcription, which seems the
>> fastest way to get people collaborating on the content, it would be
>> great to have audio streams separate from the video. Is there a
>> simple way to do this at the source? That content, at least, could be
>> uploaded to Wikimedia servers and played with immediately.
>
> Yes, absolutely. Getting the audio up somewhere quickly would be
> totally fine. :-)
>



--
++SJ