Wikipedia video player coming soon
Although video has been on Wikipedia in a limited way for the past two years, it is poised to take-off with the recent introduction of Firefox 3.5 along with other imminent developments, we have learned.
Over the next few months there will be the introduction of server-side transcoding technology, a new Wikipedia video player, and a set of collaborative editing tools which will allow community members to amend videos.
Videos on the site are uploaded and watched in a format called Ogg Theora. It is a Flash-like program which is completely open-source. Video producers can render Ogg files in FinalCut and other editing programs by using various plug-ins. Once in Ogg, these files can be uploaded to Wikipedia.
Later this year, Wikipedia will allow uploads of popular file formats directly with server-side transcoding to Ogg. This plug-in is called FireOgg.
For some time, these videos have been viewable with certain Java and other plug-ins. The release of Firefox 3.5 is the first time that Ogg videos can be viewed “natively” on a browser. Opera and Chrome will support Ogg soon, but not Explorer or Safari.
Credit:Beet.TV
