Talk:VideoWiki

Discussion

Proposal is still in the early stages of discussion. IMO a lot of potential here. What do we need to be mindful of? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:47, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Multimedia encyclopedia?

I don't see why the project should be limited to just an "encyclopedia". It can be a multimedia project, but it can also be "educational" in a broader way without going outside the mission scope. Why not allow non-encyclopedic but "educational" material? George Ho (talk) 18:35, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

You have a very good point. VideoWiki does not need to be restricted to visualizing Wikipedia itself. VideoWiki is a tool that allows anyone to collaboratively edit a video file based on wiki-text. That's why, we just created a feature that allows a user to visualize Meta pages too.

One user had a brilliant idea of visualizing their Wikimania 2018 talk using VideoWiki. So, apart from visualizing Wikipedia, we are also working on allowing users who give presentation at various wiki events around the world to share their "VideoWiki presentation" which is much more descriptive [as it is a combination of (text-audio-image and videos)] rather than sharing their notes(which is usually text only) or their visual aids in the form of slideshare/ppt (which does not convey everything the presenter wants to convey).

If you have a specific idea in mind, we can definitely work on it. :) --Rogueassasin123 (talk) 06:09, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Ideas? Hmm.... Maybe you can visualize all other projects, like Cookbook pages from Wikibooks, old news articles from Wikinews, and others. Also, you can allow original content, like original reporting, original research, original recipes, etc. as long as the content is within the scope of WMF's mission. BTW, how does Commons differ from VideoWiki? Commons has audiovisual content. Also, how can both projects balance each other and share each other's content? George Ho (talk) 08:46, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Okay, that's a lot of ideas :) Commons is a platform where all audio-visual content is stored whereas VideoWiki uses the audio-visual content on Commons to visualize a particular article on Wikipedia. Anyone, including you, can edit a VideoWiki article without even logging in. Just click on the edit button of a VideoWiki article and drag and drop an image or video from Commons. If you want to upload a custom file from your computer, you can do that too. The audio-visual file will be displayed on VideoWiki but gets stored on Commons. To summarize: Commons is platform for storing all media content whereas VideoWiki is a collaborative editing platform that uses the content stored on Commons to visualize wiki-based articles.

We are working on the VideoWiki's home-page at the moment and you will have a good idea about it by December end. Meanwhile, you can see the demo where we built a VideoWiki article from an animated video on Commons. https://www.videowiki.org/videowiki/Wikipedia:MEDSKL/Acute_vision_loss?wikiSource=https://en.wikipedia.org --Rogueassasin123 (talk) 01:33, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Honestly, I am unsure what to think about visualizing an encyclopedia. At first it is just gimmicky, but then I can see that it helps visually impaired and hearing impaired. Still, is the project for everyone, or will there not be enough people to view videos as expected? Back when CD-ROMs were prominent in the 1990s, there was Compton's Multimedia Encyclopedia CD-ROM. Right now, those who can remember that product can be impressed with the project's initial premise. However, those expecting a wiki version of YouTube or Vimeo would be somewhat disappointed by the project's somewhat narrow scope. BTW, how can the project perform on mobile? Can it run fast, slow, or what else? --George Ho (talk) 09:13, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

(1) Is the project for everyone? - Well, multimedia content was the second most frequent request during the 2015 community consultation on strategy. (2) The project's performance on Mobile will be similar to the web's performance. (3) Yes, VideoWiki makes Wikipedia more accessible by providing a platform for visually/hearing impaired. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rogueassasin123 (talk) 00:39, 9 December 2018‎ (UTC)

New Use Cases - Suggestions?

At present, VideoWiki acts as a tool to create short summary videos by dragging and dropping images/gifs/videos from Wikimedia Commons to Wikipedia text (Wikipedia and Meta). However, VideoWiki can have multiple use cases which we aren't aware about. Visualizing Wikisource, wikibooks maybe?

An example of a new use case of VideoWiki would be "Tutorial Documentation" (Refer Inkscape Tutorial made during Wikigraphists 2018 here) and "documenting wiki-talks" (Refer to the awesome wiki-therapy VideoWiki article here) --Pratik.pks (talk) 09:23, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Arabic Language

Hello @Rogueassasin123:, hope you are doing well. Is there any movement to include Arabic Wikipedia in this project? (or dealing with Arabic Language will be hard?!) --Alaa :)..! 12:15, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

@علاء : Long time :) I am doing good and hope you are doing well. We are currently shifting our user interface to an "all Wikipedia" interface. This will enable Wikipedians to use the tool without any major learning curve as they are used to the editing interface of Wikipedia. Once we implement that, the first non-TTS language we are aiming to launch is Arabic. The Arabic interface will has one minor change in its user interface but it is definitely doable :) So Arabic is definitely happening and you will be the first person I will get in touch with when it is ready :) — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pratik.pks (talk)

@علاء : We have just built the "Translate" Feature that allows to translate an English VideoWiki article into any language. For example: Dengue English VideoWiki article has been converted into Dengue Arabic Video

This feature is in Beta and would love your feedback. Can you translate (or know anyone who would like to lend their voice) to convert Pneumonia English VideoWiki into Pneumonia Arabic Video--Pratik.pks (talk) 16:41, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Hello @Pratik.pks: hope you are doing well . Great addition, I don't know if @Ibrahim.ID: can help? --Alaa :)..! 00:11, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

@علاء : Great news. I am super happy to tell you that VideoWiki (with an Arabic TTS) is live. Now, the Arabic Community can have collaboratively edited videos. Require your help in translating the basic (VideoWiki Template, FAQ, and Tutorial) along with "Dengue Script" to set the base for other in the community to make VideoWiki based videos.

Text read or explained by humans instead

• Youtube is being spammed with auto-generated videos of fake news. Most of the potential tech champions for a project like this - one much needed for semi-literate societies, will likely be chased away from the get go just seeing this, and hearing the text spoken by machine generated voice - because of their lack of exposure to the societies that could benefit from this.
• Proposal to gamify contributions of spoken text, wiki-style -I don't see the word "voice" on this page, and I think it is worth investigating - maybe machine voice doesn't matter to the target audience, or maybe it legitimizes it and so also all the other fake videos. Maybe having human voice is a needed filter, and humans will be less likely to read garbage. Dagelf 12:17, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
• If the quality reaches a certain level, can this can become official video summaries of Wikipedia pages, linked to or displayed prominently on Wikipedia?

Thanks for your interest @Dangelf. 1 out of every 4 Indians have low/nil literacy. That is equivalent to 330 Million individuals who can never access Wikipedia because of their inability to read. So, I completely agree with you.

We have just added the ability to "Export" a video by adding a human voice-over. Further, we have built a "Translate" Feature that allows you to add a voice over in different languages also, making videos multi-lingual. For example: The Dengue Videowiki English Article has already been translated into:

(1) Estonian Commons Video

(2) Arabic Commons Video --Pratik.pks (talk) 04:39, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

@Dangelf: I have moved our discussion to the talk page. Happy to let you know that we have added the ability to add human voice in April 2019.:)

Proposal to WikiSpore

I name-dropped this VideoWiki project in discussions about Wikispore. I will share some context:

Wikimedia projects have the Wikimedia Incubator, which is a space for proposing new language versions of Wikipedia encyclopedias. We currently have no space for "incubating" new Wikimedia projects, like for example a massive collection of the specialized media we need to support the kind of video which VideoWiki is proposing. Although VideoWiki is proposing to connect with Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikidata in various ways, there are some sorts of specialized video development which might not be fit with the infrastructure of any of those platforms, and perhaps VideoWiki should have some content development in its own MediaWiki instance.

Wikispore is currently an idea and not a service, but as various projects are proposing new sorts of media development schemes, there will come a time when enough of these projects will have enough content and engagement that we need to have a process for spinning them out. I listed VideoWiki there as an example project which organizers there might consider in discussion about Wikispore. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:45, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

2019 Cloud VPS Purge

Pratik.pks and anyone else involved in the technical operation of this project:

The `videowiki` Cloud VPS project has not been claimed in the 2019 Purge. Each year, the Wikimedia Cloud Services team asks developers to claim Cloud VPS projects that are still in use and request deletion for projects that are not. If the `videowiki` Cloud VPS project is related to this tool, please follow the instructions at the top of wikitech:News/Cloud VPS 2019 Purge to claim them or they will be shut down on 2019-12-01 and deleted on 2020-01-01. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 20:12, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Previous video efforts with wiki

There were these two meetups in the past about Mozilla technology getting incorporation into MediaWiki.

• en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Mozilla/Video & the Commons 2016
• en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Mozilla/Video & the Commons 2017

At wikiconference:2019 people were asking about the state of video in Wikipedia and what anyone had ever tried. There might be multiple stories to tell - that Mozilla project, this VideoWiki project, and maybe others. I am posting these links here to show who previously had been discussion technology for video in Wikipedia.

The television project at Internet Archive also has great online video manipulation tools which Wikipedia could readily use. We could use documentation in lots of directions to showcase new features and options. Just as video on mobile devices has exploded in the past few years, everything else related to video is changing crazy fast. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:36, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Baked-in references to images

Are baked-in references to images necessary? Since as per COM:WATERMARK and COM:ENFORCE, visible watermarks are discouraged, and attribution/licensing information is instead supposed to be contained within metadata/file description page. --17jiangz1 (talk) 07:28, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

User:17jiangz1 not 100% clear what is required in this case... We want to make sure that those who reuse this material do not struggle with appropriate attribution. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:40, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Wikivideos

Hi! I just proposed Wikivideos, a project somewhat similar to VideoWiki. I was unable to test the VideoWiki script (seems broken) but judging from the description, it seems the algorithm is conceptually similar to Wikivideos, though the implementation is certainly very different. Furthermore, Wikivideos aims for an independent Wikimedia project, while VideoWiki seems to aim adding a layer to Wikipedia (yes?). Still, I thought it's similar enough that you may find Wikivideos relevant and interesting.

Wikivideos is based on Extension:WikiVideos, an extension that basically introduces <wikivideo> tags very similar to <gallery> tags, but that output videos rather than galleries (basically, an automated voice reads the text aloud while each image is shown, but there's much more too).

You can read more at Wikivideos and test it out at https://wikivideos.org, cheers!

PS: If you feel like replying, please consider doing so at at Wikivideos or at https://wikivideos.org (depending on the nature of your comment) to try to keep the discussion together. Thanks! Sophivorus (talk) 03:51, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

User:Sophivorus thanks. We discussed this implementation during the creation of videowiki. And were thinking of eventually adding it aswell. We have added the scripts within a name space within MDWiki such as you can see here.

We have videowiki working on about 15 languages. We considered having static versions of videos hosted on Commons / NC Commons as being important for offline use and thus one of our target audiences. Would be happy to discuss further collaboration. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:58, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Please upgrade to better text-to-speech tech

The quality of the text-to-speech narration is I think substantially lower than the latest free AI-generated voice. Could you please use whatever SoniTranslate offers? See c:Help:AI video dubbing, the two videos at the top are I think good examples of better T2S audio.

Maybe it would be a good idea to combine this with the open source SoniTranslate altogether.

Another major issue is that one can't sync the video to the audio/text. A section segment can be long and contain parts that may not be matching the timings of the speech (this isn't a big problem with TimedTexts / when redubbing videos as one timed segment can be short even when it combines multiple images or clips). Asked about this and some other issues here. Once there is a video made with this tool or otherwise, I think dubbing the video into other languages works better with SoniTranslate than with using this tool. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:48, 17 August 2024 (UTC)