Help talk:Creation and usage of media files

WebM

Is .webm likely to be uploadable at some stage? Are there any add-ons or templates which could be used which download a format suitable for the client (html5 video)? - K (talk) 10:22, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion of a new way for media donations

Suggestion (special wiki media donation project): a new highly efficient way for world public to donate images and video to wikipedia/wikimedia/commons etc.

• There should be a link on every wiki family project page saying "DONATE AN IMAGE OR VIDEO". Anyone should be able to click on it and make/upload a media donation easily, SPECIALLY SELF CREATED WORK with the profusion of relatively cheap personal devices available now in the NEW AGE.
• In the donation form there should be all related disclosures and and Licenses that the donater can choose regarding donating a particular work.
• There should be place where Donater has to fill all related information related to media being donated like location, subject, time, basic info about self, etc. and details if from other source.
• People should be able to send copyrighted/unusable images to make suggestion of what we are missing and which we can put out on a list of required media, this list may be easily available to public view and/or circulated.
• There should be an email address to where images/video/media can be emailed, clearly stating that the donater has read the various disclosures and licenses (on our website or our news release requesting media donations) and he is donating under which license. Once a media donation email is received to a special mail account: 1) once an email media donation is received from the donater and automatic (from wikipedia/media/commons etc.) email should go out to their address from our no-reply email address reminding them to read, in mail, provided disclousers and provide appropriate license and info for use again. Donater should be asked to email back the reply keeping the same address line explaining preference will be given to media donations which have been replied to, hence making them more usable earlier. 2) It should be available in an online archive for mining by users looking for images for articles they are working on and the public at large.
• Replied email donations with disclosures read and licences provided and direct media donations by clicking on link should be at all times available to our users and world public at large and journalists etc. There should be a warning to them to make sure BY THEMSELVES that they check (what could be our mostly unsupervised database) out if the donation has been made properly and if donater has read disclosures and provided consent and chosen the license properly. Users should be provided a basic guideline on how to make sure if the image/media is good.
• Proper donations should ask for keywords that should activate various tags for easy mining of donated database.
• The whole online media donation/uploading process should be VERY SIMPLIFIED with users asked to click/select choices with one click only from various choices after reading all. Short Disclosers should be page wise only, advancable by clicking NEXT so that all get read. Licenses should be chosen by a simple click from a choice. Media Info should be requested by filling blank by blank advancable software, including location, subject, time, DATE, donator info etc.
• This Media donation project should be centralized in commons with centralized email for donations. Project should be accessible from all wiki family projects from all their pages at all times by clicking.
• There should be a special option/Tags setting alerts for media donations regarding HAPPENING EVENTS and that should make news where world journalists/News companies can find Important or Immediate topics to pursue and other agencies like Aid agencies etc. to find places and subjects to assist. A media related to citizen reporting a historical national monument in bad shape should have the potential to trigger positive action to conserve. Potentially database mining should be able to facilitate new discoveries and affirmative action in right direction and build a tremendous world resource to record history/historical period datewise over the decades.
• Anyone mining the database should be able to setup warnings with a simple click about offending/sexually explicit/illegal images and special users with experience and extra powers should be able to either remove the image or make it invisible where in doubt.
• Should an option be provided where users of this donated media like journalists/new companies can provide citation like: Donated media from wikicommons server by ..(name of original donator).
• Donators should be able to choose their nonconflicting wiki User name, and make it a Tag, so that by clicking on name tag all images donated by the users can lineup in a online gallery for public and for donator to promote himself in other/outside professional media fields, if he chooses to provide link to this online portfolio.
• There should be a clear warning that there is no monetary compensation by wikicommons for media donation of any kind, it is a DONATION.
• Wikicommons software should be able to mine technical info of media if possible and provide the same online for researchers, sometimes it may include type of camera used, aperture, date, time of day and in the near future models, the GPS position/coordinates of where the media was made. If needed donator should be asked to give consent to publish this info.
• Public/Users should be requested to make media for donation with no recognizable faces/adertising/brand names as that may trigger having to take permission from people etc. shown in media made or fuzzing their faces/advertising/brand names etc.

Please forward to concerned persons/department for brainstorming and fine tuning.

I got the above idea while creating the article on Karvi shrub which only flowers once in eight years before dying.

Thanks

mrigthrishna (talk) 22:06, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Pasting from wikipedia [1], [2].

Posted on wikimedia commons at [3]

Posted on - Talk:Proposals for new projects; From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki - at: [4]

Posted on wikimedia commons at Commons:Usability issues and ideas: [5]

atulsnischal (talk) 22:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Building a “media donation culture” and a “world media archive” from donated media – help enlisted from volunteers to “visually document the world” for an ongoing visual world historical record.

This is in continuation of my last post, posted at the following locations: [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]

Building a “media donation culture” and a “world media archive” from donated media – help enlisted from volunteers to “visually document the world” for an ongoing visual world historical record.

• We need to strive for creating a “media donation culture” where donating pictures and documentary videos, shot on people’s personal devices is thought of as a worthwhile activity / community service and a scholarly voluntary work which goes a long way in visually documenting the world we live in, in present times. An ongoing visual historical record available free for present researchers/authors to supplement their work with and for future generations to come, to look back upon. Gradually we should hope this will catch on as modern popular culture/fad, will also empower citizens and assist them in making citizen reports. Hopefully a time will come when if someone is taking a vacation then he will remember and friends will remind them not to forget making some documentary pictures/video for donating about the places they will visit during vacation. All this can be done easily now as there is a profusion of cheaper and cheaper personal devices available now incorporating embedded Still & Video camera technology.

• This is about Campaigning and Requesting for “100 percent Media Donation” for “documenting the world” in a “copyright free world archive” to serve in the future as a world historical visual documentation. This could be an “uploading + emailing project” by itself and donated pictures/video/media can be freely usable in all wikis and similar projects or commercial publications/productions etc.. Commercial entities could be encouraged to develop an informal “best practice” where they “donate funds” to upkeep this world archive, especially if they use anything from here and if they can afford it now or in future.

• There should be a link (“Donate an Image or Video”) to upload and donate media on every wiki family project page including on every page of various wikipedias in different languages and it should be centralized in one place like wiki commons in a world media archive. As and when possible over the decades viewers should be able to see/read this archive in their own language through translation software etc.

• All media donations to be uploaded/stored in “high resolution” to be more usable to future generations. Most searches in the archive should only display a decent low resolution image where the user should have the option to call for higher/highest resolution version.

• There should be a centralized Email address for media donation, and where ever it is publicized it should give all disclosures that this is in regards to 100 percent media donation.

• The above media donation link and email address should be well publicized in newspapers, magazines, and press releases and media requests; with all related disclosures that media sent will be treated as 100 percent donation and the act of uploading/emailing means that donator has read all disclosures which are provided and well publicized here and elsewhere.

• It should be preferred that media donation should be made by “original media creators” by themselves mainly as someone under normal circumstances can not donate someone else’s property.

• It should be made very clear in simple straight forward language at the very beginning before uploading donated files that one is making a 100 percent media donation, “100 percent Media Donation” means there will be no copyright, no royalties, no monetary compensation or any compensation in any kind paid in return for the media donation by the wiki family or any secondary users and the world public to the original media donator/creator. One’s donation can be used, reused, modified, broken up and made into anything else by anybody in the world and that too without having to give any sort of credit to the original media donator. There will be no legal requirement to give credit; and all these rules to apply world over. Though some sort of voluntary “best practice” should be encouraged to emerge where secondary users of the donated media, i.e. the world public including journalists, newspapers, magazines, books, businesses, government institutions the world over, who use donated media to supplement their work, could be encouraged to develop a popular culture of crediting the media to wiki’s media donation campaign/world archive and have a reference/courtesy credit to the original donator. Voluntary citation could sound like: Wiki common’s media donation server, original media donated by…. Commercial businesses/institutions who use donated media could be educated by a regular campaign that if affordable monetary donations can be made to wiki for help in maintaining wiki’s media archives. This donation can be made in any country and wiki could set up a local body in major countries so that tax break forms can be given in regards to monetary donations.

Now the question remains what absolutely free but worthwhile perceived benefit could a media donator receive in regards to donated media. Can a $5 per piece ad hoc acknowledgement tax break form be sent automatically to the media donators in regards to media donations, at the time I guess not. A popular culture should be created where the biggest perceived benefit that the donator should receive is the satisfaction of having participated in historically documenting the world in a particular time. The only other major satisfaction that they could receive is that they are able to click on a tag by their name/username and their lifelong contributions are lined up in an online gallery of the donated media. This gallery they can show proudly to everyone and in many cases receive some other benefits from elsewhere or use it as a scholarly portfolio while pursuing arts and related professions. Some sort of awards be given out to media donators who have done exceptional work.

• Professionals might want to earn money from their media but after money is made they can donate what they didn’t use or plan to use, that which they think is not as good etc.. Instead of deleting images/video footage they can donate.

• The whole idea is to attract the help of amateurs around the world who can now create media with the extremely cheap good quality profusion of computerized personal devices incorporating cameras/video etc. Who already earn a living doing some other work and who are not dependent on income through media making. Amateurs are casually making media and enjoying the process and the results but most of the results are enjoyed for immediate gratification only. Anywhere upto 95 percent or even more, of the media casually created usually gets deleted as it is of no perceived use to the creator in the long run over the remaining decades of their life. Any media creation takes lot of work and expenses but Casual media creation is perceived as no work and the process is enjoyed by casual media creators, it is perceived as totally free in the mind of the creator hence unfortunately majority of the casually created media is deleted, “This is the targeted media that we must campaign to save, the one that is being deleted”. All over the world the common man/world public should be educated from now on that they can donate this media before deleting it from their personal devices and they could be educated how to create usable documentary media for donation. Additionally there should be links to special “Tutorials” on how to create “usable” media for donation which can be used by secondary users (researchers, authors etc.) in various ways including research on what was captured and illustrating articles etc.. Usable media should avoid brand names, advertising and recognizable faces, specially of friends and family etc.. as then it may trigger having to take permission from people shown in the media for it to be usable now. Educational courses and institutions teaching Media creating; and personal device manufactures who incorporate media making functionality in their devices could one day carry these tutorials and educate public the world over that media can be donated to remain forever in a world archive. Like we see Warnings!!! in Cigarette Packs: If you smoke cigarettes you could get cancer; similar principal may one day be used by personal device manufacturers educating the buying public in the device manual and brochures that the media you create with this device can be donated to assist in documenting the world in present times so that it remains in a world archive for present and the future generations as a worthwhile historical media artifact documenting a particular location at a particular date and time from a particular angle etc. or documenting any other subject or human or animal behavior etc. All major networking sites around the world in local languages should carry links to these tutorials and media donation links in time with the development of media donation world culture.

• A lot of seemingly repetitive media will be created around famous subjects/locations but this should not be discouraged as no 2 media/pictures are exactly the same, they are created in different time, days, weeks, decades etc. and from different angles and magnifications, subject focus etc. this continuous record will be invaluable to researchers in time centuries later and could also be packed off with future unmanned space explorers to educate aliens who may receive these capsules in the chance that they exist.

It looks like in the near future GPS will be embedded in all personal devices. And if GPS data along with date & time is mined from media donations then in the future special software could be developed that would make it possible to play-out/ lay-out the donated media in various requested sequences. For example Taj Mahal is a famous tourist site; maybe pictures are created here every second of the day. Lets say over a century later a researcher having mined GPS data available to him from pictures donated of Taj-Mahal, could request the computer software to lay out a sequence where pictures are laid out in a movie type flow encircling the Taj from 150 meters (using pictures taken at every foot in the circle identifiable by the GPS coordinates imbedded in the donated media), starting from the year 2000 and the circle completes 100 years later in the year 2100. In this requested computer output sequence, mined information from donated pictures of the Taj including time and date along with GPS coordinates available in that (as it is evident that most personal devices will soon have inbuilt GPS) would assist the computer in arranging the sequence in such a manner that the camera would travel from the front of the Taj, all the way around clockwise and come back to the front from the other side. The future computer software would make minor adjustments in magnifications for the Taj to appear the same size in all the pictures. If over time the historical site deteriorates, researchers can see how it took place over time requesting daily or weekly pictures to play-out in a movie, from a particular angel and particular distance etc.. Many more applications like this may be available with future software. In the example above about the Taj mahal, it could be seen every year, month, week, day, time of day etc. and from many different angles/magnifications etc. with the assistance of GPS coordinates. All this will be possible if data is mined from the donated media and properly electronically catalogued along with the image. And if donators are requested to fill in various detailed tags about each image that they donate through the designated upload link where they will also see various disclosures that they are indeed donating the media 100 percent and foregoing all their rights. “Emailed” donated images/media could be sent an auto-email-reply with a form to fill in creating all the various Tags that could apply to the donated picture/media and the auto-reply should contain the disclosure that the donator is indeed making 100 percent media donation and foregoing all rights.

• Should inappropriate media be censored and deleted completely by administrators? Well, I think not. The media donated with brand names visible, copyrighted material, too many friends and family visible, sexually explicit material should be temporally removed from public’s view and should not be available to search in the present times. This material could be sent/dumped in an unsearchable database where it could lie for a few centuries and for a few generations to pass and after that when no one remembers who these people were the material could again be provided to public as a historical record from a previous time assisting researchers in human/historical studies and studies in human behaviors etc.. It may be noted here that even uploading unusable media requires effort and this effort may prove useful to researchers centuries later. The copyrighted material will be usable again then as copyright would have expired long time ago and in most cases the original work may have also been destroyed without a trace as most originals like books, paintings, newspapers etc. are made up of biodegradable material which perishes if it is not stored in museum like conditions.

• There should be various TAGs that should be chosen and created in respect to each donated media so that they may assist the public at a later time to pull images/media from the archive. Various appropriate Tags should be created by original media donator who should be first provided with list of short Tags he could choose from that were created by others and were eventually standardized, additionally when he starts typing, to reduce effort, other types of tags may be suggested from the ones that were created by other users elsewhere. Some standard tags could be name/user name of donator, Subject/Location, magnification/seen from what distance, angle, Date, Time, context, normal view or description of “special event captured” (Like rioter throwing stones on police, people fighting, people shopping, building on fire, reading, praying, neglect, human rights violation etc.), atmosphere tags like, sunlit, sunshine, sunset, sunrise, raining, overcast/cloudy etc.. If news-making event is captured then NEWS-making Tag should be chosen and donator should be requested for little extra notes/comments why he thinks the media has captured news worthy event and be asked to describe the event in greater detail. The news-making tags could be patrolled by actual news companies etc. and could provide them/journalists/authors potential leads as to what stories that they can pursue now or at a later date in the pipeline; additionally news making tag could provide government agencies the opportunity to take positive corrective actions and for aid agencies to find people/projects to assist. Original donators should create tags and then on a later stage when the archive is being viewed by researchers and secondary users they should be also in a position to quickly add/create some more appropriate additional tags to assist future searchers. For example someone casually shoots a picture of an unknown butterfly sitting on an unknown flower, a zoologist/botanist viewing the picture in future could add butterfly name and flower name and scientific names etc. and create tags or/and notes/comments to go with the image. Some sort of “voluntary acknowledgement tags” could be created for secondary users who actually use the image in a wiki or outside publication, they can leave a tag/info/comment if they used the particular archived image and where, could leave a citation like detail of their article/publication, where the donated media was used by them. There should be tags to rate the donated image or video so that researching public can rate donated media on quality scale and could also leave additional educational comments in case they know more about the subject captured in the media which future researchers could follow up.

Computer software should supplement the above created/chosen tags with mined embedded technical information that is available embedded in today’s electronic media files, like camera used, aperture used, lens used, date and time of day; and very soon most personal media creating devises will have embedded GPS coordinates about where the media was made. All the above will help in Citizen reporting & Citizen documenting of the world in a particular, soon to be, historical time i.e. Citizen documenting of history, especially visual world history as it happens. There could be a Tutorial on how to make and use tags effectively, also showing how to view translated tags/event-description in a particular language. As an article is written or improved on a wiki or elsewhere, tags can help authors search for appropriate media/images/video etc. that can be used to supplement their work.

A Tag-search could give an output of a list of appropriate media that could by it-self be used as an online gallery; or best chosen images could be lined up in a gallery. Donators should be able to line up their lifelong media donations by clicking on the tag of their name, there should be a link here (and elsewhere too) to a “tutorial” on how to make their donated media more useful as searchable historical documents where donators could be taught how to go back in and improve each media piece already donated by them and already listed in the world archive; basically most possible improvements should relate around creating extra and much more effective tags for fairing better in searches and writing researched notes with references in the comment space under their listed archived media about what was captured in a particular picture/video donated by them, where, when and in what context etc.. (Once a media piece is donated and listed in the world archive, it should be possible to go in there and create more tags to supplements those already created for the piece, rate the piece on a quality scale, write comments about the piece in spaces provided. There should be tutorials to show how to do all this better)

• As this is about building what will undoubtedly be a world archive, the scope is world wide and immense and lot of funding will be required to build and maintain such a resource. Lot of worldwide large scale funding drives will have to be organized targeting large donors annually. United Nations could be a good platform to request help from as this project is about the world as a whole. If someone provides funding from another country then we should set up a local office in that country so that tax-break forms can be issued to the donator so that they can get an income tax-break/incentive against donated funds which is valid in their particular country.

• Huge Archive hence Limited & More Accurate Searches to Save Energy: As overtime a huge archive will come into existence it will take lot of electronic energy to make a search in the entire archive so some of the material could be deemed to be almost duplicate by volunteers and boxed together; and time periods could be boxed together etc. and when some one wants to search the archives first these boxes should show up and only if researchers want to search a particular box then only that box can be searched. In this way searches can be made more particular and electronic energy saved by making smaller/limited searches. Additionally media should be tagged properly and accurately along with research notes/comments on what was captured so that it can be located easily when needed. If required lot of un-usable or copyrighted or duplicate media could be boxed off in unsearchable boxes for the time being and could be made to surface again years, decades, centuries later when it is deemed to be usable again as copyright would have expired, persons shown are not living etc..

• Digital Archival Storage Economy: It is hoped that this huge digital archive of high resolution images and video (as donators will be requested to upload in high resolution) will need smaller and smaller digital storage space as technology advances with time and most storage when not being searched will need no or little electrical energy; and very soon most electricity will be produced with cleaner technology hence building and searching this archive will be a relatively smaller drain on energy/world resources and wont be as harmful to the environment.

• Archival Strategy: Strategically it might become necessary to have 2 or 3 copies of this world archive with only one that is connected for searches. All copies of the world archive should be located in the Free-World which is free from dictatorships and meddling by medieval religious institutions and regimes. Physical locations of all the copies of the world archives should be located in secret underground tunnels/caves away from earthquake zones where they will remain safe from bombings during future wars or/and purposely targeted sabotage. Obviously in the future when man does colonize other planets then copies could be located there in addition to the archives they will build about themselves.

Please forward this to concerned persons/departments for brain storming and fine tuning.

atulsnischal (talk) 02:59, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Also posted here in continuation of my previous post: [11], [12], [13], [14], [15]

atulsnischal (talk) 00:29, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Please do not TYPE YOUR HEADERS IN ALLCAPS or post the same large block of text into multiple Talk Pages. Put it all into one well-organised version, for example your personal Talk Page, erase the copies elsewhere, and replace them with mere pointers to that one. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:51, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Link to image itself?

The article states that the format

[[:File:name.jpg|description]]

should be used to get a link to File name.jpg. However, when such a link is clicked, the entire media frame is shown, including the file name and lots of text that describes the image. Is there any way to get a link to the jpg file itself, so that clicking the link shows only the image itself (displayed in the browser, not for download)? Or is that functionality not considered to be within WP guidelines? David Spector 19:58, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I think there isn't a native way to do it (and you should not be doing it in articles), but you can just link to the raw url. Eg for File:Frog.jpg the raw url is http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Frog.jpg (found by clicking the image on the description page) so a link can be like this.--Commander Keane (talk) 08:17, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

OP, you mean like this?

[[:Media:Example2.png|description]]

-84user (talk) 09:50, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

iPhone recording to Wikipedia friendly format

I'm not computer type, so please forgive this presumably simple question. I recorded some bird song today I want to upload to the appropriate article. I used my iPhone's voice memo function (best I could manage in a hurry). The file is stored as a m4a file. How do I convert it to a Wikimedia friendly format? Sabine's Sunbird talk 07:26, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

For Wikipedia we want ogg format (really ogg vorbis). I found Help:Converting video and maybe some of those methods with work for audio. You can try a google search for methods. Or you can email me the file and I will endeavour to convert it and send it back to you. If you want specific instructions on how to convert (ie you want to do it yourself) then let us know your operating system and browser (eg Windows and Firefox, Mac and Safari etc). I will stick by you until this file is uploaded, I really want to hear it now :-) --Commander Keane (talk) 08:12, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Videos starter page

We now have a very initial draft of a Wikipedia:Videos starter page. Help us make it better!--Pharos (talk) 12:21, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Ogx format does not play

Ogg was was very strange, but at least i could play it in winamp. But ogx does not play. Amongdrew1 (talk) 13:09, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

uploading DIA vector files.

How can i upload a vector image in DIA format? (without converting to svg) `a5b (talk) 04:28, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Birth & Study of Sachin Thakral

Sachin Thakral was born in 29 nov. 1991 Hissar. But his hometown is Hansi. His 1st school was Genius Public School. then he goes to Sr. Activity High School. he passed +2 from Govt. Sr. Sec. School. in 2009, he passed +2 & after +2, he hoes to H.C.T.M college. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sachin Thakral (talk • contribs) 18:00, 24 March 2012 (UTC)