Media Activism needs to go Mainstream

Much of what “media activists” are doing looks kianda irrelevant as the is a real-revolution going on out there which has nothing to do with the small activist cereals and alt-tec projects. The shaping of the future of information and entertainment is being decided by the new breed of dot-com pioneers in the apartments of NYC and San Francisco.

This so called “web2 revolution” is really the original web as envisioned before being dumbed down and killed by stumbling corporate client server Internet imposed on us the past 10 years. The next year or two the resurrection of the original peopul2peopul internet has the capacity to free us from the embrace of the decaying corpses of rotting mega-portals.

The question for me is – are we interested in shaping part of this – or are we happy in the ghetto scene? If we don’t act we have to fight more stinking zombies as they are just going to keep on stumbling outa the crypt of corporate-culture.

A video wall of some of our shows

Democracy Player is to geeky for TV outreach?

We have tried the existing UI with lots of different people/groups over the last year and it just docent work for non-tec outreach. That is the sought of people who watch TV...

* about a 1/2 uninstall/stop using the app because of stability issues and slowdowns, and the whole whats it doing to my computer worry of P2P.

* the rest just don't get the interface through tec fear... if it was TV the wouldn't be any problem - Joost will be much more of a success because of this...

Will the open source movement lose out through geekness agen... simplify... simplify... simplify is the way to go Democracy Player has not done that anufe for real out reach. I feel it would only take a few UI changes to do this... and the UI could be made optional to not tern off the geeks. TV/TIVO can flick from one to the other, start them on TV - the hay I understand this moment then later they can dive in and find the power of peopul2peopul TV.

VisiononTV reviews please

We now need to do publiserty for all the channels, the are many ways to do this probably the best is to click on the BOOKMARK button on the http://visionontv.com page and click on a number of the web2 tagging review sights such as Digg and Del.icio.us

This will be a big help, as we now need to give the technology a real test.

peopul2peopul TV and the mainstream

The are a lot of Pirated TV shows out there in torrent and RSS format. This is the formats that we use with our media player DP you can just add this http://tvrss.net/feed/unique/ as a new channel to our normal DP install which you get here and you will find links to a huge amount of uptodate mainstream TV shows from around the world from a geeky prospective.

Check out some of the shows (note this may be agenst the law in your part of the world - do check) The key thing is that all the corporate branding and advertisements have been remove, which raises the question is the still sustainability for such high production value mainstream media in this new media world when information just wants to be free?

HELP NEEDED

We need Programmers:

Urgent
* Re-skin Democracy player application and create a one click install.
* Write a play list generator plugin for Democracy Player
* Create an RSS widget to place on friendly websites to promote the channel and inform people about what's on.
* Do web development and help with the backend tools

We need video-makers:
* Include your films, chat shows, docs on Vision On. Encode at high resolution and upload to www.vuze.com

We need researchers:
* Trawl the web to find great videos
* Network with other filmmakers to find new content each week.

Dreams for later
* Create a working open source video editing package
* Subtitle the videos into your language

Customized Democracy Player V1.00 install with VisiononTV skin

Democracy player is a GPL app currently in BETA testing near to launch (ver 0.95) The majority of the code is cross platform Python with platform specific front ends for Windows, OS X, and GTK/X11. The core of the GUI is written in cross platform HTML, but we strive for a native look and feel on each platform. We leverage free software projects wherever we can -- VLC, Xine, Bit Torrent, and Mozilla just to name a few.

http://www.getdemocracy.com/code/

We need to customize the Democracy Player app by making it less like a computer app and more like TV.

* Take out the menus, channel bar and the search box in the default install view.

* add a button "Guide" at the bottom corner that returns this functionality to DP app.

Thus as a default install you get a TV box with a VCR controls that starts a Channel template play list (to be written) when you hit the Play-button.

You can get interactive TV by clicking on the on the "Guide" button.

- need to change the app name to visonontv
- need to update the help in the menus to add a donation for visonontv link and a offlineTV help option. leaveing the credits to PCF
- in preferences we need to tern on by default: the auto run and the bit torrent download speed limiter.
- Make the tag visionontv the default view in the channel guide
- take out the auto update feature.

Video compression for VisiononTV on Macs

How to make a video for vtv on a Macintosh

Final Cut Pro

Set beginning and end point

Select whole project - using selection tool drag a lasso over the whole project

Effects / video filters / video / deinterlace

File / export / using quicktime conversion

Save box - format - mpg4

Options - File format - mpg4 isma (not that one) - choose mpg4 (NOT isma)

Video settings - video format - h.264

Datarate - 1600

Image size - custom

640 x 480 for 4:3

800 x 480 for 16:9

Do not click “preserve aspect ratio”

Framerate - change to current

Keyframes - automatic

Video options - best quality

Audio settings - AAC

Datarate - 128 kbps

Channels - stereo

Output sample rate - 48khz

OK!

Give filename and save

I-movie

File / Export / Quicktime - compress movies for expert settings

Share

Then do as above.

Were I have been in the world is telling...

Create your own visited countries map

What is Undercurrents latest project all about?

Vision On Tv is a new Peer to Peer Tv channel distributed across the net. Rather than YouTube style low resolution clips, you can receive DVD quality films, chat shows, and more automatically every day. We are aiming to have the look and feel of television rather than a computer interface. Vision On will promote the radical as well as the daft, serious and possibly even sports. We want to appeal to a wide section of people and then introduce them to activism.

Vision On will have eco-direct action news, progressive technology review shows, mad cabaret acts, festival and alternative video/music reviews and series about Bushcraft and another about Eco Villages.

If you want to be inspired tune into Vision on TV.

This is a nonprofit DIY project and anyone can add their own outreach films to the open publishing channel.

Our slogan
When our world,
is based on lies,
We aim to open your eyes,
Though you need more than eyes to see,
You need vision.

How you can get involved

We need people to get involved and join the Beta Testing of the software during our testing week May 7-13th 2007.

Undercurrents believes this could be the future of video on the web so please help.

Steps
1.Go to our website www.undercurrents.org/visionon
2.Click on the V install button.
3.Download our open source video player application (say yes to the questions it asks). Your PC/MAC will need to be fairly new- 2 or 3 years old) to run it.
4. You will have a choice of films and shows. Click on any film you like and hey presto- you have joined the Video revolution!

So tune in and become part of the media - Vision On TV is launching JULY 2007

Technical stuff

The project highlights the best of open source software and working practices.

Uses open source applications
-Broadcast machine - which uses blog-Torrent
-Democracy player - which embeds firefox, VLC and open torrent code.
-Azureus and Vuze: one of the most successful open source P2P hosting clients around.

Open standards
RSS
Bittorrent
Creative Commons

Archive- Vision On will combine lots of original content from undercurrents with the best from the Creative Commons video from around the world. We hope to create a real alternative to traditional mainstream TV in full screen DVD quality to 100,000 people via a scaleable and tested torrent technology.

The long term aim of the project is to help make these “open standards” the centre of future media landscape.

Wish List

We are looking for a programmer to re-skin the Democracy Player and to write a play list generator which will give Vision On the look and feel of Television.
A pot of cash to cover expenses and running costs.

We also need
Video producers - to produce films, trailers, promos, shows.
Content finders- we need people to search the net for shows and films we deserve a wider broadcast.
We need website updaters.

SchNEWS Alternative Media Gathering 2007

(Sat 2pm – 1 hour) – THE VISION THING – the VISIONonTV crew talk about the beginning of the end for mainstream media, with hi-quality peer-to-peer TV over the web. How can we make the current dotcom boom into a media revolution?

Screening (Sat evening – 45 mins) – VISIONonTV
We are producing a large amount of original content for the TV channel this spot will show some of the shows and get feedback on what people think of them? As well as some of the internet shows being produced around the globe.

1 hour workshop – Sunday.
Encoding, uploading and out-reach scaleable screening quality video over the web to hundreds of thousands of people using P2P networks and open source projects.