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Managing video content
- File and Image went into an Asset category, maybe one day to be joined by video tags.
A similar thought has been going through my mind in recent months.
If
- Txp is about managing content
and if there
- is a content tab for files
- is a content tab for images
- is a content tab for links
- are 2 content tabs for text/articles
Then there should be some provision for video content.
When Txp began, files and images would have been the most common media on a site. Video has been growing by leaps and bounds. It would seem that modernizing Txp would include video.
Perhaps as it’s own stand alone tab. Perhaps changing the image tab to a multi-media concept.
just thoughts.
Mike
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Re: Managing video content
Hi Mike
there is also sound (mp3), flash (swf), silverlight, java applets…
Where should it stop?
I agree though, that the files tab is an inappropriate tab to upload this kind of content.
Multimedia content tab maybe:)
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Managing video content
I agree built-in video support would be nice, but web video is a bit of a moving target at the moment, it would be interesting to see how/if it could be implemented.
As it stands today (using the HTML5 video tag) you would have to encode and upload to textpattern at least 2 formats of video (.ogv and .mp4, ideally also .webm which could replace .ogv in the future).
Then maybe include a player like videojs (there is a wordpress version of that), which takes care of flash fallback for older browsers and a consistent UI between browsers.
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Re: Managing video content
I like the idea of being able to separate file content types but is it something that everyone wants and thus should be base code? Personally I don’t think so. We already have a plugin to add a javascript tab to “Presentation” so what about someone coming up with plugins to add new tabs to “Content” such as “Sound” to cover such file types as mp3, mp4a, wav, maybe FLAC and ogg and there are several others I can’t be bothered to remember at the moment, then another plugin for “Video” covering swf etc? That way, although they wouldn’t be within the existing “Files” tab, they would be within “Content” and would be separated for easy admin.
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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Re: Managing video content
colak wrote:
Multimedia content tab maybe:)
That’s actually more along the lines of what I was thinking. Unless a site is heavy into a particular multimedia format, I think they all can be grouped together. “video” per say would be too specific. But it is too unique
I suppose one could argue images and some files are also multimedia. Or that all videos, images, and other multimedia are just files.
And while I could live w/ images being part of a tab that can handle them and other things. However, I think given the sizing, thumbnails, and tags for them, images best would remain it’s own content type break out.
Likewise – video and audio files used for content seem like they should be handled differently than text files or pdfs.
there is also sound (mp3), flash (swf), silverlight, java applets… Where should it stop?
touche!
imo, mp3, flash, silverlight, etc. are all multimedia, and I think they should be together for the sake of simplicity. I’d have to think more about java applets — I tend to see java more in the realm of javascript, php . . .
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Re: Managing video content
philwareham wrote:
I agree built-in video support would be nice, but web video is a bit of a moving target at the moment, it would be interesting to see how/if it could be implemented.
It seems to me there are two tightly related but somewhat separate challenges that multimedia poses.
- How to manage the content.
- How to publish the content.
My thoughts recently have more to do w/ how to manage the content. Unless you use the files tab, there’s no real way to upload and categorize multimedia content. You can not simply export the database as an archive or to move serves. All the things that make a CMS useful.
Of course, once you have the content in the database, and “managed”, what do you do with it? You are absolutely right – web video is changing all the time. And quite possibly will continue, though the new html5 standards may change that.
I actually am not as inclined to having video tags added for that reason — although your suggestion of something like videojs is very good and I’d be supportive of that if enough people thought it worth the while.
My personal thought was more making Txp easy for plugin authors to hook into the multimedia tab and then publish with the player of their choice.
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Re: Managing video content
thebombsite wrote:
I like the idea of being able to separate file content types but is it something that everyone wants and thus should be base code?
Honestly, I don’t know. I do think the same question can be raised about links, files and images, however? To play “devil’s advocate”
Consider images, which now have really nice tag support:
Searching the forum shows a number of people calling for better image support, and wanting to do galleries. They were vocal, (and this despite a number of plugins for both the image tab and to publish galleries, etc.) Yet I suspect that if you compare the number of (vocal) people doing major image publishing, there are a lot of people who never publish a photoblog or gallery. Yet we expanded the core for the new image tags.
That said, separating images still makes sense because I suspect many people at least use an image here or there in there website. ;)
Likewise, do many people make use of the link tab or the file tab?
Personally I’ve only had two sites – one that managed a lot of links and needed to categorize them, etc., and one that included regular pdfs to download. The vast majority of my sites could get by w/out those two content types being separated out. So a multimedia tab would be on par with those tabs in most of my sites. I wonder if that is true for others?
We already have a plugin to add a javascript tab to “Presentation” so what about someone coming up with plugins to add new tabs to “Content” such as “Sound”
Personally, there is enough js being used in Txp any more, I’d like to see a tab for that in the core or at least something similar to how js is managed in smd_admin_themes. :)
That said, a plugin might work — I wonder how complicated it would get if you added the content tab using a plugin, and then you wanted to use another plugin to add some sort of processing feature to the tab (ala ebl_batch_upload or esq_autoresize type plugins)
For me, Txp strength is in its tag language – I so prefer it to trying to wade through php – for you php gurus, I confess that is my own shortcoming – ;-)
But that means its strength is more as a “Content _Publishing_System”. As we move to Txp 5, I’d love to see it strengthen its role in managing the content. We’ve been moving there, but we have a way to go.
I admit, that makes me a bit nervous though – I love the writer-centric paradigm that Dean birthed in Txp and hate to weaken it. Yet, I suspect that the long term health of Txp calls for a paradigm that embraces other content more equally.
anyway
just some thoughts to spark discussion fwiw
thanks guys!
Mike
Last edited by maverick (2010-10-30 13:30:36)
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Re: Managing video content
I actually am not as inclined to having video tags…
IMHO if there is no specific built-in tag support then there is no benefit of having that kind of content in the textpattern system, you might as well carry on uploading your videos via FTP and leave them out of the CMS altogether.
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Re: Managing video content
I’m not against built in tag support per say. . . and understand your point of view. I see issues with creating tags for flash, for mpeg, etc. How do you have tags that work with whatever video or multimedia file that might be uploaded? And then there would likely be “player wars” over what player to include . . . . (although positioning Txp to use the html5 built in support would be a reasonable solution).
But if one can manage it from Txp admin side (e.g. upload the content from the tab, have it referenced in the database like an image or file, be able to categorize it, or tag it with something like tru_tags or smd_tags, associate it with an article, etc,) then hand off the actual presentation to a plugin of choice (say smd_multimedia_swiss_army_knife), that would seem to be a potential compromise.
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Re: Managing video content
I tend to see java more in the realm of javascript
well processing is changing that…
the problems with mm management are many.
If we take the images tab as a template for the mm tab, then what are we suppose to be seeing there?
Or should the files tab serve as the template? If the case is such, then media types should be flexible enough to cater for current and future file types AND extensions. Then the question arises on how they are called.
An idea is for an extra media types table which could be filled by the end user. the table could be working with new txp tags so as to embed the content in the pages. Way out? complex? probably:) just thinking aloud.
Yiannis
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NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Managing video content
maverick wrote:
flash, silverlight, etc. are all multimedia — I tend to see java more in the realm of javascript, php . . .
All are related to programming. What the application in any of those sets of tools is up to the developer. JavaScript and PHP on the other hand are plain scripting languages and can not even draw interfaces on their own.
That said, a plugin might work — I wonder how complicated it would get if you added the content tab using a plugin, and then you wanted to use another plugin to add some sort of processing feature to the tab (ala ebl_batch_upload or esq_autoresize type plugins)
The same as with core. Plugins can provide callbacks and usable markup as the core can which then can be extended with plugins. Only real difference is that the user would have to have both plugins installed.
Last edited by Gocom (2010-10-30 19:36:17)
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