[MCN-L] IP SIG: Creative Commons: letter from Renata Avila, CC Guatemala project lead
Original Message Subject:[cc-commonerletter] Commoner Letter #2 - Renata Avila, CC Guatemala project lead Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:47:21 -0800 From: Melissa Reeder meli...@creativecommons.org To our community - we are honored and proud to present the second letter in this year's Commoner Letter series, written by CC Guatemala Project Lead, Renata Avila. In addition to her passionate work heading off the successful launch last month of Creative Commons licenses in Guatemala, Renata is also a human rights lawyer and a frequent author for Global Voices Online, an international citizen journalism project. As you will see in this letter, some of CC's most inspiring stories come from our international community; they help remind us why CC and the Commons are vital and how they have the power to effect positive change in ways that may never have seemed possible. == Dear Commoner, The Creative Commons enables us to connect with people from other cultures, share ideas, and solve problems together. It is a tool that gives voice to creativity, and allows us to share symbolic space within society, charting alternative routes to inclusion across the continents, in all languages. My country, Guatemala, is an amazing place where indigenous communities and Spanish speakers share a diverse cultural space. The diversity extends from the culture to the landscapes, right down to the way we communicate. There are 22 indigenous languages in active use by Guatemalan communities across mountains, two oceans, and 33 volcanoes. Sadly, our country was affected profoundly by more than 30 years of civil strife until the mid-90s, and is only now emerging from a long period of violence and racism, exclusion and social disparity. Poverty in Guatemala is high and deep, and the country has remarkably unequal distributions of income, resources and opportunities. In my work as a human rights lawyer, I have experienced in a very personal way that the potential of our cultural commons and national heritage is disconnected and unrealized. Each of our indigenous communities treasures a legacy of scientific and technical knowledge, artistic and aesthetic values of their own, but they need the tools to open their culture to others and share both ways. We need to find ways to overcome linguistic, technical and social barriers, and build connections with Spanish-speakers completely disconnected from their reality. To create a common culture is a challenge and a necessity to improve living conditions and assure peace. As in many other developing countries, basic necessities such as food, potable water and medical care certainly have priority. But how can we communicate to the world that we are in fact a rich country, in the sense of how we create and preserve culture? How do we connect different visions of the world within the same country? I decided to spearhead the launch of Creative Commons Licenses in Guatemala as a tool to help connect our cultural commons. Now the Guatemalan Ministry of Education is using cc for a Schools of the Future project with books and materials with Creative Commons licenses to help breach the digital divide. One of the most prestigious universities in the country, Franscisco Marroqu?n University, have released their online educational resources to the Commons too. Internationalization and localization of the Creative Commons licenses is more than just a technical, legal process. It enables creative, verbal and nonverbal forms of expression as a vehicle to share and learn from one another. Through human connections we can discover treasures that reshape our understanding of concepts like development, wealth and others. We can begin to cross the mental and geographic borders that divide us. As an author for Global Voices Online, one of the most successful examples of global cultural exchange using Creative Commons licenses; and as a lawyer dealing with the complexities of multilingual, developing countries in transition to peace, I believe that open tools such as the Creative Commons are essential for creating better societies. We have a lot to learn from each other. With this letter I challenge you to allow yourself to be embraced by another world. Please support the creation of our Global Commons. === We rely on our supporters to continue our work enabling stories like those listed above. Check it out -- Donate: http://support.creativecommons.org/join CC Store: http://support.creativecommons.org/store Events: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Events ccNewsletter: http://creativecommons.org/about/newsletter Creative Commons was built with and is sustained by the generous support of organizations including the Center for the Public Domain, the Omidyar Network, The Rockefeller Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, as well as members of the public.
[MCN-L] HD video in the galleries?
Have you looked into the MedeaWiz DV76 HD Player? Sounds like it does what you need and it's $385. http://www.medeawiz.com/products/Dv76.htm Sold through Team Kingsley in St. Louis. http://www.teamkingsley.com/MedeaWiz.htm Please let me know if this does what you're looking for or if anyone else has experience with this product. I'm about to use their DV68 for the first time for a project now. I'm curious about the HD player. Thanks Dana Hutchins XhibitNet 541 Congress St. Portland, ME 04101 207.773.1101 ext.102 dana at xhibit.net www.xhibit.net On 11/7/08 5:51 PM, Jason Bondy jbondy at okhistory.org wrote: Daniel, Thanks for your response. We have an 80GB hard drive in the computer. Many of the video clips are 5-10 minutes long, except one that is 32 minutes. We are planning more long documentary type films, so we need to be ready for the larger files. We currently own a few of the Firefly digital video players for standard-definition video, but their HD players are out of our budget at this time, as are the Adtec devices. Also, we already have the computers installed, so we were going to try to use those if we can. As far as Blu-ray, we are concerned about wear and tear on it if the film is repeating continuously for nine hours per day. A hard drive is much cheaper to replace when it wears out. We are still learning about various HD formats and playback options. We were using H.264 originally because we have a Flash program that plays the files using QuickTime. We need a playback format and application that goes straight to full screen as soon as the computer boots up. Do you know of any good reference material that explains some of the formats more in depth? Thank you. I really appreciate your time and assistance! Jason ___ Jason Bondy Exhibit AV/IT Systems Oklahoma History Center 2401 N. Laird Ave. Oklahoma City, OK 73105 405-522-0783 - Office 405-522-5402 - Fax www.okhistory.org -Original Message- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu] On Behalf Of Daniel M. Bartolini Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 4:02 PM To: Museum Computer Network Listserv Subject: Re: [MCN-L] HD video in the galleries? Hi Jason- How much hard drive space do you have available on these machines and how long are your videos? I ask because HD playback on computers is significantly improved when you use codecs that create discrete frames versus heavily compressed MPEG formats like H.264. For example running your video out to something like DVCPro HD or the Animation preset creates all independent frames of the movie. Your hard drive overhead is enormous (possibly 2 Gb for every 3 minutes, depending on bit rate) but the computer has to think far less about the process as there are no i-frames going on. Alternatively, if you need really small file sizes, mess with the H.264 bit rate. Start high at 1500kb/s and move down to around 900 or less until you find something that allows you to maintain your full frame rate. The lower you go of course the more you will see those motion artifacts, but perhaps not jumpiness. The dirty sort-of-secret of that format is it's really processor intensive and upgrading video cards won't matter a lot unless you specifically buy something like the latest NVidia cards that have built in hardware rendering support of H.264 and other MPEG codecs, or if you're willing to use a program like Max/Jitter (or comparable VJ system), or environment like openFrameworks to display your video in OpenGL so all work is done on the video card. Finally, have you considered standalone HD players, like those from Adtec, or going to Blu-Ray (I know, more money, may not work)? Oi. That was long. Sorry. Hope that helps. Have a good weekend. Daniel Jason Bondy wrote: Hello all, We have recently begun moving toward High-Definition video for all of our interviews, documentaries and other footage to be used in exhibits. We are using internally produced video as well as video shot by outside producers. However, we are running into some obstacles determining the best solution for playback in the galleries. We will be playing the HD video files from Windows-based computers connected to plasma monitors. Currently we are trying it with H.264 encoded QuickTime files, but they are very jumpy on video clips with a lot of motion. We have upgraded the RAM and video cards in the computers, but with very little improvement. Also, we using Cat5 DVI/HDMI extenders as there is quite a bit of distance from the computer to the monitor. Who else out there is using HD video in your exhibits? How are you doing it? We would welcome any suggestions or input you may have. Thank you so much, Jason ___ Jason Bondy Exhibit
[MCN-L] HD video in the galleries?
Dana, I hadn't seen that one before. We had originally ruled out dedicated players as the ones that we had found were more than we wanted to spend on it. This one may be worth looking into though. Thanks, Jason ___ Jason Bondy Exhibit AV/IT Systems Oklahoma History Center 2401 N. Laird Ave. Oklahoma City, OK 73105 405-522-0783 - Office 405-522-5402 - Fax www.okhistory.org -Original Message- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu] On Behalf Of Dana Hutchins Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2008 8:09 AM To: Museum Computer Network Listserv Subject: Re: [MCN-L] HD video in the galleries? Have you looked into the MedeaWiz DV76 HD Player? Sounds like it does what you need and it's $385. http://www.medeawiz.com/products/Dv76.htm Sold through Team Kingsley in St. Louis. http://www.teamkingsley.com/MedeaWiz.htm Please let me know if this does what you're looking for or if anyone else has experience with this product. I'm about to use their DV68 for the first time for a project now. I'm curious about the HD player. Thanks Dana Hutchins XhibitNet 541 Congress St. Portland, ME 04101 207.773.1101 ext.102 dana at xhibit.net www.xhibit.net On 11/7/08 5:51 PM, Jason Bondy jbondy at okhistory.org wrote: Daniel, Thanks for your response. We have an 80GB hard drive in the computer. Many of the video clips are 5-10 minutes long, except one that is 32 minutes. We are planning more long documentary type films, so we need to be ready for the larger files. We currently own a few of the Firefly digital video players for standard-definition video, but their HD players are out of our budget at this time, as are the Adtec devices. Also, we already have the computers installed, so we were going to try to use those if we can. As far as Blu-ray, we are concerned about wear and tear on it if the film is repeating continuously for nine hours per day. A hard drive is much cheaper to replace when it wears out. We are still learning about various HD formats and playback options. We were using H.264 originally because we have a Flash program that plays the files using QuickTime. We need a playback format and application that goes straight to full screen as soon as the computer boots up. Do you know of any good reference material that explains some of the formats more in depth? Thank you. I really appreciate your time and assistance! Jason ___ Jason Bondy Exhibit AV/IT Systems Oklahoma History Center 2401 N. Laird Ave. Oklahoma City, OK 73105 405-522-0783 - Office 405-522-5402 - Fax www.okhistory.org -Original Message- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu] On Behalf Of Daniel M. Bartolini Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 4:02 PM To: Museum Computer Network Listserv Subject: Re: [MCN-L] HD video in the galleries? Hi Jason- How much hard drive space do you have available on these machines and how long are your videos? I ask because HD playback on computers is significantly improved when you use codecs that create discrete frames versus heavily compressed MPEG formats like H.264. For example running your video out to something like DVCPro HD or the Animation preset creates all independent frames of the movie. Your hard drive overhead is enormous (possibly 2 Gb for every 3 minutes, depending on bit rate) but the computer has to think far less about the process as there are no i-frames going on. Alternatively, if you need really small file sizes, mess with the H.264 bit rate. Start high at 1500kb/s and move down to around 900 or less until you find something that allows you to maintain your full frame rate. The lower you go of course the more you will see those motion artifacts, but perhaps not jumpiness. The dirty sort-of-secret of that format is it's really processor intensive and upgrading video cards won't matter a lot unless you specifically buy something like the latest NVidia cards that have built in hardware rendering support of H.264 and other MPEG codecs, or if you're willing to use a program like Max/Jitter (or comparable VJ system), or environment like openFrameworks to display your video in OpenGL so all work is done on the video card. Finally, have you considered standalone HD players, like those from Adtec, or going to Blu-Ray (I know, more money, may not work)? Oi. That was long. Sorry. Hope that helps. Have a good weekend. Daniel Jason Bondy wrote: Hello all, We have recently begun moving toward High-Definition video for all of our interviews, documentaries and other footage to be used in exhibits. We are using internally produced video as well as video shot by outside producers. However, we are running into some obstacles determining the best solution for playback in the galleries. We will be playing the HD video files
