Hey Dev

Excellent work. Hopefully we will be able to upload MP4s via the
Upload Wizard soon. I think we are just waiting on legal.

James

On Sat, May 16, 2026 at 3:02 PM Dev Jadiya via Wikimedia-l
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'd like to share a Toolforge tool I've built for uploading
> device-recorded videos to Wikimedia Commons: clip2commons.
>
>   https://clip2commons.toolforge.org/
>
> It encodes locally in the browser using the WebCodecs API and uploads
> via the official MediaWiki API.
>
>
> WHY ANOTHER TOOL
>
> This is intended to complement, not replace, video2commons.
> video2commons handles URL imports (YouTube, archive.org, etc.) and
> remains the right tool for that workflow.
>
> clip2commons covers a different case: a video file already on the
> user's device that needs to reach Commons. For that case, the
> existing options are:
>
>   - video2commons (file upload mode): the file goes to a Toolforge
>     encoder pool that is shared and currently overstretched
>     (Community Wishlist W447, W392, W443, W512, W523, W536 are open
>     about v2c stability or capability gaps).
>   - UploadWizard: accepts files up to 5 GB chunked, but does not
>     convert formats. iPhone .mov and many Android .mp4 files fail
>     TimedMediaHandler post-upload or upload as patent-encumbered
>     formats.
>   - Manual ffmpeg + UploadWizard: works for those who can do it,
>     but is outside what most uploaders are willing or able to manage.
>
> clip2commons does the WebM/VP9 conversion in the browser via
> WebCodecs, then uploads chunk-by-chunk to commons.wikimedia.org.
> There is no shared queue, no server-side encoder pool, and no
> infrastructure that needs maintenance to keep the tool running.
> The only resource constraint is the user's own device.
>
>
> VALIDATION
>
> End-to-end test, 1-2 Mbps connection, 683 MB 1080x1920 portrait
> (Original) file (6 min 13 s):
>
>   - In-browser encode: 15 min 20 s
>   - Total wall-clock (encode + upload combined): ~16 minutes
>   - Final file: 163 MB, VP9/Opus, 1080x1920
>   - Result on Commons:
>     
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_Script_Publisher_Presentation_at_Developer_Skill_Development_Program_India_01.webm
>
>
> PROVENANCE / LICENSING UI
>
> The "Release rights" step mirrors UploadWizard's question tree
> exactly: same root choice (own work vs. someone else), same
> sub-questions for "contains the work of others" and "not protected
> by copyright law", same hard blocks for "I don't know" and
> "copyright-protected", same VRT-pending workflow for permission
> uploads, same set of accepted CC license templates per branch.
>
> This was deliberate. Files uploaded through clip2commons should be
> indistinguishable in policy terms from files uploaded through
> UploadWizard or video2commons. The wikitext output uses the
> standard {{Information}} + {{self}} / bare-license-template
> structure with [[Category:Uploaded with clip2commons]].
>
>
> BROWSER SUPPORT
>
> Verified working (full encode + upload):
>   - Google Chrome (desktop and mobile)
>   - Microsoft Edge (desktop only)
>   - Brave
>   - DuckDuckGo browser
>   - Samsung Internet
>   - Dolphin
>   - Bing browser
>   - Opera Mini (already-WebM/VP9 files only)
>
> Limited mode (already-WebM/VP9 files; cannot re-encode):
>   - Firefox (desktop and mobile)
>   - Safari (encoder support coming in 26.1)
>
> Not currently supported:
>   - Microsoft Edge on Android (WebCodecs implementation incompatible)
>   - Opera (decoder errors at encode start)
>   - Yandex
>   - Tor Browser (WebCodecs disabled as fingerprinting protection)
>
> Browsers in the "limited mode" or "not supported" lists show a
> clear banner up front instead of letting the user start a doomed
> upload. video2commons remains the recommended fallback for those
> browsers.
>
>
> KNOWN LIMITS
>
>   - No URL imports. video2commons remains the right tool for that.
>   - Hard cap: 1 GB / 1 hour input file. Larger files risk OOM during
>     in-browser encode on memory-limited devices.
>   - Encode time depends on the device. Modern hardware encodes at
>     roughly 0.2x to 1x video duration; older devices can be slower.
>
>
> FEEDBACK WELCOME
>
> This is beta. Bug reports, policy / wikitext / copy review, and
> testing on devices and connections I do not have are all welcome.
>
>   - GitLab issues:
>      https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/toolforge-repos/clip2commons (MIT)
>   - My talk page:
>     https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dev_Jadiya
>
> Thanks,
> Dev Jadiya
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-- 
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
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