Wikipedia Adds Online Video with Kaltura

Wikimedia is partnering with the collaborative video service Kaltura to start rolling out video to Wikimedia sites. Wikimedia and Kaltura have begun a process aimed at bringing rich-media collaboration to Wikipedia and other wiki websites. The vision of this project is to enable the Wikipedia community to further enhance and enrich Wikipedia articles with rich-media content. Think of this technology as a form of video-wiki software that is integrated into the Mediawiki platform, allowing users to add collaborative video players that enable all users to add and edit images, sounds, diagrams, animations and movies in the same manner as they do today with text. By incorporating rich media, Wikipedia and other wiki projects will be able to further enhance the quality and richness of their content and truly surpass any existing encyclopedia in the world.

If you want to see this in action, you can see it on the WikiEducator demo site, which is not affiliated with Wikimedia. I am told that we will beging to see collaborative video added to wikipedia pages starting immediately.

Just as with any Wiki, videos powered by Kaltura can be created and edited by anyone. Users will also be able to view previous versions of a video and a list of people who have worked on it. This tool is not just for video however, but rather any multimedia content; users can also upload audio, slideshows, and other rich media. All audio and video will be encoded in the open source OGG Vorbis and OGG Theora formats.

Here are some links to get you started:

• To take a shoot at editing a video with Kaltura, try the collaborative video sandbox.
• Kaltura is an open source project and the source code is available on http://sourceforge.net/projects/kaltura/.
• To sign up for their partner program, visit http://www.kaltura.com/index.php/static/partners, and add the Collaborative Video Extension to your own Wiki.

Here is a sample video collaboration from Kultara on the Hurricane Katrina (http://www.kaltura.com/devwiki/index.php/Hurricane_Katrina):

Thanks to Download Squad for pointing this out.

About the Author - Mark R Robertson
Mark Robertson is the Founder and Creator of ReelSEO.com. Mark has had extensive experience in online marketing, particularly in Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Local Search, Video Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You can follow Mark on Twitter @markrrobertson

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