Okemo II Media thread

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drummingpariah
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Re: Okemo II Media thread

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Sorry for the long wait, I couldn't get adequate hosting set up so the server is currently running in my spare bedroom. I don't have a static IP here, and haven't configured my network to auto-update via dyndns, so it may disappear whenever Comcast decides it's time to recycle. Please bear with me, I'm working on a more permanent fix.
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Re: Okemo II Media thread

Post by dsldubn »

not sure what I'm doing wrong but I keep getting "invalid or corrupt" error messages when trying to download and open the zip folders

I'm still on an old xp machine, maybe that's the issue?
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Re: Okemo II Media thread

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dsldubn wrote:not sure what I'm doing wrong but I keep getting "invalid or corrupt" error messages when trying to download and open the zip folders

I'm still on an old xp machine, maybe that's the issue?
It's more likely that it's on the server-side, a lot of files are getting thrown at this thing. Do you think you could get the link for one of the files you're trying to download for me, so I can try to reproduce the problem on my end?
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Re: Okemo II Media thread

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Just thinking out loud, but it might be easier to just have an album on the Facebook group page for each race and let people tag themselves. That will solve sorting, storage and bandwidth issues for the pictures. Also crowdsourcing will make this more sustainable than a one man job having the burden to sort out everything (btw, there is a picture of 41x in my 506 folder, but it's ok because it's a Corvette too! :D I don't seem to have the option to move the file back in the appropriate folder).

We could limit the server usage to just videos. I don't think there is a good solution to process the videos right now especially if they are long running ones.

I have a colo facility but it's at the University and I cannot bring personal equipment there. Even though they might not be the best, relying on free public services like YouTube, Facebook and such might be our best no cost option for the hillclimb media repository.
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Re: Okemo II Media thread

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RacingFrog wrote:Just thinking out loud, but it might be easier to just have an album on the Facebook group page for each race and let people tag themselves. That will solve sorting, storage and bandwidth issues for the pictures. Also crowdsourcing will make this more sustainable than a one man job having the burden to sort out everything (btw, there is a picture of 41x in my 506 folder, but it's ok because it's a Corvette too! :D I don't seem to have the option to move the file back in the appropriate folder).

We could limit the server usage to just videos. I don't think there is a good solution to process the videos right now especially if they are long running ones.

I have a colo facility but it's at the University and I cannot bring personal equipment there. Even though they might not be the best, relying on free public services like YouTube, Facebook and such might be our best no cost option for the hillclimb media repository.
You should be able to just drag-and-drop that incorrect image in the web interface. Everyone with a login has access to create/move/modify/delete right now. A friend just donated a nice 4u APC UPS and I found that I can get a redundant connection at my house, so all I have left to do is replace these fans with quieter ones, and this server can live in the spare room without any issue.

The primary reason I'm offering this service is so people have access to their content. If you upload a video on Facebook, it gets re-encoded immediately, and the original source video is not available for download. When someone wants to create their own video of their runs, Facebook doesn't help with that at all, and Facebook doesn't help you to get corner-worker footage into your custom run-video.

It's also nice to have a single source of truth for our media. Right now, there's some on Facebook, some on Dropbox, some on Pinterest, some on Youtube, and even some on Vimeo. Personally, I don't have/want a Facebook account, and this mitigates a bit of that pain.

Editing
I'm working on an application in me free time (ha!) that will go through the 'unsorted' videos and chop them up into separate videos, based on audio dead space. I've done some initial testing on that, and have had good results so far, so I'm going to continue with it. That will at least separate all the corner worker footage into single clips that will be easy to sort.
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Re: Okemo II Media thread

Post by walterclark »

I appreciate what you are working on here for hillclimb videos.

It is fine to view pics and video others have created and shared on places like Youtube and Facebook, but I know the files I have been able to download from them have been compressed or otherwise encoded and I gave up on using bits of them in my hillclimb videos (which to-date just include my in-car) because the quality was so compromised.

It would be very nice to have a source of some of these that is original without having to find and trouble the author for copies.
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Re: Okemo II Media thread

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drummingpariah wrote: The primary reason I'm offering this service is so people have access to their content. If you upload a video on Facebook, it gets re-encoded immediately, and the original source video is not available for download. When someone wants to create their own video of their runs, Facebook doesn't help with that at all, and Facebook doesn't help you to get corner-worker footage into your custom run-video.

It's also nice to have a single source of truth for our media. Right now, there's some on Facebook, some on Dropbox, some on Pinterest, some on Youtube, and even some on Vimeo. Personally, I don't have/want a Facebook account, and this mitigates a bit of that pain.
Note that I only recommended Facebook for pictures, not for videos. If we had a hillclimb YouTube account we could download MP4 HD versions of the videos.
For the same reason you don't want a Facebook account, I might not want another account just for hillclimb media.
Another option would be to have a MediaDrop server (or equivalent) where people can upload and download, but still preview or stream content at a lower quality.
Also we should probably ask in the first place who is really interested by the video footage of their car to include in their videos. I think only a handful of us are taking the time to make such videos and trying to process all videos for all cars might be a lot of wasted effort.
Do you have stats on file downloads from the folder to see how much active (downloaded) vs dead (never downloaded) content we have? And for the files that are downloaded, are they downloaded by more than 1 person?

If everyone is only interested in their own content, maybe we should approach the problem the other way around and have only folders for interested users and drop the content in their folder. BTW, right now only the people reading this forum and this thread (295 views out of 360 users) know about this folder. Those following the NEHA news on the FB page (443 users right now) have no clue this is available.
drummingpariah wrote: Editing
I'm working on an application in me free time (ha!) that will go through the 'unsorted' videos and chop them up into separate videos, based on audio dead space. I've done some initial testing on that, and have had good results so far, so I'm going to continue with it. That will at least separate all the corner worker footage into single clips that will be easy to sort.
Power Director 12 has a plugin for that based on audio and/or video to automatically detect sequences in a video. I use that when I make my videos.
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Re: Okemo II Media thread

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walterclark wrote:It would be very nice to have a source of some of these that is original without having to find and trouble the author for copies.
One issue with the current situation is that I don't even know who has taken the picture, who I need to give credit to and what the copyright policy of the author is.
Sometimes there are real photographers and they charge for their work. I only include material that I know I have the right to include. If there is no disclaimer that can tell me I can use that image I won't use it anyway. The author should always be contacted unless he explicitly authorized the use of his/her images.

That raises an interesting question. Who owns the copyright of the pictures and videos in the shared folder?

And be careful I know of at least 1 lawyer that is racing with NEHA! :D
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Re: Okemo II Media thread

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I'll add a terms of use to the root NEHA folder and prepare to add it to the login screen. I think NEHA should own the rights to this media, but that may be more complicated than I'd like, so I may add a clause that releases it to Driven-Daily (which would then provide free-to-use permission to anyone under Creative Commons). All derivative works would be owned by the creator of the final product. That's an excellent point to bring up, and not one I had implemented a final solution to.

If a pro photographer wishes to retain all rights to their work, they would simply not share their raw media with others. This is a service for people who wish to share their media.

Speaking of final solutions, I have plans to add effective preview/streaming functionality to this, but I don't want to rock the boat with new features until it is what I would consider moderately reliable (minimum three nines, or 99.9% of availability). My first order of business after that's done is to make it easier to use (starting with documentation and by bringing my laptop and a battery bank to events so people can load media they want to share on-site, rather than having to upload it to a server somewhere).

I am certainly not opposed to mentioning it on the FB group, or wherever else NEHA folks get together, but I would still consider this a prototype and I have enough test users involved for my needs right now.

Re: Power Director
Does that still require someone to open each corner worker's clip? The reason I wrote this avconv/ffmpeg script was so I wouldn't have to touch anything, it would just run through the 'corner-worker' folder (or whatever we end up calling it) and split each of those long clips into 'interesting' clips of a car driving by. The only human interaction required is to view the short drive-by clips and put each into the appropriate car number's folder.

Ideal Workflow
At the end of the day, I'd like to be able to give each driver a .zip file they can extract, so their computer automatically downloads their car's folder for each event. As media gets sorted into their folder, it'll magically appear on their computer. If anyone is feeling particularly adventurous, they can also download the 'unsorted' folder and help to sort through that, but I have a fairly decent workflow to identify cars at this point - My script looks for the loudest part of each drive-by clip and creates a thumbnail using that moment. Generally speaking, that's going to show the car number prominently, and I don't even have to open the file to be able to sort it. The process definitely needs work and refinement, but has proven to be reliable and saves me a lot of time.

I don't have an electronics background and can't identify wires by color, so I'll contribute to the group in ways that I can make a meaningful contribution. That means lots of software automation and technology operations implementation. This is all good feedback so far, and I have a running list of want/will/won't features that's growing every day. I'll have the laptop and battery bank at Burke II, so we can see how that turns out for whoever wants to contribute their media to the project.
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Re: Okemo II Media thread

Post by RacingFrog »

This looks excellent Jesse. The Power Director route still requires manual generation of the clips as far as I know, just the cutting is automatic.

There is power in the Frog Racing trailer and I can setup a table if you want to leave the laptop there during the event for people to upload/download (it's also dry and in the shade!).
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