OStatic

It wasn't that long ago that it was impossible to find good, free open source tools for working with and viewing video. Now that video runs rampant on the web, though, there are a whole lot of applications worth getting, even if you're currently happy with your video and encoding tools. Here are eight good applications to try.

Do you work with video and audio files a lot? Especially if you use a lot of open source applications to do so, you probably run into situations where you're not sure what codec you need to get a file to run or you need to know about the encoding bitrates that apply to various files. Codec incompatibility can be a big bugaboo with open source software as can getting a hold of good open source utilities that can tell you everything you need to know about rich media files. Whether you're running Windows, the Mac OS, or Linux, a good tool for solving these problems is MediaInfo.

OStatic's sister site NewTeeVee is out with an interesting report about YouTube expanding its developer tools to give outside web sites and software the ability to video uploads, and more. New APIs will allow interaction and customization outside of YouTube, from the community. According to a YouTube blog post the number of possible new applications is endless. For example, the University of California at Berkeley will enhance its open source lecture capture and delivery system with the new APIs to provide free educational content. Check out Liz Gannes' report and her update.

Web Worker Daily has a hands-on look at this week's new version 1.1 of the open source Flock browser, based on Mozilla's architecture.ﾠ

Wikia, parent of Wikipedia, has partnered with open source collaborative web media provider Kaltura to offer collaborative video for Wikiaﾒs communities. You can check out sample videos.

ITWire has an interesting multi-part prescription for how to launch and drive a successful open source project.ﾗITWire

 

 

Whether you do some blogging, operate an e-commerce site, or simply have moving pictures in the back of your mind to start working with, web-based video and animation should probably be on your radar. Many marketing departments are setting up their own video and animation studios for everything from product demonstrations to webinars, and an increasing number of companies such as Brightcove are helping to deliver and syndicate video on the web.