P2P Audiovisual Guide

How-to make, promote and find people powered media

Beginner's Guide

Tools and Platforms: A basic intro for beginners - How-To: Some simple links to get started - Theory - Tour 1: Indie Film Maker's (Editor's) Tour: Resources for indie film makers - Tour 2: Online Audio, Media Publishing & Online Media/Art Communities Tour: A larger section covering Free Audio Resources via the Internet Archive, Remix Culture, Useful Audio Software, More Communities/Discover/Buy, Sell (featuring artist's friendly music stores) and more...

How-To's

Image/Video/3D - Audio/Video Players: iTunes/iPod/iPhone - Zune - Players Supporting Ogg Vorbis - Rockbox: Open Source Jukebox Firmware - (Pro) Video Tutorials - (Pro) Audio Tutorials/Information - FLOSS Manuals: *special recommendation* - how-to for open-source tools - Web Building Tutorials - DVD/PVR/P2P TV/IPTV - Streaming/Webcam - Annotation/Subtitles/Tagging

Resources

Useful Software: Audio/Video Players/Aggregators, Web TV and Codec - Audio/Video/Image Editing and 3D - Audio/Screen Capturing - YouTube Tools - Telephony (VoIP)/Video Calls - Media to/from Mobile Phones/Digital Movie Distribution - Related Links/Resources: Video Production (Wikibooks) - Movie Making Manual (Wikibooks) - Filmmaking (Wikiversity) - more... - Related Online Articles - Related Blogs/Sites - P2P Related Media - The Directory

New Links and The "classic" P2P Audiovisual Guide

Scroll down to find all new links (added between March and June 2008) here on the main page of the P2P Audiovisual Guide.

or

Browse the directory above to find all links added before March 2008.

This separation was initially made to make it easier for the readers to actually find all the new additions, but it also means that maintaining the original guide requires more attention than before.

With the June 2008 update the old maintainer hands over his work to the P2P Foundation, after two years of working on the project the guide seems pretty complete in terms of what it tries to achieve, most links should be fairly up-to date, but since things are moving fast in the online media world some sites or certain software that could still be recommended only a year ago might currently not be ideal to use - sooner or later some links will need to be updated...!

Since this guide now features a larger spectrum of projects and sites than originally anticipated some categories might need to be restructured (again), some attempts have been made for the new links since March 2008, but of course this also means that the rest of the guide would need to be reworked as well...

Still, the P2P Audiovisual Guide should be useful for the readers the way it currently is for a while to come - its (current) work-in progress status maybe just reflects the exiting and fast moving changes that the democratisation of the media has to offer. To be continued - by anyone who wants to participate...

How-To/Info/Sources

Animation

2D/Traditional Animation

Pencil is "an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source." This programme is easy to use and ideal for beginners or young people. Professionals may find it useful for creating animatics. See also the User Manual. (www.les-stooges.org)

Synfig "Two-dimensional animation has long been the domain of proprietary software. That changes with the introduction of Synfig, a free software/open source tool for producing feature-film quality animation with fewer people and resources." (www.synfig.org)

KToon is "a 2D Animation Toolkit designed by animators (Toonka Films) for animators, focused to the Cartoon Industry. This project is covered by the GPL License using G++, OpenGL and QT as programming resources from KDevelop as the development platform. By now, KToon is only available for Unix systems but we expect to make it works on Windows systems too someday." (ktoon.toonka.com)

Computer Generated/Code Based Animation

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. (...) Available for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows." See also the Learning resources. Worth noting is also the list of Related Initiatives on the main Processing page, though not all projects listed there are open-source ones. (www.processing.org)

Pure Data "PD (aka Pure Data) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. (...) Pd is free software and can be downloaded either as an OS-specific package, source package, or directly from CVS." See also the Pure Documentation. (puredata.info)

The following free and open-source projects (previously linked in this guide) might also be of interest to animators:

Inkscape (vector graphics editor, www.inkscape.org), GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program, www.gimp.org) and The CinePaint Project (deep paint image retouching tool, www.cinepaint.org).

Animation related and project development:

Arduino is "an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. (...) The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment (based on Processing)." (www.arduino.cc)

celtx is a free and open source package for "media pre-production" (screenplay, storyboard, schedule and more). Celtx is of course also meant for traditional, live action film productions. (celtx.com)

3D Modelling/Animation

Wings 3D is free and open-source "subdivision modeler". It is fairly easy to use (as far as this can be said about any 3D app) and might be of special interest to those starting with 3D modelling. See also the linked User Manual.

MakeHuman is "completely free, innovative and professional software for the modelling of 3-Dimensional characters." While not quite feature complete yet (currently 0.9.1 RC1) MakeHuman features an extremely elegant, intuitive and forward-looking interface that could well establish a new standard in terms of user/software interaction. (www.makehuman.org)

For completion's sake the previously linked free and open-source blender needs to be mentioned in this 3D/Animation specific update. Blender is a high-end, state of the art modelling, animation, rendering and video post tool - just to mention a few of its many features. See also the extensive online Manual.

Animation/Open Movies

Big Buck Bunny (formerly known as the "Peach open movie project") is a blender made 3D short produced by the Blender Foundation and was released online for free in May 2008. One of the most interesting aspects of this project is the fact that all production ".blend" files can also be downloaded, modified, shared etc. under a Creative Commons 3.0 licence. This practise is virtually non-existent in the commercial 3D animation world, for all sorts of (legal) reasons. By sharing the production files with the blender community (and by previously documenting the production process on the blog) Peach/Big Buck Bunny can safely be regarded as an "open movie", even though neither script nor the actual production was "community made" as such, instead there was an application process that allowed anyone interested to be selected for the actual Peach team. While the finished product is of a very high standard and can easily compete with comparable shorts from Hollywood animation studios in terms of its technical quality, the subject matter/theme (revenge) and the way violence is shown might come across as disturbing to some viewers since scenes reminiscent of torture are portrayed in a somehow peculiar easy-going/matter-of-fact kind of mixture. (www.bigbuckbunny.org)

Blendpolis Movie Project is "a community project with the ambition to produce an open movie. We, the members, share the passion of creating 3D art in Blender." (blendpolis-movie.de)

Detail Library is "the first open movie project of a small group of artists, teachers and students (the members of this blog), reunited just for the production of it." (detaillibrary.blogspot.com)

Animation/Game Development

Apricot is an open 3D game project, the Blender Foundation's latest effort after Big Buck Bunny (featuring the already established characters from the movie) aimed at advancing and promoting blender's capabilities for game development. Even though blender has its own built-in Game Engine (GE), Apricot uses the free and open-source Cristal Space (www.crystalspace3d.org), a "cross-platform software development kit for realtime 3D graphics, with particular focus on games". (apricot.blender.org)

Video

Education:

Video/Movie Editing and Video Captioning are two resource pages from "Shambles in S.E.Asia (The Education Project Asia)" aimed at teachers and educators. (www.shambles.net)

FX/VJ:

FreeFrame is "an open-source cross-platform real-time video effects plugin system". It supports a wide range of commercial programmes (e.g. After Effects, Adobe Premiere, Jitter, VVVV or Modul8) as well as open-source ones (e.g. FFRend or PureData). (freeframe.sourceforge.net)

Film Making/Remix Culture/Open Media:

MOD Films - remixable films and tools for film reuse "MOD Films makes re-mixable films and tools for film re-use. Sustainable Story Systems." (modfilms.com)

G8 TV Wiki "At the G8 protests 2007 in Heiligendamm, Germany and surrounding events we ran G8-TV to create an alternative news platform for video content. We decided to document how we did it, so you can set up your own Internet TV station and be the media!" (wiki.g8tv.org)

Community Platforms:

Cedar River's Native Tube "invites all of indian country to post your Native sounds with us. We would like the brothers and sisters to know that we will promot your music at no cost to you. The Cedar River first Nations Community is a non profit organization." Note that while the project's host (magnify.net) Terms of Use agreement is a pretty standard commercial one, it does however say that "The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the Magnify Website." This is important, not all (popular) video sharing sites let users do that - always check a sites Terms of Use agreement before uploading any work! (nativetube.magnify.net)

Research/Copyright:

YouTomb is "a research project by MIT Free Culture that tracks videos taken down from YouTube for alleged copyright violation." (outomb.mit.edu)

Open-Source Development:

Lumiera "a Free/Open Source Non-Linear Editing (NLE) application project for Linux developed by the CinelerraCV community. It was born as a rewrite of the Cinelerra codebase called Cinelerra3 but it is now an independent project with its own name. Lumiera is still in an early stage of development. It is not usable yet." (lumiera.org)

Related Video blog:

GVFX - Gnu Video FX is "a project for creating TEMPLATES of 3D transitions, filters, etc." using free and open-source software.

Related Video article:

Video Editing with Blender looks at the open-source blender built-in VSE (Video Sequence Editor) from a user's point of view - note that some points made in the article refer to how things were before the blender 2.46 update in May 2008 (eugenia.gnomefiles.org, 20.04.08) - this article was also discussed on Slashdot. (tech.slashdot.org, 21.04.08)

Audio/Music

Free Albums Galore "I post only legally free albums, instead of blindly hoping copyright owners won’t mind me distributing their music." (freealbums.blogsome.com)

RIAA Radar is "a tool that music consumers can use to easily and instantly distinguish whether an album was released by a member of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)." (Reason: for supporting indie labels instead.) (www.riaaradar.com)

Amie Street "was founded by three college friends in 2006 with one goal: make it affordable, fun and easy to discover and download new music. (...) We support our artists by giving them 70% of song sales and never taking ownership of their creative work." (amiestreet.com)

Related Blogs/Sites

For research:

mwesch (youtube.com) is Michael Wesch's YouTube channel - he is the maker of the 2007 viral video Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us. Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist and leading the Digital Ethnography Working Group @ Kansas State University. (mediatedcultures.net)

Images for the future - Research blog "This blog is the discussion forum of the project Images for the Future. We would like to have an open, critical discussion on a broad range of topics that are relevant to the digitization of audio-visual heritage." (research.imagesforthefuture.org)

Related Articles

Open Movies/Remix Culture:

Film 2.0: The Open Video and Story Remix Platform (indiworks.wordpress.com, 20.06.08)

Fanboy Supercuts, Obsessive Video Montages (waxy.org, 11.04.08)

Want to Make an Open Movie? Recommended read for anyone thinking about making an open-movie, be it an animation (as discussed in the article) or a live action project. (andy-dolphin.blogspot.com, 26.08.07)

Mobile Phones:

Openmoko's Open Source Phone Goes Mass-Market (mobile.slashdot.org, 25.06.08)

Nokia to Acquire and Open Source Symbian (mobile.slashdot.org, 24.06.08)

Gaming/Game Development:

Unofficial Homebrew Channel For the Wii See also the related links mentioned in this Slashdot discussion. (hardware.slashdot.org, 25.05.08)

Copyright/Creative Commons:

Does Creative Commons Work? Check Out the New Case Studies Database (www.readwriteweb.com, 24.06.08)

Media Archives:

Gordon Mohr Takes Us Inside the Internet Archives (news.oreilly.com, 18.06.08)

Books:

Hackerteen Volume 1: Internet Blackout See also the related Little Brother by Cory Doctorow as mentioned in this Slashdot discussion. (books.slashdot.org, 16.06.08)

Selling/Buying

Microfinancing Music With Calabash (blog.wired.com, 02.04.08)

How-To/Info/Sources

Image

For how-to use the free and open-source GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) see the GIMP User Manual (www.gimp.org) - available in a variety of languages including English.

Audio

For and introduction to the free and open-source sound editor Audacity see the Audacity Wiki (audacityteam.org) including the Tutorials page.

For getting started with the free and open-source digital audio workstation Ardour see the official Ardour Manual (ardour.org) or this Ardour 2 Tutorial (www.out-of-order.ca).

A full introduction to audio mastering/mixing offers Tweak's Guide to the Home and Project Studio (www.tweakheadz.com) including a how-to for putting together a home recording studio "that rivals professional studio sound".

Video

An introduction to the free and open-source DV video editor Kino (Linux only) give the FLOSS manual's Kino pages (en.flossmanuals.net). (Note: use the orange, left hand menu for site navigation!)

The free and open-source Blender (3D app) also features a simple yet powerful NLE that may be used in a professional production environment (due to current limitations possibly more useful for shorter lengths projects) - see the Using VSE (Video Sequence Editor) pages from the BlenderWiki (wiki.blender.org). (Also see "Previous" and "Next" at the bottom of the page for more.)

Related online articles:

Open source video editing: what we have now and what we need (www.linux.com, 10.04.08)

Life after Final Cut Pro (indiworks.wordpress.com, 07.04.08)

iPhone

Pwnage - it’s here, folks (theiphoneproject.org, 02.04.08), iPhone DevTeam Releases Pwnage (www.iphone-hacks.com, 03.04.08) and iPhone Dev Team Pwnage Tool Released! Broken WiFi Fixed! (ipluspwns.com, 03.04.08)

Related online article:

The iPhone SDK and free software: not a match (www.linux.com, 15.04.08)

Forums/Help

The Show in a Box Forum is focused on finding solutions for presenting video in WordPress. (showinabox.tv)

Streaming

Flumotion "is a streaming media server created with the backing of Fluendo. It features intuitive graphical administration tools, making the task of setting up and manipulating audio and video streams easy for even novice system administrators. Flumotion is released under the GPL."

Useful Software

Top 100 of the Best (Useful) OpenSource Applications (ubuntulinuxhelp.com, 28.02.08)

Related Articles

Death of the sitcom frees up 2,000 Wikipedias worth of cognitive capacity (www.boingboing.net, 27.04.08)

Ubuntu man Shuttleworth dissects Hardy Heron's arrival (www.theregister.co.uk, 22.04.08)

P2P Related Media

Belgian Integral Philosopher Michel Bauwens' Vision by Akasa - "Michel's VISION Statement Movie represents the essential principles of his Peer to Peer Alternatives" - 5 min. - www.youtube.com

Selling/Buying

Brad Sucks Digital Download Store "I needed a cheap, DRM-free digital download store so I wrote this quickly over a few days. Then I thought it'd be useful for other artists. It was created to sell music but any files will work. ... I'm giving this store away for free to help other artists sell their stuff online." (www.bradsucks.net)

1,000 True Fans "Other than aim for a blockbuster hit, what can an artist do to escape the long tail? One solution is to find 1,000 True Fans." (www.kk.org, 04.03.08)

How-To/Info/Sources

Audio/Video

8.5 GB of Free, CC-Licensed Samples from the OLPC Project, and OLPC Music Tools (createdigitalmusic.com, 26.03.08)

The Digital Artists' Handbook "is an up to date, reliable and accessible source of information that introduces you to different tools, resources and ways of working related to digital art. (...) The focus of this Handbook is on Free/Libre Open Source Software." (www.digitalartistshandbook.org)

iPhone

The iPhone Project is aiming at offering "the most valuable resources for iPhone users, available. From a repository, to open source software, a forum, and a wiki (...)." (theiphoneproject.org)

iPhone Hacks welcomes readers "to the source for all iPhone Hacks." (www.iphone-hacks.com)

The iphone elite dev-team site is about "Replacing what Apple left out." See also the project's page on code.google.com. (www.iphone-elite.org)

Ziphone is "From Zibri with love" and "ZiPhone 2.6b had 3.000.000 downloads!" (www.ziphone.org)

iPlusPnws "was created to provide information about iPlus and related iPhone applications." The download page offers iLiberty, iPlus and Ziphone among other iPhone related software. (ipluspwns.com)

iPhone Linux features iBooter an "interactive Apple Bootloader (iBoot) Console for the iPhone and iTouch. Support for WinXP/Linux/MacOSX 10.5.2". (iphonelinux.org)

iPhone Dev Team Portal notes that "The information, statements, articles, and releases here are official. They have the approval of the combined Dev/Elite teams." but "This site and its contents are in no way affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Apple Inc." (iphone-dev.org)

On the iPhone (iphonejtag.blogspot.com) is the blog of pioneering iPhone hacker George Hotz (en.wikipedia.org).

Annotation/Subtitles/Tagging

dotSUB.com is "a browser based tool enabling subtitling of videos on the web into and from any language" (dotsub.com)

Media to/from Mobile Phones

movino allows to "Broadcast LIVE video from your mobile phone over 3G or WiFi onto your website. Or use your phone as a bluetooth webcam in Mac OS X. Free and Open Source." (www.movino.org)

OpenMoko is "the Worlds First Integrated Open Source Mobile Computing Platform". For more see the OpenMoko Wiki. (www.openmoko.org)

Zannel Launching Mobile Microblogging API (mashable.com, 28.02.08)

Gaming

The Wii Owner’s Toolbox: 100 Cool Things to do With Your System (www.virtualhosting.com, 04.03.08)

Related Articles

21.03.08 BluRay's BD+ DRM broken (www.boingboing.net)

13.03.08 The Digital Tipping Point: an open source documentary (blog.p2pfoundation.net)

12.03.08 iPhone 2.0 Unlocked, Runs All Apps "In other words, true carrier and applications independence. And for a long time." (gizmodo.com)

Publishing

Plumi "is a Free Software video sharing Content Management System based on Plone and produced by the EngageMedia collective. Plumi enables you to create your own sophisticated video sharing site; by adding it to an existing Plone instance you can quickly have a wide array of functionality to facilitate video distribution and community creation." (blog.plumi.org)

Show in a Box "is a package of free video-centric themes and plugins for WordPress, made by and for independent web video creators. All of these tools are open source and ready to be tweaked to look as good as your video content does." (showinabox.tv)

Selling/Buying

Bid4Vid "We connect businesses with independent video producers in an open, secure marketplace to get high-quality videos made at an affordable price." (bid4vid.com)

Vlogging Project

Semanal "One video per week for all of 2008" (semanal.org)

How-To

Video Production Basics

The blip.tv Learning Center "is designed to give those who are new to Web show production a head-start on learning the art, and give experienced producers some tips to help improve their craft." (blip.tv)

Tutorials/Help

What is the Audio/Video Edition of NGO-in-a-box? "The Audio/Video edition of NGO-in-a-Box is a toolkit that lowers the entry level for NGOs, non-profits and media activists wanting to use audio and video for social change." (av.ngoinabox.org)

(Pro) Video Tutorials

AwkwardTV is "dedicated to finding additional uses for the Apple TV by (legitimately) enabling its Potential Capabilities, and is a place for the community to share ideas, discoveries and solutions." (wiki.awkwardtv.org)

Hackint0sh Projects and Hacks: AppleTV, iPhone, iPod Touch and more (www.hackint0sh.org)

Building a video remixing web-site using Annodex - note: this is not the actual tutorial, only the "Talk Details" (linux.conf.au)

Build Your Own Video Community With Lighttpd And FlowPlayer (Debian Etch) is a tutorial in three parts (www.howtoforge.com)

(Pro) Audio Tutorials

10 Tips for Editing a Podcast in GarageBand (www.voiceovertimes.com)

Useful Software

FFMPEG2THEORA offers user friendly solutions for encoding video to the free and open-source Ogg Theora codec (no licensing fees for commercial use in contrast to other proprietary formats) (wiki.transmission.cc) - for OS X users specially interesting seems the Simple Theora Encoder (direct download link) (www.v2v.cc).

Media to Mobile Phones

Open Handset Alliance "Together we have developed Android™, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform." (www.openhandsetalliance.com)

Related Articles

25.02.08 Introducing P2P-Next, a European Union Internet Data and TV Standard (iptv.tmcnet.com)

22.02.08 Adobe cripples Flash video with DRM (www.boingboing.net)

31.01.08 Video Vortex Conference 2008 (1 of 2): Open Source Ways Of Producing, Distributing And Promoting Online Video (indiworks.wordpress.com)

25.01.08 Video Publishing: Fair Use and Copyright Analyzed - Recut, Reframe, Recycle - Robin Good's Latest News (www.masternewmedia.org)

23.01.08 Internet Video Publishing: A Beginner's Guide (www.masternewmedia.org)

21.01.08 An Open Source Media Definition to judge the openness of Open Movies (blog.p2pfoundation.net)

21.01.08 Wikifying video production (announces collaboration with Kaltura) (www.boingboing.net)

01.01.08 20+ Resources For Homebrew Games (mashable.com)

Related Blogs/Sites

Transmission "is a network of citizen journalists, video makers, artists, researchers, programmers and web producers who are developing online video distribution tools for social justice and media democracy." (www.transmission.cc)

P2P Related Media

The Future of Ideas (2001) by Lawrence Lessig is about "The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World - to buy or free .pdf, 368 pages (www.the-future-of-ideas.com)

The Aim

This section focuses on the how-to and technical aspects of producing, finding and distributing audiovisual content using the new autonomous media infrastructure.

This is a Wiki - if you, the reader, have information that you feel is missing and want to share: get involved and help building the P2P Audiovisual section!

The Wiki Text and The Directory

The Wiki text that follows tries to give the reader an overview to the the audiovisual P2P net by filtering the vast amount of available information by asking questions like "Is this useful, can it be recommended - is it somehow in the interest of either the majority of people or a neglected minority?" (Instead of being a link or site that first of all promotes the interests of e.g. a company.)

The Directory (entries currently listed underneath in "Articles in category 'Audiovisual'") on the other hand tries to collect related sites and links of all sorts - including commercial services - where the criterias mentioned above might or might not apply. Over time however a critical evaluation of the individual entries can be done.

General Hint about Web Services and Software

Just because a web service has a pretty site or because a particular software is open-source does not mean that it is useful for everyone. Especially in the Web 2.0 world there seems to be a certain tendency - maybe out of sympathy for a P2P related project - to over-hype a service or a software project. While this Wiki tries to point in directions that hopefully are useful, the reader's own critical judgement is encouraged when exploring unknown territory or installing and using new software.