System demonstration: Metavid.org: a social website and open archive of congressional video

ABSTRACT

We have developed Metavid.org, a site that archives video footage of the U.S. Senate and House floor proceedings. Visitors can search for who said what when and also download, remix, blog, edit, discuss, and annotate transcripts and metadata. The site has been built with Open Source Software (OSS) and the video is archived in an OSS codec (Ogg Theora). We highlight two aspects of the Metavid design: (1) open standards; and, (2) Wiki functionality. First, open standards allow Metavid to function both as a platform, on top of which other sites can be built, and as a resource for "mashing" (i.e., semi-automatically assembling custom websites). For example, Voterwatch.org pulls its video from the Metavid archive. Second, Metavid extends the MediaWiki software (which is the foundation of Wikipedia) into the domain of collaborative video authoring. This extension allows closed-captioned text or video sequences to be collectively edited.

References

1. Lessig, L. Free Culture. 2004 Penguin Press.
2. Pfeiffer, S., Parker, C., Pang, A. 2005 "The Annodex exchange format for time-continuous bitstreams, Version 3.0": Network Working Group, Internet Draft (expires September 20, 2005); http://www.annodex.net/TR/annodex.txt
3. Pfeiffer, S., Parker, C., Pang, A. 2005 "Specifying time intervals in URI queries and fragments of time-based Web resources," Network Working Group, Internet Draft (expires September 20, 2005); http://www.annodex.net/TR/draft-pfeiffer-temporal-fragments-03.html
4. Weber, S. The Success of Open Source. 2004 Harvard U. P.

Index Terms

• Human-centered computing

  • Collaborative and social computing

    • Collaborative and social computing systems and tools

      • Asynchronous editors

    • Collaborative and social computing theory, concepts and paradigms

      • Computer supported cooperative work

  • Human computer interaction (HCI)

    • Interaction paradigms

      • Web-based interaction

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Computing and business

      • Computer supported cooperative work