With this blog post we look back on the past year. How did Open Images contribute to an open collection of audiovisual material and stimulate the reuse of it?
Hundreds of Items Added to the Platform
In 2010 we have uploaded hundreds of interesting items to the platform from the historical newsreel collection of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, reaching the milestone of a thousand items available on the platform on the UNESCO World Day for Audio Visual Heritage in October. In our selection procedure some themes received special attention; sports, performing arts, winter, technology, and Indonesia.
This year the Sound and Vision was not the only contributor of content to the platform. Other wonderful additions to Open Images were done by the EYE Film Institute Netherlands, the Institute for Network Cultures and the Dutch National Committee May 4th and 5th.
API Launched
In September Open Images launched its open API. Items published on the platform and their descriptions (metadata) and are accessible through an Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). This enables third parties to retrieve the stored metadata and media files in a structured way, making it easy to reuse material from the platform in their own applications (for example to create a mashup).
Video on Wikipedia
Since the start of the project, Open Images has contributed its audiovisual content to Wikimedia Commons to enable reuse of video on Wikipedia, for instance to ‘illustrate’ an article.
At first the ‘donation’ to Wikimedia Commons was a manual process, but in 2010 – in collaboration with Wikimedia Netherlands – we were able to fully automate this process, thanks to the Open Images API. As a result Open Images is now responsible for almost 12% of the video content available on Wikimedia Commons, hence being one of the biggest contributors of video that is reusable on Wikipedia.
We are getting more and more insight in the impact of the availability of Open Images material through Wikimedia Commons. We’ve learned that a large proportion is used to enrich over 550 entries on Wikipedia with related audiovisual content. In December 2010, these entries were viewed nearly 1.2 million times. This shows the great potential for the cultural heritage sector to collaborate with the Wikimedia Foundation to reach new and greater audiences within a meaningful context.
New Projects Reusing Open Images
When Open Images was launched in 2009 the material was almost immediately reused within several projects, including the OPEN CITY audiovisual archive of urban life from the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO and the ArtTube video platform about art and design from the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.
In 2010, tens of projects, small and large, were added to the list. Among them Picture War Monuments, a location-aware iPhone app that enriches the on-site visit to war monuments with audiovisual heritage, including newsreel footage and oral history video material on the Second World War available through Open Images. Another notable initiative was Image on a Map (‘Beeld in kaart’), a Google Maps mashup for the educational sector in the Netherlands combining several (educational) video sources – including Open Images – within a map interface. With this interface users are able to filter results based on subject (geography or history), location and time period.
What’s Next?
In 2011 the Open Images platform will receive a major update, with both functional and visual improvements. Part of this update is the realisation of portal functionality, allowing third party content providers to build and manage their own entrance to the platform (think: http://partner.openimages.eu). This will, for example, allow them to highlight their own contributions to the platform and to design their presence on the platform according to their own wishes and branding.
The platform functionality is part of a larger campaign we are organising to attract more third party content keepers to contribute to an even larger and more diverse offering of open audiovisual content through Open Images. This campaign will focus on public broadcasters, regional and local archives and broadcasters, institutional archives and business archives.
Finally, we would proudly like to mention our nomination for the Museums and the Web – Best of the Web Award 2011 in the category ‘Innovative / Experimental’.
Tags: API, ArtTube, mw2011, OAI-PMH, open video, OPENCITY, Picture War Monuments, Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia
This entry was posted by Maarten Brinkerink
on Thursday, March 3rd, 2011 at 3:23 pm and is filed under Content, Development, News.
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Today we’ll give an exclusive preview of the Open Images platform at the exiting Open Video Conference in New York City. This preview is part of the Birds of a Feather session on Audiovisual Archives we are co-hosting. Read more about this session here.
Other interesting cases presented during the session are:
You can read our introduction here.
Tags: Al Jazeera, American Archive, archives, audiovisual, Creative Commons, MediaBurn, open content, open formats, open source, open standards, open video, Open Video Alliance, Open Video Conference, preview
This entry was posted by Maarten Brinkerink
on Saturday, June 20th, 2009 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Development, Events.
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In March we started the development of Open Images. The first task at hand was drafting the Functional Design for our open media platform together with our MMBase developer André van Toly, d+g design. We finished this first phase in the development in April. Since Open Images is an open source media platform, we will also share our Functional Design document under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands license!
We expect to have a beta version of Open Images online at the end of this June. We will present the platform at the Open Video Conference (more on this in an upcoming post).
Please click here to download the document.
Tags: André van Toly, Creative Commons, d+g design, Functional Design, Open Video Conference
This entry was posted by Maarten Brinkerink
on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Development.
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This is a post to circulate our current research on the availability of open source software for video:
Open Source Video Software: An Inventory (OpenDocument Text file, 52 KB)
This inventory is the result of an ongoing effort at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision R&D Department at creating an insight in the current availability of open source software for video. The main reason for this research is the current development of Open Images, but it is also aimed at expanding our institutional knowledge and expertise, and to share this within research projects and (collaborative) software development. The goal is to get an overview of the available tools for the whole spectrum, from production to distribution and ultimately consumption. Next to this, we also consider processes involved with preservation, interaction and creative reuse of video.
The publication of this document is meant as a first step towards sharing this knowledge and transforming this research into a collaborative effort. We hope this document can become a starting point for a more comprehensive and elaborate inventory. To make this possible we have used an OpenDocument Text file for this document and licensed it under a Creative Commons license. So feel free to correct and/or add information to this inventory, or – for instance – convert the document into a wiki!
For the less ‘open’ readers, there is also a PDF version.
UPDATE: The Open Video Alliance has adopted the inventory on its wiki, making it possible for anyone to contribute!
Tags: collaboration, Creative Commons, inventory, knowledge exchange, open source, Open Video Alliance, OpenDocument, research, software, video, wiki
This entry was posted by Maarten Brinkerink
on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Development.
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As part of Images for the Future the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and Knowledgeland are developing Open Images. The aim of this project is to offer online access to a selection of archive material for creative reuse. Reuse includes remixing of archive footage in new videos. Open Images also supports interlinking with other data sources (like Wikipedia), allowing the easy creation of mashups. Access to the content will be based on the Creative Commons model which proposes a middle way to rights management, rather than the extremes of the pure public domain or the reservation of all rights. The ‘open’ nature of the project is underscored by adapting open formats and using open source software. Software resulting from Open Images will also be released under a open source license.
The development of the project started with a kick-off meeting at Knowledgeland in Amsterdam, earlier this month. The aim-of-the-day was to map the (open source) digital video solutions that are available today and to get feedback. Eight experts in the digital video field where invited to this informal brainstorm session. After an introduction of Images for the Future and the Open Images project plan, the invited experts gave inspiring presentations of their current work. At the end of the day there was a general discussion about the project plan and the first steps that ought to be taken.
Please find a report of this day below. Open Images aims to launch a Beta release by the end of the year.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Bits on the Run, Images for the Future, kick-off, Knowledgeland, open source, Pad.ma, software, Sound and Vision, SURFmedia, technology, Tribler, video
This entry was posted by Maarten Brinkerink
on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Development.
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