In addition to running a video sharing website, the EngageMedia collective also produces a free software video distribution platform, Plumi, and conducts research on free software video technologies.

EngageMedia is based on Plumi, a series of software modules and customisations of the popular open source content management framework Plone.

Plumi is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and available to implement and further develop upon. Almost all video sharing sites do not make their software available for others to utilise. We wish to make what we do here on EngageMedia possible for others to replicate and use for their own projects to create truly democratic media and technology.

Plumi enables a wide array of functionality including:

• Video uploading in any format (over http)
• Server-side flash transcoding and embedded playback using IndyTube
• Vodcasting: Expanded Plone standard syndication feeds. RSS1 plus RSS2 feeds with media enclosures created automatically from taxonomy items - e.g country, genre, member, topic, or through creating custom smart folders
• Tagging
• WYSIWYG editor
• Sophisticated work flow, roles and permissions system
• Live search and RSS feeds from search results
• Customised Workspaces for hosting files and other works, which can be made private or shared only with particular site members
• Embedded Playback of Quicktime, Flash video, Real and Windows Media within the browser
• Custom templates for publishing and browsing videos
• Custom profile page for site members with personal latest videos vodcast feed
• Open Content Licensing including Creative Commons and GNU Free Documentation License and the ability to add your own custom licenses.
• Transmission metadata standard

Future features will include:

• Automatic creation and seeding of BitTorrent files upon video upload
• Large video file uploads
• Mobile phone uploads and downloads
• Specialised calendar
• Donations system for contributors and online purchasing
• Integration with gnutella and other p2p networks
• Collaborative film production tools

The key Plone product (software module) EngageMedia develops is ATVideo.

The Plumi tracker is here: PlumiTrac
The EngageMedia software development tracker be viewed here: http://trac.engagemedia.org/projects/report/

Participating

We are keen to involve more people in the development of Plumi. Please contact us if you'd like to contribute, especially if you have experience working with Plone, Zope or Python.

Research

EngageMedia recently completed a research project into FOSS codecs, transcoding and playback applications. Through this research we lay out what possibilities currently exist to encourage the uptake and use of FOSS codecs over their proprietary counterparts. Read the report.

Transmission Network

Transmission is an international 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. The Transmission network's objective is to make independent online video distribution possible (using FOSS) by building the necessary tools, standards, documentation and social networks. EngageMedia's efforts in software research and development are fed back into this network.